In the ongoing discussion about football concussions, here’s a perspective that’s largely been overlooked — a point of view which Confederate commander Gen. Robert E. Lee touched on in 1863 when he remarked: “It is well that war is so terrible — otherwise we would grow too fond of it.”

College football sprang up almost overnight in the aftermath of the Civil War. The phenomenon was more than mere coincidence. The war between North and South employed vast amounts of new technology in weaponry, communications and transportation. Repeating rifles, exploding cannon shells, trains, telegraphs, trenchworks and armor-clad battleships were among the innovations that made for efficient large-scale killing and destruction. Officers on both sides had been trained at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, perfecting military techniques and strategies.

The result was war that had grown too terrible — and yet, young men were still attracted to the gallantry of conflict.

Enter football — a game of simulated battle, minus the weaponry. College rivalries which have endured more than a century began forming a few short years after Lee died in 1871. Football provided an ideal substitute for war: violence and bravado with limited risk of death or serious injury. And young ladies liked to watch.

It was a dangerous game as first conceived. Helmets did not appear until the 1920s — and they were made of soft leather with no facemask, no chin strap and limited padding.

Hard leather helmets were introduced in the ’30s. The first molded plastic helmet was patented by the John T. Riddell Co. in 1939. The face mask debuted in 1955.

There have been steady improvements ever since, all designed to enhance player safety, absorb shock and protect the head from impact.

But here’s this overlooked concept of helmet as weaponry: while continually improving the football helmet as a defensive tool, the engineers and designers unwittingly have also perfected it as an offensive weapon. Players began developing a technique known as “spearing” — helmet-first tackling. Coaches taught it as a legitimate technique — “aim the top of your helmet right at the numbers on his jersey.” High school football banned spearing in 1976, but officials were slow to enforce automatic ejections, believing it was too harsh a penalty.

The growing awareness of the long-term effects of brain injury have spurred efforts to discourage dangerous football techniques like spearing, but misperceptions persist. So does resistance to the message.

A recent Tulane University survey of 600 football players from 16 Louisiana high schools found that 29 percent thought using the top of their helmets to tackle was legal, 32 percent thought head-butting an opponent was legal and 35 percent thought it was permissible to barrel over an opponent headfirst. Of the coaches at those 16 schools, only two said they’d shown a blocking and tackling safety video distributed free by the Louisiana High School Athletic Association, three refused comment, five said they hadn’t had time to show it and six believed showing the tape to their players would curb their aggressiveness.

And a recent survey of 100 New Jersey football officials found an extremely low level of enforcement of the spearing penalty. Forty-one percent had not made a spearing call in the previous season and 87 percent called between zero and three penalties. A typical official called one spearing penalty for each 20 games worked, although by some accounting methods as many as 40 spears occur per game between tacklers and ball carriers.

Advances in technology during the Civil War hastened the popularity of football as a safe substitute for war — the thing Gen. Lee described as “so terrible.” Nearly 150 years later, advances in helmet technology threaten to make football something terrible, too.

The remedy is more complicated than simply taking away the modern helmet; and yet, it must be acknowledged that spearing tectics are impossible when wearing a 1920s-style leather helmet — or no helmet at all.