Frank Wycheck

The face of Detroit Red Wings' hockey goalie, Terry Sawchuk, before masks became standard equipment, 1966.

 

Hockey consist of high speed skating on ice hitting a solid rubber puck with long wooden sticks.

Ice, razor sharp metal, solid rubber puck traveling upwards of 100mph.

Not the same.

 

You're correct. Both of them are different than motocross racing.

I wouldn't suggest doing any of them without a helmet.

 

Nobody says that football, especially pro football is a safe sport. Modern football as we know it came out of the fact that the leading cause of death for men in college was football. Before 1905, football was mainly a modified rugby game. A couple dozen young men would die every year from football injuries or be maimed for life before the days of modern orthopaedic medicine. It was so bad that President Roosevelt seriously considered banning the sport altogether. He was a Harvard man and Harvard was the one of the dominate football schools of the day. Imagine if the President today went to Alabama or Ohio State as an alum and seriously discussed banning football.

The power schools of the day got together and rewrote the rules largely using the guidance of Yale coach Walter Camp (Camp would later be a sports writer, inventing the All-American team whom he personally selected). The rule changes changed the game from the bloody slugfest to something we would actually recognize today.....a line of scrimmage, 4 downs to get 10 yards, a consistent scoring system, the safety, etc. The forward pass would come later. And the modern NCAA would be born from these discussions between colleges.

Amazingly, helmets wouldn't be required in college football until 1939 and 1943 in the pro ranks. About the same time, plastic football helmets made the scene, replacing the leather helmets that dates back to the late 19th century.