Because some of the yanks around here seem to insist on it and then it is the rules that we have to bring up rugby to wind them up.
That sports science show basically found that this is exactly what happens. The sheer violence of the impacts in american football is frightening, and wearing all that protection just encourages it.
Your knowledge of American football is on par with your knowledge of fitness. I’m not surprised you don’t understand.
Of course, imagining it is all you can do, because no such people exist in the NFL. The only players in the league who could possibly run a sub 10-second 100 meters are corners, wide receivers and tailbacks, and there certainly aren’t any such players in the league under 230 pounds.
Hell, the fastest linebackers in the league are lucky to break 4.5 second 40s, and very few of them clock in at 270+ pounds - and certainly none with that sort of speed.
Would you guys please keep it down!? I’m trying to watch poker.
That should say **over 230 pounds. :smack:
**
I’ve been reading both this thread (and others about the World Cup), and just want to chuck in my response to the bafflement about how a game can end it in a “tie”, and why don’t they do something to ensure that it doesn’t. Let me explain why.
Football (I’m in Scotland, I’m going to call it football) is played in leagues, and in knock-out competitions. The World Cup is a hybrid: the first stage is in leagues (the “group stage”), then progresses to knock-out.
Those of us that live with football day in, day out, are commonly used to seeing league games.
I could give you countless examples*, but I’ll take you back to a Scottish Premier match back in 1998. For once, the domination of Rangers and Celtic is being threatened, and a three-horse race is underway with my team - Hearts - up there as well. One Sunday, we are at home to Celtic. Going into the match, Rangers are on 49 points, and Celtic and Hearts are both on 48.
Celtic score in the 40th minute, and Hearts spend the next 50 hanging on for grim death. Then, an age into stoppage time, Hearts player Jose Quitongo finds the ball at his feet, makes the unlikeliest of shots at goal, it takes a wee bobble and a deflection, and hits the back of the net. The resulting celebration in the stands at Tynecastle is one I will always remember, and it usually features when people are asked about their favourite goals. It finished 1-1.
So the league now stands at 49 points for Rangers, Celtic and Hearts, with only goal difference separating them. Hugely exciting for Scottish football.
In a league competition, there is really no need to have games always played out to a win. It would be a total change in the approach to the match.
I guess we’re just used to seeing league football where draws can be hugely signifcant, and that’s why I just don’t get the bafflement on the boards that amounts to “A tie? Huh? How’s that allowed to happen?”.
*The other example I was tempted to give was the time that Hibs went 3-2 up against Hearts in the final minute of normal time, went 4-2 up in stoppage time, and still managed to only draw 4-4.
Nitpick: that was a First Division match. The divisions weren’t realigned until the following season - and Hearts finished third that season anyway, as I recall. 
Witness Mike Webster of the Pittsburgh Steelers:
“Iron Mike”, as he was known, was only fifty at the time of his death.
And let’s not even get into hockey. (Not as many deaths, but holy shit, you want a violent sport? “I went to a fight…and a hockey game broke out.”)
It can also protect against non-violent injuries as well. I mentioned hockey above? Well, they addressed [url=Clint Malarchuk - Wikipedia]Clint Malarchuk**'s near-fatal throat injury, and after that, neck guards were required for goalies.
Hah - I’ll see your nitpick and raise it. That was the last season of the Premier Division of the Scottish Football League. It became The SPL the next season. Without Hibs.
And I’m all too aware we finished third - one of the decisive matches being a draw against Motherwell, to go back to the point of the thread. We did win The Cup though, in a final which at one point did look like the dreaded extra time and penalties was a real possibility.
That was my thought reading the thread. I love American football. Been watching nearly all my life, but for violence, I have to give it to hockey.
Seeing people getting hit in the face with pucks and leaving the ice pouring blood to seeing a center come across the middle with his head down and getting knocked unconscious by a 225lb guy flying at you at 30mph and taking your head off. You’ll see stuff there that you won’t see in any other sport.
Why do you think most hockey players are missing teeth? (Ovechkin would make a jack-o-lantern jealous!)
Oh, I looked on Wiki – (sorry, I just wanted something quick), apparently neckguards are NOT manditory for goalies, but most wear them. (Anyone who doesn’t is a complete dumbass, in my opinion)
They aren’t bright enough to operate more than a couple at a time?
Imagine how the Spanish feel today.
Up until a few years ago, major league baseball games could be a tie. If a legal game (past 5 innings) was called for rain or whatever and was tied, it was a completed game.
It did not go into the team’s standings in any way, and had to be made up if possible and/or necessary, but the player’s stats were official. The only difference from a game played to a decision was that there were no winning or losing pitchers.
14 pounds?
It’s different because rugby players aren’t allowed to block, greatly reducing the number of collisions. Notice how the original point was specifically about blocks, and your counter-example is about a tackle. That’s what makes it different, and was the entire point of that response, which you completely missed.
Or anywhere else.
Football players don’t ruck, maul or scrummage properly, greatly reducing the number of collisions in American football. The worst hits in rugby are routinely when you’re on the ground under a contested ruck with players piling in on both sides, or driving forward in a maul. Furthermore, the game continues without stoppage: a rugby forward’s expected to hit, maul and ruck on one side of the pitch before immediately switching to the other side of the pitch, following the backs. There is no rest period to recover from a hit: it’s non-stop.
Yes, it was about blocks. But the reason blocks were brought up was to discuss players being hit without having time to prepare themselves:
The distinction between a block and tackle is irrelevant: getting hit without preparation happens routinely in both sports.