(09-13-2022 01:33 PM)GoodOwl Wrote:  Stanford lineman Branson Bragg to retire from football, citing concussion and mental health issues

He's from Combine, Tex. (SE of Dallas) and Crandall H.S. (https://gostanford.com/sports/football/r...gg/17907).

From the article linked above: "Bragg wrote that he's on track to graduate with his degree in mathematical and computational science."

Nice!!

(01-20-2019 04:45 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(01-20-2019 01:09 PM)franklyconfused Wrote:  

(01-19-2019 05:54 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  Rugby coaches will insist that there is a simple way to reduce football injuries--take off the headgear.
With no helmet, players are a lot more aware of proper technique. Put it on, and they think they are invincible and can go spearing people with it.
There are (at this point admittedly isolated) places where rugby is growing as football declines because of the concussion issue.

I've heard this a lot, but I wonder if this is due in part to the fact that rugby doesn't have as much scrutiny because there's less money being thrown around. It also doesn't address the issue of rugby being far less likely to put a ball carrier in a position where there are defenders running full speed at them from in front and from behind at the same time (forward passes). Generally, a ball carrier in rugby is either in front of every defender or behind every defender, maybe with an exception for the full back that they can turn away from (turn the hits from front and back to side-on). A receiver on a crossing route is surrounded by line backers and safeties, and a running back through the line has to deal with linemen and linebackers. I'd like to see experiments where teams demonstrate American football with less or no padding to see if it's viable, but I'm not sold on it, yet.

There is no question that the dynamics of rugby are different. And those different dynamics almost certainly contribute, as you suggest. I do think that if you removed the headgear, the dynamics of football would change as a result. You raise interesting questions, and I don't know the answers. Nor, I suspect, does anyone.

Another enormously different dynamic of rugby is limited substitutions. If you have to play both ways for 60 minutes let alone 90 and your team only gets x number of subs you play to survive and control the ball not just jack people up. Plus, the average sizes would likely come way down etc. Not a move that would be popular but most of these guys wouldn't survive a whole rugby game. Other than that sign a waiver - the way this thing is heading with college degrees worthless many if not most of these guys don't have a lot of options to make them and their families generational wealth so play on.