JOHN RIORDAN: America’s game facing its biggest challenge yet

Now that the US President is safely returned to office, attention has quickly turned to that other ultra-magnified bastion of American culture: the Super Bowl.

The 47th Super Bowl, to be exact. The NFL cavalcade rode into New Orleans these past few days with a strew of unlikely storylines and bad press waiting to be scattered around its carefully managed temporary home for a week.

And yes, once again, concussion is dominating the discussion, the magnitude of this dilemma faced by the sport apparently becoming more and more evident as the stakes get higher.