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Regarding equipment expense:
Financial burdens can be placed on different people, depending on performance level, regional culture and the type of league. The fact that private individuals frequently bear the cost for soccer, baseball, tennis, golf, etc., while it's public institutions or wealthy private schools that bear the cost for football, should shed light on the relative expense of football.
Regarding propensity to injury:
By the end of week 2 of the NFL season, enough players had had to be taken out of games with injuries to field the starting lineups for the entire CFL, and still have a few left over. Most of the injuries are related to collisions that occurs during play. Players in the NFL average 3.3 seasons. By comparison, most MLB injuries are related to chronic or excessive strain, and the average career length is 5.6 seasons.
Other sports typically considered "non-contact" such as baseball have their moments when it comes to injuries, but the difference is that it is shocking when they happen. When the two Cardinals outfielders collided near the end of last season, it was newsworthy partly because baseball players rarely have major concussions like that. The NFL and NCAA have only recently instituted programs to prevent football players from returning to the game after receiving concussions, while MLB is just recently detecting concussions in their players. That MLB plays 10 times as many games as NFL teams do, and their concussion rate is much lower, should tell a lot about the likelihood of injury in their games.
Finally, regarding ownership:
It shouldn't be embarrasing that football is more expensive and the players are more prone to injury. It's just an attribute of the game. If you ignore it, you prevent yourself from adjusting to the reality and responding as necessary. Enjoy the games you love, but respect the costs. Once you understand and appreciate the costs, you can be in a position to take the necessary actions to keep the game alive. Otherwise, you'll find yourself with no game, bitter about that fact, and living in a country with hundreds of enormous memorials scattered around the country, honoring a time when we paid people large sums of money (or marginally valuable educations) in exchange for entertainment.
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