Korean Job Discussion Forums

[seoulsucker]

As a Kiwi friend once told me, "Rugby is a contact sport, American football is a collision sport."

There's always been a ton of discussion about which sport is "tougher", or which players dish out the most punishment, and this video takes an interesting snapshot of both from a scientific point of view.

http://www.spikedhumor.com/articles/167804/Sports-Science-Rugby-vs-American-Football.html

Rugby hit: 1600 pounds of force
NFL hit: 4800 pounds of force

I think the most interesting point is the "psychological armor" comment.

Anytime someone calls NFL or NCAA players "poofs" for wearing pads, think about this: why do boxers or MMA fighters wear gloves? It's not so much to protect the opponent as it is to protect the puncher's hands.

Knowing that they are not at as great a risk for injury, they are able to throw much harder punches. I think the same concept applies to US football hitters. They're able to drop the body's natural self-preservation mechanisms and just throw it all out there.

Of course, this is a subjective test. I'm sure there are frequently harder hits thrown in both rugby and football, but the test seems to show that in general, AF players hit much, much harder, but rugby players hit much more frequently.

[Horangi Munshin]

[FMPJ]

In rugby, you must wrap when you hit, you can't put your forearms up and spear. This means that your shoulder--a mass of soft tissue, tendons/ligaments, small bones, and a joing--takes the brunt of the hit.

If a rugby player tried to hit with as much force as an NFL player, he'd destroy his shoulder in one hit and would likely never play again.

Rugby (union, at least) is a much manlier game, either way: You can destroy your face, there aren't really substitutions, gameplay is in continuous 45-minute halves (no "TV timeouts" haha).

[BS.Dos.]

I'm just heading out the door so haven't had time to watch all of that clip yet, but did they look into scrummaging? Look at the pressure exerted and absorbed by the hooker and the tight-head prop in rugby.

[komtengi]

jammer is a pro and those rugby players were amateurs...
but having said that jammer isnt as big a hitter as some of the lbs out there.
personally I think football players make bigger hits, there are times that dont even go to wrap up the player, and just hit them instead
like said previously the pads allow for that

[ernie]

why didn't they test hockey hits as well? guys on skates move WAY faster than a football or rugby player could ever go. what about being crunched into the boards?

[BS.Dos.]

Why did they test a rugby tackle against someone who was moving, but tested the American football hit against a static object? Why didn't they use a real moving person with the American footballer?

[BS.Dos.]

I don't think either rugby or American football really lend themselves for fair comparison being as you can make off the ball hits in the latter whereas that would be both illegal and highly dangerous in the former.

Ultimately, I think that that test was both flawed and biased and I don't think that it established categorically that American Footballers hit any harder than Rugby players being as the test criteria for each was different and, more importantly, they choose a Pro American footballer but an amateur Rugby player.

Is there anything equivalent to scrummaging in American Football?

[komtengi]

[BS.Dos.]

And conversely, maybe those that do wear pads should take them off once in a while. This post afterall seems to imply that NFL players hit harder, which is a highly dubious presumption given that if you take two 100kg guys of equal fitness are going to pretty much perform the same. Just because one plays sport x and the other y, doesn't mean that this somehow increases his physical ability to play the game.

There are certain aspects of rugby that make it a far more brutal sport, rucking for example, a legal aspect of the game, but very unforgiving for the player who finds himself being rucked. Also, you take a smack in the mouth from some lump of a prop-forward in rugby and you're going to know about it a lot more than a guy who's wearing a helmet.

[JMO]

[BS.Dos.]

There are no rules in rugby which restrict how hard you can hit.

[JMO]

[BS.Dos.]

[JMO]

I don't agree. Releasing and rolling away does not need that clarification. That is a separate aspect.

There were virtually no hits in that video where the player did not have an arm on either side of the body of the player he was taking down. In American football you can hit just with the shoulder/forearms and nothing else.

Are you saying that it is common in rugby union for a person to hit someone with the shoulder/forearms and nothing else? I don't think it is even legal.

Also the video doesn't show how many of those hits were legal.