One name conspicuously absent from NBC's planned Super Bowl coverage is legendary broadcaster Bob Costas. When Costas announced that he was stepping down as NBC’s primetime Olympic host, the network said it would use him on bigger NFL events, like the Super Bowl. But when NBC published its release yesterday highlighting its coverage of Super Bowl LII, it said Dan Patrick and Liam McHugh would host the Super Bowl LII pregame show. What happened to Costas? NBC emailed two statements, the first from an NBC Sports spokesperson that read, “Dan and Liam have served as hosts for our NFL pregame/studio shows on Sunday nights and Thursday nights, respectively, throughout the season and will continue on Super Bowl Sunday.” A statement attributed to Costas read, “Dan and Liam have done the job hosting NBC’s NFL coverage all season. It wouldn’t be right for me to parachute in and do the Super Bowl.” It could have been Costas’ comments from a November panel session at the Univ. of Maryland that led NBC to make a change. During the panel, Costas offered a bleak assessment of the football’s future, according to a report to USA Today’s Tom Schad. “The reality is that this game destroys people’s brains," Costas said, according to the report. “The cracks in the foundation are there. The day-to-day issues, as serious as they may be, they may come and go. But you cannot change the nature of the game. I certainly would not let, if I had an athletically gifted 12- or 13-year-old son, I would not let him play football.”
