Each team has 53 players on its roster for yesterday's game, which is typical/ There are usually 2-3 players for every position, sometimes more, given that there can be significant 'attrition' throug the course of the season. The salaries for each team's players varies , and the football league is not setup with the franchise salary caps that the baseball leagues are - though even the baseball league team's vary ALOT - it is a mysterious formula that dictates their limit, to be sure.
Rugby was starting to become a little more popular over here when I was in university, but I didn't play it more than a few occasional weekends with some non serious friends. I enjoyed soccer(football to the rest of the world) quite a bit, and I can say that there we had alot less of the 'swan-dive' performances than we see in the world cup matches these days. My friends who played rugby easily kept the local pharmacy in business for bandages, medication and plast casts/splints.
I guess the thing about rugby, in my view, though there are some pretty big guys out there on the rugby field, and anyone can get hit pretty hard without protection, they all have to be able to do some running, etc. and the big guys aren't as ridiculously HUGE as the linemen on these american football teams. If I had 5 or 6 of these 350+ pounders all lunging for me at the same time, I'd want some padding and a helmet!
