I’ve heard that the old leather helmets provided good protection. Today’s hard shell helmets can be used as battering rams.
Another factor is that the players have bulked up so much in recent years. Years ago, 300 pound players were rare. Now there are huge numbers of such players.
There’s a big difference between being hit by a 220 pound player and a 320 player. The laws of physics are involved. Force = mass x acceleration.
Just as in boxing you would never allow a 200+ lb fighter fight against a 140 pound fighter...perhaps the NFL does need to look at weight restrictions.
It’s not that the old leather helmets provided good protection.
It’s that when you’re wearing one, you’d better hit with another part of your body!
It’s the counter-intuitive, law of unintended consequences - when you efficiently sheathe the head, it IS used as a battering ram. Correct! They would NEVER do that with a leather helmet.
Any attempt to conflate suicide with football, even the way it is played today, is an effort to castrate.
Not to t/j too much, but I’m convinced the directors - the ones who say; “Camera two!....go to camera 4, etc” (who show the game) did NOT play football.
How many times did you WANT to see a snot-bubbler get up, want the camera to linger on the scene... and instead, you get the qb’s face, or *something else*...?
Think about it. There’s a high percentage of faggotry in showbiz.