(CNN) -- The spectacle of big bodies crashing with brutal force has helped make American Football a billion-dollar industry and the country's favorite sport. But the game is changing because its players are being crippled with the whole country watching.
"We do love the big hits," football injury expert Chris Nowinksi told me this week. But, he said "we can't have (former) players all coming down with dementia because we thought it was fun to see them knocked out".
This past weekend, several particularly startling and dangerous collisions broadcast live on television suddenly reminded the country what happens when grown men get paid millions of dollars to grind each other into the ground.
Fans don't normally dwell on that aspect of the action. An American football field is a place of choreography and chaos, astonishingly agile running and players who pluck seemingly impossible passes out of the air.
Americans watch football on the country's biggest religious and civic holidays - Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Years. They make its annual championship, the Super Bowl, the highest-rated program on TV. The world may think of baseball as the quintessentially American sport, but pollsters say this country prefers football by a margin of four to one.
And the U.S. isn't just feeding itself football, it's gorging on the game. During the season that stretches from early autumn to winter, it's all weekend and more. Every community in the country draws crowds with Friday-night high-school games. College teams play to sold-out stadiums and massive TV audiences on Saturday. The big professional games follow on Sunday and Monday.
CNN
