Really fine dramatization of the genesis of football's "concussion protocol."

Rating: Null/10 (13 January 2017)

My wife and I watched this at home on DVD from our local library.
It has become common when watching a major college or pro football game to see a dazed player taken off the field after a very hard hit, and the announcers mentioning the player was being put into the "concussion protocol." It is to evaluate them and assure they don't return to play to risk brain damage.
This didn't always exist, in fact it is relatively new, only a few years. For years football glossed over head injuries, basically denying that any long-term damage occurred. But then doctors started noticing that retired football players often began experiencing strange symptoms that pointed towards brain damage.
Then in 2002 all-star Steelers center Mike Webster died of a heart attack at age 50. As luck would have it the doctor performing the autopsy was Dr. Bennet Omalu, who avidly studied life, death, and the brain. The only thing abnormal in the autopsy was that Webster looked much older than 50, maybe in his 70s or 80s. On a hunch Omalu removed the brain and had it sectioned and "fixed" for study under a microscope.
What he found was truly Earth-shaking in football, he found abnormalities that could only be attributed to repeated harmful collisions over a long time. As other former football players experienced erratic behavior and died young further study found the trend, and they named it "CTE".
The NFL pushed back hard, if acknowledged the findings would jeopardize their whole very profitable business. But persistence and help from others in the medical profession finally resulted in football collisions being the cause of CTE, and one of the remedies has been establishing the Concussion Protocol, designed to minimize further injury.
This is a very fine movie of a very important discovery. Will Smith really shines as Dr. Bennet Omalu, there were times I actually forgot he was an actor. One of his supporters was Alec Baldwin as LSU alumnus Dr. Julian Bailes who had been an NFL doctor. And David Morse as Mike Webster.