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Comment by estearum | Hacker News Reader

As someone who has had multiple concussions in other sports, the impacts in youth football are absolutely sufficient to cause concussions and more minor (but still cumulatively damaging) trauma. The fact that they're a repeated part of the game and not occasional incidents is very, very bad.

Requiring a child to play football should be actual child abuse, and even allowing it should be frowned upon the way that letting a child play with a blowtorch is.

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there you said it: you got concusions from other sports. so why single out football as the worst thing ever?

So why ignore the part of their comment that answers your question:

The fact that they're a repeated part of the game and not occasional incidents is very, very bad.

I've gotten a concussion falling off an electric scooter. But slamming my head on the pavement isn't the point of riding an electric scooter, and if you're doing it regularly, you're doing something wrong. Unlike contact football.

When I played some 30 years ago I was taught explicitly not to use my head for any technique, be it blocking or tackling, etc,

That's nice but empirically we know (and anyone can observe) that head impacts are pretty much the norm in ~100% of plays.

Certainly, football isn't the only thing people do that leads to head injuries.

But if it is significantly worse than other sports, why not single it out as the worst thing ever?

Several sports increase the risk of CTE, but football has been more studied, I think because the incidence of obviously impared former players is higher than in other sports.

Due to the number of concussions per minute played. It could be worse (boxing), but it's not difficult to see how some sports are far riskier than others

> The fact that they're a repeated part of the game and not occasional incidents is very, very bad.

CTE isn’t caused by concussions. Hence the rest of their comment.

Because football is the most studied and has one of the highest (if not the actual highest) rates of head trauma per time played.

Rugby and ice hockey are certainly bad, but at least the impacts are generally limited to play near the ball/puck, whereas with American football, essentially every player has an impact on every play (WR blocking on rush plays, etc).

Is it not worse?

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