Suspended coaches, defamation claims, thousands of former players suing the NFL, sickening crimes and a cover-up at highest levels at Penn State, retired NFL stars saying they wouldn't let their own sons play football -- it's been a tumultuous offseason. Football generates more news than some entire nations.

But football's really important offseason development occurred on the field behind your local elementary school. The Pop Warner organization decided to limit contact in practice.

As evidence continues to mount of the long-term danger of concussions -- both from big hits and from the accumulated impact of lesser blows to the head -- anything that makes football safer trumps all other concerns about the sport combined. And less contact in practice, beginning at the youth level, will make football safer.

Obviously football will never be risk-free. As in many aspects of life, risk must be balanced against benefits, and football generates many benefits to players, communities and schools. But if concussion research shows that significant neurological harm is being done not just to professionals but to the millions of youth and high school players, whether football should be played at all becomes a fair question. Making the sport as safe as possible is essential not just because this is ethically right, but to preserve the game.

As TMQ laid out a year ago, more injuries happen in practice than on game days, because more hours of contact occur in practice than in games. Practice harm is invisible to the public, but terrible for players. Two years ago, the Ivy League restricted football to two days per week of full-pads contact. Last year the NFL and NFLPA agreed to a major reduction in the amount of contact allowed during practice.

This is the right trend and in June, the Pop Warner organization, noting that more concussions occur in practice than in games, cut back on the amount of contact allowed in practice, while banning the Oklahoma-style drill in which players run toward each other and smash helmets. The competing USA Football youth organization, sponsored by the NFL and the NFLPA, immediately matched the move and cut back on practice contact. The must-read new book "Concussions and Our Kids," due out next month from Robert Cantu and Mark Hyman (Cantu is a leading neurologist), lays out in detail the importance of such reforms in football practice standards.

A decade ago, there were no laws regarding youth and prep football safety. Now most states mandate proper care for concussed athletes. If you live in Arkansas or Montana, ask your local legislator why your state is sitting on its hands on this issue.

A decade ago, the National Athletic Trainers Association began to advise high school coaches to take it slow in August, practicing without pads for the first five days while players become accustomed to heat, then having contact only in the mornings of two-a-days, with afternoon sessions confined to walk-throughs. These rules have begun to gather momentum. Georgia, where two high school players died from heat stroke in 2011, just imposed the NATA regime on public high schools, as did Maryland, where your columnist lives. Every state should adopt the NATA rules -- the sooner the better.

Won't limiting contact turn football into a wimpy sport? Aren't two-a-days and Oklahoma drills how players prove their manhood? Traditionalists are saying this. Traditionalists once opposed the forward pass; traditionalists once said football players should be forbidden to drink water in heat. Traditionalists have said a lot of really stupid things.

Football will always be a fierce, aggressive sport. Football can remain hard-hitting and aggressive within a context of reforms that reduce head injuries and heat stroke. Football must achieve such reforms both to take better care of players -- the vast majority of whom play at the youth and high school levels, where there are no scholarships or bonus checks -- and to remain acceptable in the public eye.

As Tuesday Morning Quarterback endlessly reminds, there is no law of nature that says football must be popular. If large numbers of Americans become disgusted by neurological harm caused by the sport, the popularity of football could wane.

Consider as well: There is no law of nature that says football must be legal. Congress could be moved to outlaw the sport, or to impose restrictions. If high schools begin losing liability suits regarding concussions, public school districts may have little choice but to drop football, for money reasons. Awareness of this possibility is one reason the NFL began funding USA Football as a reform organization -- one focused on making the game safer, and thus keeping football socially acceptable.

Will the NFL lose concussion litigation? Numerous lawsuits involving more than 2,700 former players are tracked here. Some former players likely suffered neurological harm that was improperly treated, or could have been avoided if the player was kept off the field after showing symptoms of head trauma. Some former NFL players may have conditions associated with improper orthopedic care or overuse of injected or oral painkillers supplied by their teams. Some former players may have degenerative conditions associated with aging -- problems that would have happened regardless of athletics. Some former players may simply be hoping for one last payday from the NFL. There's an air of billboard hucksterism to the eagerness of lawyers to cash in. Practically everyone has "long-term health issues."

If the sudden binge of litigation were to show that the NFL knew concussions could lead to later-life neurological harm and withheld that information from players -- or provided inadequate medical care, knowing better care was needed -- the NFL might be assessed huge damage awards. If on the other hand the evidence shows NFL trainers and coaches did not know how terrible concussions can be, then a litigation defeat for the league becomes less likely. After all, players assumed a risk of their own free will, in order to enjoy the benefits of playing what they knew was a dangerous sport.

Medical understanding of the long-term consequences of concussions is fairly recent; a generation ago, a conscientious football coach might not have known that a player should not return to a game after "getting his bell rung." Chronic traumatic encephalopathy has been a concern of researchers only for a short time, and the condition is poorly understood -- it's possible lots of people suffer CTE that has nothing do with athletics. Points like these might favor the NFL position.

But even if the concussion litigation ends well from the NFL's standpoint, evolving knowledge of the risk of head harm caused by football makes it imperative that contact be reduced at all levels of the sport, while game-day...