The National Football League has successfully pressured Toyota to edit a TV commercial that showed two kids crashing helmet-to-helmet while playing football. I think the NFL, extremely sensitive to negative media coverage about the dangers of concussions, doth protest too much.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/sports/football/22toyota.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
The original version of the commercial, which first aired in November, had a mother saying that she was concerned about her son playing football, and when the two youths collided the spot “superimposed crashing sounds and force lines rippling from their heads,” according to The New York Times.
The TV spot, The Times said, cited the fact that Toyota was sharing its own crash research with doctors who are studying football concussions. That didn’t sit well with the NFL, which demanded that Toyota edit the commercial. In the new version, the mother is concerned about her son playing “sports,” rather than just football, and the helmet-to-helmet contact is gone.
If Toyota didn’t change the spot, the NFL threatened to stop the automaker from advertising during games, according to The Times.
The NFL was ready with an answer about its demand that Toyota revamp the commercial. “We felt it was unfair to single out a particular sport,” an NFL spokesman told The Times. “Concussions aren’t just a football issue.”
No, they aren’t. But they are a hell of a lot bigger issue for football than for other sports. As Time sports reporter Alan Schwarz slyly points out, statisitics from the Nationwide Children’s Hospital found that high school football players report 100,000 concussions a year. “The second through ninth-ranked sporrts combined reach 110,000.” Schwarz wrote.