The brain damage is obvious (well, at least to anyone who thinks about it - I honestly doubt the majority of American Football fans do).
What has been in dispute is whether the adoption of safety measures (helmets, padding, etc) has helped or hurt. The tide of medical opinion seems to be that it has hurt, that all the gear gives an illusion of safety that doesn't really exist, leading to more frequent, high momentum impacts. What has also been in dispute is whether players have been placed in excessive danger due to the machismo involved - that concussions have been treated as no big deal, resulting in players with potentially serious head injuries being ordered back onto the field, and that the desire to win at all costs by managers, sponsors and players has resulted in a level of injury and death that simply wouldn't exist if the players were more concerned with playing well than with the scoreline.
Certainly, you don't see reports of multiple suicides by New Zealand All Black Rugby players (although Rugby is arguably a more vicious game). Soccer players have reported deafness as a result of head injuries, but you don't see the massive incidents of domestic violence. That's usually left to the fans. (Ooops, did I say that?) Formula 1 drivers suffer incredible head trauma, but injuries of that kind are treated with extreme caution (neurologists are included amongst the circuit medics and brain scans after an accident are standard).
I'm not saying any of these sports are "safe" - soccer has worked on making the ball lighter to reduce head trauma, which is good, but all of these involve participants suffering brain injuries from time to time. What I am saying is that American Football appears to have both a higher incidence of brain injury AND a greater severity of brain injury when incidents occur than any of the other sports I listed. Which is impressive, when you think about it, given that F1 cars can slam into a barrier at 170 mph.
Of course, the big difference is that most F1 drivers have a major shunt perhaps two or three times a year, but American Football players can suffer head trauma every play and there will typically be between 60-80 of those per game (http://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/plays-per-game) over 16 games per season (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League_regular_season), which gives you between 960-1280 potential head injuries per year.
Repetitive, untreated head trauma is going to be worse than a very few, treated head injuries even if the latter are more severe in a given incident.
Ok, what about soccer? It has plenty of head impacts. Well, according to studies, players head the ball 6-12 times in a game. (http://journals.lww.com/neurosurgery/Fulltext/2012/01000/Heading_in_Soccer___Dangerous_Play_.1.aspx) That's a tenth the number of head impacts of American Football. The mass of a soccer ball is 1 lb, but the mass of an American Football player can be 290 lbs. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Castillo_%28American_football%29) If the impacts were at the same speed, you've vastly more momentum per collision in American Football -plus- vastly more collisions.
There's plenty of evidence that some brain injuries occur in soccer, though it's not easy to see how this can be reduced much further given that we've gone from pig-skin leather soccer balls to ultra-light plastic. (http://www.oysan.org/Assets/oysa_assets/doc/coachingarticles/ConcussionFindings.pdf and http://www.thelancet.com/journals/laneur/article/PIIS1474-4422(03)00579-9/fulltext) [thelancet.com] This needs to be publicly recognized. It is NOT a risk-free sport and brain trauma IS inevitable.
Rugby is perhaps a more difficult sport to explain. Head crunches aren't uncommon (although leg tackles are the standard), all manner of injuries are very common, and the forces are absolutely incredible. (A rugby scrum can put 20 tonnes of force down your spine.) True, the All Black's Haka (htt
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