I'm so glad that football coaches and sports physicians have started to be more cautious about head injuries! When I was playing college ball the biggest guy on our team was 6'3", 225. In high school the biggest guy I ever played against was Charles "the Buddha" Slaton at 6', 265 (and, believe me, the Buddha was hard to move when you were 2" shorter and weighed 190). In short, even if we hit each other full tilt boogie with a running start, our chances of causing life threatening injuries were actually pretty low, even with the truly sucky equipment of those days.
Today, the physics has taken the game to an entirely different level. When you have 300 pounders hitting 225 RBs with both moving as fast as RBs did when I played, things can get really, really dangerous really, really fast. There were a lot of bad things that happened as a result of taking player's heads out of the blocking equation, but it was absolutely necessary. It is too bad that young men have to give up their careers, but they and their families are better off being careful. Good luck going forward, Merritt!
