John Oliver took American sports team owners and their showy stadiums to task on Sunday, when he invoked a “Friday Night Lights”-esque speech to rally tax payers against the publicly funded monstrosities.
“Most new stadiums nowadays look like they were designed by a coked-up Willy Wonka,” the “Last Week Tonight” comic quipped.
And since the early ’90s, American stadiums have enjoyed a ridiculous replacement rate of more than 90 percent, Oliver pointed out.
“We replace stadiums even faster than we replace Spider-Men,” he joked.
While Oliver is down with the eccentricities of these gaudy venues, he just doesn’t want to see billions of dollars in tax payer money continue to be misapplied. In these cases, it is tax-exempt municipal bonds that are usually the culprit.
To try to change the narrow-minded focus of the fans and educate the public, Oliver donned a cap and windbreaker, delivering an impassioned locker room speech about the funding. As he is known to do, the former “Daily Show” host broke down the complicated matter into a more digestible — and hysterical — format.
After dropping Kyle Chandler’s famous “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose” TV line, the HBO late-night host was carried off the set on the shoulders of giants, just like in the end of his favorite sports movies.
Watch the video above.