It seems the way to make the game safer is, ironically, to reduce the safety equipment. After all, if you have more skin in the game, so to speak, the less you might make or take on risky maneuvers. Of course, there are always those who are going to go for broke and do it anyway,

So maybe the way to win is not to play,

A similar sport is rugby, but the incidence and possibility of injury is pretty high there, if you read the news. Plus, rugby is un-American, just as American football is un-Worldwide. So changing sports isn't really an answer, either. Basketball isn't the same kind of sport, though I took a few elbows in the face and a knee or two in a very unfortunate spot, so yeah, it rates up there.

I grew up in a small Texas town where football was practically a second church (technically, 4th, since there were three churches in town). I broke a couple of bones and sprained both ankles multiple times before I was out of elementary, plus I was rail-thin, so by the time football rolled around I was pretty risk-averse. However, I "managed" the team, which meant doing a lot of menial tasks the the coach didn't want to. I was also the cameraman.

There were several times I observed some pretty serious injuries. One of our tackles shattered his right thumb to the point where it was very difficult to reconstruct. I watched a running back go over the line and got pinned between two tackles, right at the hip, not only taking him out of the game, but putting him in serious condition in the hospital for a week (the term used at the time was "bone-bruise" and he was on crutches for the rest of the season, at least). During training, despite every precaution, I saw people suffer from heat-stroke and -exhaustion because we started training in the 110-degree August sun.

These weren't urban kids, either. They were small-town farmboys, used to working in heat and taking hits from the occasional obstreperous cow or a kick from a nervous horse (those were few and far between, thankfully). I once had my bell rung by a charging sheep desperate to get out of a trailer, so I know what a concussion feels like, after you wake up. No hospital trip, either. Just sucked it up and went back to work.

The point is: that these guys were were willing to take some damage just to play a sport. They were middle-school and high-school kids, ready to take on the world, without considering the potential risks. Their parents encouraged it (my grandparents were pretty much neutral about it) and when one of their kids got injured, it was just part of the game, even if the damage was fairly traumatic. None of these guys were particularly violent at the time, but if there was fight, they weren't going to back down and so the prospect of being padded up and charging the other guy wasn't that big of a deal.

How do you even begin to compete against that sort of mentality?

NOTE: Not to knock om people who grew up in an urban environment, but I think growing up in a rural farming community carries a higher risk of injury. When working around livestock you have to be on your game at all times, since you can't just take a break for a minor injury, that would otherwise entail a trip to the family doctor for a quick checkup. That was potentially a whole day lost. Anything above a minor sprain or a small cut could have some serious effects on production.