New Orleans Saints "bounty" scandal

[Sigaba]

Originally Posted by Horned Frog

Pedoncodoc,
It's my understanding that in the early 1900s football as we know it began to diverge from rugby, most noticeably at first with the allowance of the forward pass. Other rules followed until the game exists as it does today.
When the forward pass was instituted (in colleges of course; no pro ball at the time), hits started getting bigger and injuries started getting worse. I seem to remember reading that some players died, but I don't remember the source so I hav no data there. The first pads derived from the scrumcap, it was made thicker, more rigid and more padded which of course is now a helmet. In my experience with playing both sports for a few years, rugby players get hurt a lot more. However, I've only seen one really serious injury during rugby, a severe concussion when a player was driven into a goal post. In football I've seen broken femurs, concussions, torn up knees, bad juju. So I think football has more serious injuries when they do occur.
Rugby hurts more though, so why would you bother playing football?

FWIW, the following link will take one to a Library of Congress webpage. The webpage has links to newspaper articles on football during the early 1900s and the efforts of progressives (especially Theodore Roosevelt) to reform the game in order to limit the number of fatalities <<LINK>>.