Yes you can...but it's not what reality is, it is what people's PERCEPTION OF REALITY is.
And the perception right now is that football is much more dangerous than other sports for this type of injury.
I played soccer for 25 years starting at age 5. Saw plenty of really bad injuries...knees, ankles, broken legs, broken orbital bones from a player missing a header but connecting with the other players face instead, concussions, gruesome lacerations from metal spikes scraping across skin, etc...
But people don't associate soccer with these type of injuries, they associate football with them.