John Oliver also misses live sports, has a suggestion to fill that gap

"The coronavirus has taken its toll on all manner of industries, but the world of sports was among those hit hardest, earliest, and perhaps most visibly," John Oliver said on Sunday's Last Week Tonight. For many people, in fact, the NBA scrapping its season was the moment they "first realized our lives were going to fundamentally change for a while." As shocking as it seemed at the time that all major sports leagues canceled or pushed back their seasons, "the truth is, there was really no choice," he said. "Sporting events with large crowds packed together are the exact opposite of social distancing, and they're a nightmare scenario during a pandemic."

"But though sports shutting down was emphatically the right thing to do, people have been increasingly asking when they can return," one man especially loudly, Oliver said. President Trump probably shouldn't be watching old baseball games during a deadly pandemic, but "he's not entirely wrong — the lack of sports is an emotional blow to a lot of people, and it's not just emotional, it's also financial."

Since "the absence of sport has caused such pain, we thought tonight we'd take a look at what sports have become in the age of coronavirus, and what a path back for them might look like," Oliver said. "To do it responsibly would be a mammoth undertaking. To do it irresponsibly, however, turns out to be pretty easy," as Florida can attest. "Profit is a powerful motivator here, especially for some team owners who won't be the ones taking the risks," he said. "And it's why major sports, like baseball and football, are so eagerly pursuing plans to come back," though "the second you start reading the details of any plan, it automatically becomes ridiculous."

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"Look, I will own the fact I really want sports to come back," Oliver said. But "while sports was genuinely helpful at the start of this crisis in showing us how serious this virus was, if it comes back too soon and irresponsibly, it won't be an inspiration, it'll be a cautionary tale." Clearly, "there is currently an absence in people's lives, so ideally what you'd want is something that would fill that gap for a while — you know, until sports can return," he said. And Oliver, of course, had a suggestion. Watch his typically NSFW episode below. Peter Weber