First let me start by saying that the research on brain injuries and sports is very new and at times has shown fairly bad protocols in the studies, so basically anything you read on the subject requires more specialist context than I have.
That said, in reading about this for the last decade or so when it became a top news item, its become apparent that most brain injury news stories don't report on them very well and lump 2 drastically different kinds of brain injury into the same bucket. Concussions and CTE. The former is caused by a single traumatic event that can leave the brain damaged after it. The latter is probably a repetitive injury, lots of small events that add up to brain damage.
Gridiron football has the opportunity for both. Big shots on open field runners frequently lead to concussions, but for CTE the most dangerous position may be offensive linemen who infrequently take those high speed impacts that get so much coverage. Instead on every play they are taking repeated small blows to the head.
This is how soccer gets lumped in. There is at least circumstantial evidence that the arial game in soccer and potentially even header practice can lead to CTE at fairly high incidence rates. Given the lack of studies its unclear what the level of danger is.
Hockey on the other hand has the opposite danger. Repeated small head hits are rarer than in football but the incidence of traumatic concussion causing hits is similar if not higher.
American football is the first sport to have major studies around brain injury and those are fairly early days. As the other sports have more studies, and as the studies get more data, I suspect we will find that all contact sports put you at risk of brain injury and that football and rugby have higher incidence of CTE than the others. But thats just guess work right now.
For soccer it’s trivial to remove the aerial aspect from the youth game, in fact they’ve already done it. No headers, no throw ins, etc. Doing so doesn’t do much to change the game at a youth level.
Football on the other hand... it’s pretty much impossible to take the CTE risk away without ending up with another sport (rugby, Aussie rules, whatever).
IMO the long term viability of US football is not good.
That said, in reading about this for the last decade or so when it became a top news item, its become apparent that most brain injury news stories don't report on them very well and lump 2 drastically different kinds of brain injury into the same bucket. Concussions and CTE. The former is caused by a single traumatic event that can leave the brain damaged after it. The latter is probably a repetitive injury, lots of small events that add up to brain damage.
Gridiron football has the opportunity for both. Big shots on open field runners frequently lead to concussions, but for CTE the most dangerous position may be offensive linemen who infrequently take those high speed impacts that get so much coverage. Instead on every play they are taking repeated small blows to the head.
This is how soccer gets lumped in. There is at least circumstantial evidence that the arial game in soccer and potentially even header practice can lead to CTE at fairly high incidence rates. Given the lack of studies its unclear what the level of danger is.
Hockey on the other hand has the opposite danger. Repeated small head hits are rarer than in football but the incidence of traumatic concussion causing hits is similar if not higher.
American football is the first sport to have major studies around brain injury and those are fairly early days. As the other sports have more studies, and as the studies get more data, I suspect we will find that all contact sports put you at risk of brain injury and that football and rugby have higher incidence of CTE than the others. But thats just guess work right now.