American football, with its brutal smashmouth style, is something like dogfighting for humans, leaving many players with devastating brain damage. But what about that other sport that the rest of the world calls football, with relatively tamer contact that’s often theatrical, even comical, could it be dangerous to gray matter? Soccer may actually also be quite bad in this regard, with brain injuries caused by jarring headers during the game and thousands of bounces off the skull in practice. From the BBC:

“Ex-England striker Jeff Astle died from a brain condition normally linked to boxers rather than Alzheimer’s disease as previously thought, a neurosurgeon has claimed.

Dr Willie Stewart carried out a new examination of the former West Bromwich Albion forward’s brain.

He said Astle, who died, aged 59, in 2002, was killed by chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

He said this had been caused by heading footballs.

Dr Stewart said CTE was formerly known as dementia pugilistica – a progressive degeneration of the the brain caused by repeated head trauma.

He said the condition was frequently mistaken for dementia, as happened to Astle when he was incorrectly diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

Astle scored the winning goal in West Brom’s 1-0 victory over Everton in the 1968 FA Cup final

Dr Stewart said he believed a number of footballers could be affected by CTE.”