TSN - The Canadian Football League and Canadian Football League Players' Association will introduce changes to their sport later today that will improve player safety and could have ripple effects well beyond the league.
Effectively immediately, the league will no longer allow full-contact padded practices during the season, significantly reducing the number of collisions players sustain over the course of a season.
The above text is from a TSN article that hit earlier today and created major shockwaves throughout the world of football.
Teams are currently allowed full-contact practices during training camp, plus an additional 17 days during the season. While contact practices will still be permitted at training camp, full-contact practices during the regular season will immediately become a thing of the past.
By no longer allowing contact practices during the season, the CFL is one of the first major sports leagues to openly show that they are willing to sacrifice a little bit of quality on the field for more healthy athletes. A decision that the NFL has been asked to make for years.
Will this actually decrease injuries? Some believe it will have the adverse impact and cause more players to be injured because they are not used to contact.
We will see, but we now have a very reliable "test dummy" on an idea floated around for years. That's the only way change happens.