Once upon a time in America, smoking was commonplace. Glamorous, even. It had cachet. People puffed at the office, got alive with pleasure on airplanes, turned sporting events into movable airborne toxic events. Cigarettes were even peddled as healthy; and if Big Tobacco's promises of steadier nerves and improved digestion didn't exactly square with the reality of inhaling incinerated bits of leaf nicotine laced with pesticides -- well, lighting up sure as heck felt good, and that painful lesion in the back of your throat was nothing a spiffier, more sophisticated filter couldn't fix.

In short, smoking was a lot like football.

This sack by the Giants' Aaron Ross sent Chicago's Jay Cutler off the field with a concussion earlier this month. AP Photo/Kathy Willens

Maybe you've heard the news: Concussions are bad. Very bad, actually, assuming you need a working brain. Moreover, helmet-to-helmet football hits are downright scary. Especially when shown over and over on television.

In response, the NFL is getting tough, cracking down, fining the likes of Dunta Robinson roughly one-sixth ($50,000) of his weekly base salary ($294,000). This wanton cerebral trauma will not stand!

Problem solved. Crisis averted. Brains saved. Back to juggling fantasy lineups. Everything is once again hunky-dory on Planet Football, with two tiny, nagging exceptions:

1. The helmet hit crackdown doesn't solve the brain damage problem, any more than cigarette filters solve lung cancer;

And 2. Sooner or later, said brain damage problem is going to kill the sport as we know it.

To put things another way: Football is whistling past its future graveyard.