Football season is now well under way for the year, but on Sunday night, John Oliver had just one thing to say about it: Maybe it shouldn’t exist at all.
Though Oliver’s main segment for the night was about crime reporting, the late night host did what he always does, and managed to sneak in the extra, somewhat off-topic dig pretty smoothly, even tying it back to the topic at large. In this particular case, Oliver had called up footage from a 1995 CNN package, wondering if reporting so often — and so viscerally — on crimes was necessarily a good thing.
In the footage, a local chief of police argued that it’s possible that by giving so much attention to crimes and graphic scenes, a person wanting to die by suicide might go out of their way to do it publicly. “We would have, like, a TV show called ‘Suicide Today,’” he said.
“Not to step on that man’s greater pursuits here, there is already primetime programming where people kill themselves for our entertainment,” Oliver joked. “It’s called Monday Night Football.”
Oliver was, of course, referring to the numerous injuries sustained during football games, particularly in the form of concussions.
“Happy concussion season, football fans! It sure feels like this sport maybe shouldn’t exist,” he said, before moving right along with the segment.
Oliver’s dig comes after Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa suffered multiple concussions in back to back weeks. After one hit during the Dolphins’ Sept. 25 game, Tagovailoa struggled to walk off the field. But he was later cleared to play the following week — where he once again showed signs a concussion after taking another hit. The incidents prompted the NFL, alongside the NFL Players Association, to review their concussion protocol and amend it to include another symptom.
“The parties concluded that while the step-by-step process outlined in the Concussion Protocol was followed, the outcome, in this case, was not what was intended when the Protocol was drafted,” the NFL and NFLPA said in a statement.
The statement also noted that, going forward, they would be adding the term “ataxia” — which “is defined as abnormality of balance/stability, motor coordination or dysfunctional speech caused by a neurological issue” — to the list of symptoms that will immediately require a player to sit out a game.
You can watch Oliver’s full segment in the video above.
