Bob Costas, perhaps the most recognizable personality in sports broadcasting, has covered Major  |
| NBC relinquished rights to sports that Costas covered, but he isn’t sitting around. |
League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA and college basketball. He has hosted just about every major sporting event, including the World Series, Super Bowls, NBA championships and, most notably, the Olympics.
Under contract to NBC, Costas is "on loan" to HBO for his critically acclaimed "On The Record With Bob Costas" and for "Inside the NFL." In April 2003, Costas was presented with the Sports Emmy for Outstanding Studio Host, marking the second straight year the "On The Record" program host received that honor. In September 2002, Costas joined Cris Collinsworth, Dan Marino and Cris Carter to co-host HBO's "Inside the NFL." With the addition of Costas and Carter, ratings for the series rose 30 percent, and the program received the Sports Emmy for Outstanding Studio Show-Weekly.
SBJ's founding editor, John Genzale, caught up with Costas late last month in New York.
When NBC backed off of sports, you found yourself in a position of having less to do. Are you comfortable with that?
Costas: I'm comfortable with that in two ways. First, I think NBC's decision was very logical and appropriate. NBC doesn't run its sports operation in order to provide me with places to broadcast games. They are a
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| Costas leads the “Inside the NFL” lineup. |
business, and the business of sports television was going off the rails. It was haywire. I think that NBC injected a needed note of sanity. They were right to back off the NFL, the NBA and baseball. They were money losers. Other than the Olympics, the NBA was Dick Ebersol's greatest personal connection. We all loved the league. We all loved the role we played in the league through the '90s. We enjoyed it; we would have loved to have kept it. But you can't run a business that way. You know, no matter how well you do it, you still lose money. So I don't have any quarrels with what they did. And then, luckily for me, I was able to go to HBO and do some things I wouldn't have time to do if I had a full schedule at NBC — and NBC probably wouldn't have let me do if I was fully committed to them.
What's the weirdest sport you've ever done?
Costas: At the Olympics, everything crosses the radar screen at some point: race walking and curling, badminton. But when I was just starting at CBS, where I did some regional assignments before NBC hired me, maybe 1976 or 1977, I must have been about 24 or 25 years old. The old "CBS Sports Spectacular" was CBS' answer to "ABC's Wide World of Sports." They sent me to Pendleton, Ore., to do the Pendleton Round-Up, a rodeo. I was working with a famous rodeo cowboy. I'll never forget the on-camera opening, seated astride a horse. Suffice it to say, I have not spent too much time — I grew up in New York City and on Long Island — astride a horse. So they found the most worn-out nag they could possibly get, one that could not bolt, one that did not have much life in it at all. And I sat atop this horse with a 10-gallon hat atop my five-gallon head and looking pretty ridiculous, and Brent Musburger, the host, said, "Let's throw it out to big Bob Costas out there on the range." So I did the opening on the horse and then we did the round-up.
Who are your idols in broadcasting?
Costas: I don't think I have any current idols because they are colleagues. They are people that you could respect. ... Growing up, I liked the guys who had distinctive styles, but who were storytellers and had a command of language. I liked Vin Scully. I liked Red Barber. I liked Jim McKay. And many others. When I first got to St. Louis and he was still in the prime of his career, I thought Jack Buck was tremendous. Just tremendous. As good as he was on national broadcasts, he was even better on local broadcasts because the frame of reference was shared by the audience. He had a way of conveying honest emotion along with a dry sense of humor. You could just tell that he was a man of some substance. Lived a life beyond "SportsCenter." That's part of the problem with a lot of talented young people out there. There are not that many people that give you the sense that sports is part of their life.
Who's the best young face in sports broadcasting?
Costas: Joe Buck.
He's been around. Who is the person to watch?
Costas: She's been around, but now she's getting more prominent assignments: I really like Suzy Kolber on ESPN. I think she has a presence but is simultaneously appealing and authoritative. That's just one name. If I thought about it, I could come up with another half-dozen.
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| Suzy Kolber’s an up-and-comer on ESPN. |
Do you see more women coming into broadcasting?
Costas: Yes, and it's a very good thing. The next threshold is play-by-play. There are virtually no women who have done play-by-play.
What is your favorite sports facility?
Costas: Well, neither one of these places is really a facility. They are ballparks. Fenway and Wrigley. As a facility, the great underrated place is Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis because it is the perfect melding of what you want in a facility. They can use it for basketball and use it for concerts. They use it for boxing matches. It has all the modern amenities, the luxury boxes, but still has an old-time feel. It's intimate. In the NBA, it's really the only successful stab at going the Camden Yards route. What happened in baseball is that everyone tried to knock off that idea, including places that had no particular history. Then it feels like a theme park. It really became generic. But in Indianapolis, you are in the heart of basketball country. It's a downtown facility. It feels authentic. In some places, it feels like it came right off the assembly line.
How do you see sports as entertainment?
Costas: There are so many ways to come at that. I think Roone Arledge and Jim McKay, with "Wide World of Sports" or "Monday Night Football," they perceived sports as entertainment, but entertainment in the sense that there is a drama to sports. That's a great thing. Vin Scully has always been a dramatist calling a baseball game. He's trying to make you see and feel what's going on in the game. What sometimes happens now, though, is that everything, no matter how inane, is sometimes tossed in as entertainment. When somebody does a moronic dance after tackling somebody, acting like a crass, classless buffoon, and their defense is "Hey, sports is entertainment," well, yeah, lots of things are entertainment, and some of the things appeal to those with the IQ of a geranium. When the league cracks down on someone who made a throat-slitting motion and they say they are taking all the fun out of the game, well, since when is this in the category of fun? So, sports is entertainment and always has been entertainment; generally speaking, you're there to have a good time. Sports isn't church and not the most important thing in the world, but the games do have their own integrity. That is what the entertainment is. A good game should be enough.
If I got into your CD player, what CD would I find there?
Costas: Well, at any given time you might find some Springsteen, you'd probably find a lot of jazz, Miles Davis, classic jazz, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong. You'd find classic rock 'n' roll.
What was the last memorable movie you saw?
Costas: "Bad Santa." I saw it about 10 days ago and laughed my ass off. God, is that funny, and it's so dark and so negative that in a way it's just brilliant.
Would you like your children to be broadcasters?
Costas: I wouldn't stop it, but I wouldn't push it. My son, Keith, knows sports. He's very knowledgeable. I don't think he wants to be a broadcaster, but I think he wants to do something in sports administratively. I think he'll do something like sports management. My daughter, at this stage, wants to be a screenwriter.
For more with Bob Costas, visit The Sports Business Daily at www.sportsbusinessdaily.com.
