After hearing it was fantastic, I started watching Friday Night Lights--and the recommendations were right. I have little interest in American football and the show still sucked me right in.
Watching anything to do with American football, whether real or fiction, you quickly realize that the specter of permanent, career-ending injury hovers over every player, from high school to the pros. After doing a little research, I found that paradoxically, it seems the improvement of football padding design has actually increased the amount and severity of injuries; when players are armored up and feeling secure, they have a tendency to hurl themselves into other players with much greater velocity and ferocity than they would if they were playing, say, unprotected rugby.