2012-10-29
Explanation
This comic is a satire of American college football (and contact sports in general), using the absurd metaphor of a fictional sport called "headbrick," in which bricks are thrown at college students' heads for entertainment. The joke works by taking all of the common defenses of college football -- tradition, community, school pride, the opportunities it provides for underprivileged youth, revenue generation -- and applying them to a sport that is transparently, unambiguously harmful.
A university administrator defends headbrick by citing tradition ("This university has been a leader in the sport of headbrick since 1865"), downplaying the danger ("we have not had a single dozen fatalities in that entire time"), celebrating violent victories, and dismissing concerns about brain damage with the argument that "we can't just change the whole system every single time someone's mommy says brain damage." He even accidentally reveals the exploitative nature of the system by saying that "for lots of poor kids, getting bashed in the face for the amusement of wealthy alumni is the only path to success" before hastily reframing it as valuing scholarship. When confronted with the fact that most schools lose money on headbrick, he invokes the "nanny state" objection to regulation.
The comic ends with two characters failing to see eye-to-eye, which turns out to be literal rather than figurative -- one of them has "a headbrick-related occipital lesion" that prevents proper vision. The other character's slurred response ("Thaaat's what that is") implies they too have suffered brain damage from the sport. The votey panel cheekily declares "Today's comic was a satire about badminton," deflecting from the obvious football parallel with a joke misdirection.