It's funny how they keep "improving" the gear that players use, but now we've seen far more frequency of suicides and early deaths of players across contact sports lately that are related to head trauma and being a "tough guy" than we did for the past decades when safety was much more lax of an issue.

The issue of what this form of brain damage is doing to the players needs to be looked upon more closely, but it's taking the deaths of many players to get any attention.

Seen similar studies on the issue involving fighters, DH. They've said that boxing gloves are like hammers attached to the fighters, especially at 16oz, and are increasing the incidences of brain injuries and fatalities. They give the boxer increased weight behind their strike while allowing them to increase the power of their strike with reduced risk of injury to themselves.

There have been a few (quickly muted) calls to drop down to MMA/K1 5oz gloves in boxing as well as demands for the officials to call fights earlier at the signs of an injured fighter rather than letting them continue. The lighter, smaller gloves have a higher risk of cutting the opponent than boxing gloves, but keep the fighter in check due to an increased risk of injury and slightly reduce the impact to the skull of the other fighter.

As far as rugby goes, I took a few good shots to the head when I played and recovered fairly quickly. Friends of mine in football and hockey after getting their bells rung a few times had a hard time recovering and never ended up quite the same. For all of the protection that the helmets are supposed to give, I would have thought that having a 270lbs guy land on my head on frozen ground would have given me worse damage than my buddy having his helmet banged against the plexiglass, but it could've been the luck of the draw as well.