The NFL is rather big business in the U.S., the Super Bowl of this year having peaked at 120 million viewers. That makes it rather attractive for advertisers and helps make the players filthy stinkin’ rich, but all is not exactly as it seems and a new movie is blowing the lid off the sport’s dirty little secret.

The trailer for Concussion, starring Hollywood heavyweight Will Smith, debuted last night and quickly went viral as debate raged over whether the NFL needs to do more to curb the epidemic. Just how bad is it? More than 30 NFL players have now committed suicide post retirement and fingers are being pointed. The Daily Beast reports (with very American spelling):

America’s favorite sport—at the professional level—is being revealed as organized barbarism, and the NFL has been hushing its involvement in incentivizing skull-crushing hits while being aware of their deadly impact for years. Countless exposés have been written or aired, including one that was pulled from ESPN after it was completed, in part because of the network’s financial interest in the league’s well-being…

Research alone couldn’t stop the concussion crisis. Long, damning investigative reports couldn’t either. But [director Josh] Fox says this movie can. He’s seen it happen himself, and he says he’d be glad to help the film out. He, too, wants to end the concussion crisis, and he doesn’t want to wait…

“We’re feeding people to the lions,” Fox says. “It’s a big deal in the NFL. It’s much more of a big deal to the millions of kids in school who don’t know they’re getting their brains bashed in.”

Now it’s fair to say that rugby has less head-to-head collisions than we see in the NFL, but do we police the use of scrum caps enough at schoolboy and club level? There’s no need for us to panic of course, but perhaps a movie like this will open dialogue here at home aimed at reducing the amount of brain trauma caused at all levels of rugby across the country.

[source:dailybeast]