[Dilbert San Diego]

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.

[dfwgator]

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.

[spankalib]

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.

[Nowhere Man]

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.

Yeah, I remember in the 1970's and up to about 1990 or so, 300 pound players were a novelty. IIRC, William, The Refrigerator, Perry was like 300/325 and he was all the talk back in the day. I remember when they mentioned the then rare 300 pounder, Mom and I stared at each other with open mouths.

A little OT, I remember a 1979 article on Sports Illustrated about football in the year 2000 where they said players would have suits with power assists, radios in the helmets and I think a HUD in the helmet too. It was wild.