Rugby vs Football

A reader protests:

"What rugby players endure..." For most of my adult life I've listened to rugby players--and those who admire them - go on and on about how tough they are, how noble, etc. Well, all sports that actually are sports require physical toughness, don't they? I tried playing some club rugby in college, albeit not at a name-brand school with history and tradition and all that. Didn't like it. You see, it just didn't offer enough opportunities for raw, straight-up violence as did American football. Yes, they wear pads and helmets. Yes, they stop the play about every five seconds. But if they didn't no one would live to tell about it. Like most activities that are purely American, violence and the destruction of the opponent is the point in American football. Any high school senior in late season can tell a half dozen stories on par with having a tooth stuck in one's head, but the snapped fingers and feet facing the wrong way and bouts of blindness caused by brain injury just don't captivate quite like the tooth tale.