9781422283011

its players safe as it does today. Players wear state- of-the-art helmets and pads and receive instruction on safe technique. On-site trainers and medical staff oversee an athlete’s every move at the higher tiers, and even at the youth level in many cases. Yet many wonder if it’s enough. Thanks to year-round conditioning and im- proved diet, each generation of players gets bigger and stronger. In effect, football players have been engineered for maximum physical impact, and their bodies pay the price for it. The question is whether things like rules chang- es and technology can remove some of the risk from the game. The NFL and all the leagues that feed into it want to give their fans the action they crave, while offering the players the protection they deserve. It’s like a delicate tiptoe along the sideline, except the consequences are huge.

11