What about football? Is it a sport or a concussion?

Jim Murray, the long-running Los Angeles Times sports columnist, was known for epigrammatic one-liners that punctured sports’ self-importance. This quip belongs to his recurring skepticism about American football’s violence and the physical cost paid by players—especially head injuries—well before concussion research and league protocols became mainstream public discussion. Murray often framed such critiques as rhetorical questions, using humor to force readers to confront the sport’s brutality beneath its entertainment value. The line is typically cited as a standalone Murray aphorism rather than tied to a widely reproduced, clearly dated column in common reference sources.

In this wry, rhetorical question, Murray compresses a critique of American football into a single binary choice: either it is a legitimate athletic contest or it is primarily an engine of head trauma. The humor depends on exaggeration, but the point is serious—football’s spectacle and cultural status can obscure the routine violence of collisions and the long-term neurological risks to players. By framing the issue as a question, Murray invites readers to reconsider what they celebrate when they celebrate the sport, and whether entertainment and tradition have been allowed to outweigh player safety and informed consent.