This story appears in the October 8 issue of Sports Illustrated. To subscribe, click here.
For at least a decade, and in some ways much longer than that, the National Football League has been trying to thread the eye of a tiny sewing needle with a thick strand of barbed wire. A sport once left unchecked to grow its own mythology through 16-millimeter homages to manliness has found itself under fire from a force of activists, researchers, media, even its own former players, all demanding that the game be made safe. It is, by consensus, both a reasonable and wholly unachievable mandate.