I’d count that under the “exploitation” aspect. Ditch the armour, tweak the rules.
It is possible to play vigorous and exciting contact sports without causing brain damage.
That’s an amazing photo, but I’d be surprised if there isn’t a level of CTE in rugby too. Didn’t they find evidence of it from heading in soccer? My kid club fenced from 2nd to 8th grades, and I was impressed with how much safer playing with swords was than football.
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That picture is from AFL rather than rugby. And although it’s a nice photo, you’ll see similar scenes in every match.
The underlying ethos in the AFL rules is that almost anything is permitted so long as you are going for the ball. If you clobber someone because that’s what you need to do to get to the ball, fine. If you clobber someone just for the sake of clobbering them, or deliberately use more force than necessary, not so fine.
Because it involves big strong dudes running around at speed, collisions happen. The rules are designed to minimise contact with the head [1], but sometimes accidents occur and somebody gets concussed.
But that is a thing that might happen to a player a few times in their career. They are not slamming their heads together at every scrimmage.
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[1] To tackle someone, you have to grab them between shoulders and hips; no tripping, no coathangers. If you run into someone, you aren’t allowed to deliberately or negligently hit them in the head.
While there’s no doubt the helmets and padding have facilitated more violence in the game, I’ve read that 100 years ago when both were primitive, it was still a very violent sport. It seems baked in. Maybe AFL has a less violent culture, or maybe it hasn’t come out yet. You don’t need to hit head to head, just head to turf.
As anxiety mounted over the death of a student from head injury in 1906,30 the Harvard College team doctors released a damning and unambiguous report on “The Physical Aspect of American Football” in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (BMSJ), printed on page one.31 Dismissing ongoing tinkering with reforms, the doctors came down “entirely against the game from its medical standpoint.” Their article, systematically documenting the nature and number of injuries sustained by the team over the 1905 season, highlighted one injury in particular that had been hiding in plain sight: concussion of the brain.
AFL wasn’t real gentle back then, either. 
The interpretation of the rules has been tweaked over the years. There is less tolerance these days for sneaky violence, especially when aimed at causing injury to a skilled and popular player.
To minimise CTE, you’d need to do more than just remove the armour.
The exact rules tweaks required are obviously tricky and will require careful thought and experimentation, but just as an off the top of my head idea: what would it do if the linesmen had to begin standing upright instead of crouched?
Less battering ram, more Sumo and Judo.
Wasn’t that one of the tweaks for youth league, or maybe college scrimmages? I forget, but I’ve heard it.
Glad someone saw through all that Librarian poo and brought this to our attention, are we? The bursar not takeing his dried frog pills and condoning a guilded scoreboard for the Unseen Academicals. I say! If it would have been trifle!
Behold the megapode, as they say, but under no circumstances should someone open that door to the hellish dimensions by NOT TAKING THE SPIRIT OF THE WILL OF A LIBRARIAN INTO FULL ACCOUNT! L space will bend, and he will haunt his “alma” “mater”. Oook!
At least I hope so.
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Meanwhile they cancelled plans to install an elevator in the arts building due to a lack of funds.
Though calling the UNH football games “sparsely attended” is nonsensical. They usually exceed the seating capacity by a wide margin as long as the weather isn’t lousy.
Well, I guess you don’t need any nifty hiding hood ornament on your caboose, right? Do tell, what colour did you paint that Sherman M4?
I have to say I choked a bit at the idea that someone was seriously proposing Aussie Rules football as a less physically violent game.
You can obviously do a lot to minimise the risk of CTE in both American football and rugby but I’m not sure whether one can do enough.
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LIke all good punk historians, I have a partial shaved head.
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One of my regrets is not going to a Rice game when I was working there (briefly). My cousin filled me in on how academic standards doomed them to chronic losing, so the fans concentrated on raising poor sportsmanship to an art form. They would disguise someone as a yell leader (during A&M games—TX A&M being a rival for decades) to lead scurrilous and uncomplimentary cheers about the opposing team.
And whenever the other team, whoever it was, scored against Rice, the fans in the stands would shout, as one, “AWWW, SHIT! GOD-DAMN!!”
I’d love to see that, just like I’d like to see soccer fans in Italy sing Verdi’s “Va, Pensiero” during games.
…and the dragons.
Sounds like a good group of people to turn to for such funding.
Just incidentally, do you also have a kangaroo pal?
Could be an asset at faculty meetings. Especially in budget negotiations.
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