Show Caption. Hide Caption. Phelps, Bolt and other retired Olympians not competing in Tokyo. From parenthood to launching new careers, here's a look at some retired Olympians not competing at this year's Tokyo Games and what they're up to now. You must know all these figures. ESPN changed the game in that they made everything more plentiful. There were more games on. And occasionally they did journalistic stuff, and they still do.
There have not been a ton of MeToo stories in professional sports uncovered by sports journalists, certainly compared to other industries—politics, media, Hollywood—which have journalists covering them obsessively.
Is this at least in part because a place like ESPN is both a partner with these networks as well as an entity reporting on them? NBC had the big events. I was part of that. Plus, I will say that the networks do not have investigative units in their sports departments. And I never suggested that they should. Do you ever think about how your career would have been different if you had come up in this era, where you would have to have a social-media presence and prove yourself in the current media environment?
The qualities of a good play-by-play person are the same as they were when Vin Scully and Jack Buck were breaking in. If a young Al Michaels was to come along today, his skills would still stand out. The Internet and then his podcast allowed him that. He could go in discursive directions and then come back. Some of it was solipsistic, but it was amusing in its own way because you went to Bill Simmons for Bill Simmons. Even Letterman had a format. He remade late-night television, but there were still time constraints and space constraints.
If things had gone differently, do you think you would have liked continuing to host a late-night interview show? Do you ever have regrets? You could have Elie Wiesel one night talking about coming face to face with Josef Mengele, and you could take a pie in the face the next night from Soupy Sales. I mean, that literally happened. No, it literally happened.
One of the things that meant most to me in my whole career or life was one time I was at a restaurant and Dick Cavett was there. And there was a little of this and a little of that. So I think that what I brought to it might have had a different texture to it than what other people may have brought to it.
Game Seven. But during the World Series, after Game Two, at Fenway Park, Joe Buck, by contract, has to go [announce] some dog-ass Thursday night [football] game, and then go to Dodger Stadium to do Game Three [of the World Series], which turns out to be an eighteen-inning classic. Game Three of the World Series. Now what does that say? That some soon-to-be-forgotten, regular-season football game in October should actually be important enough to divert the voice of the World Series from Boston to Houston before he goes to Los Angeles for Game Three.
What does this say? Forget about subliminally. What does it say about the power of the N. Is football at a place now where its power to demand this stuff is unparalleled in the history of modern sports?
They get their way on everything. The N. The impact in popular culture and the brands of these athletes seem to be through the roof. Would you fit well in the N. You know the list. And so the idea that sports and politics do not intersect is insane. My guess would be that, if I was still involved with the N.
That would be my guess. That it would be a more welcoming situation. Here's the check, fill in the number. At the time, Costas says he had sworn off the sport. He had hosted NBC's NFL pregame show for nearly a decade in the '80s and early '90s but asked to be taken off the broadcasts after the season. I just didn't feel comfortable with that. That felt stupid to me. Costas did host "Inside the NFL" on HBO for six seasons beginning in , but he says he justified that in his mind because the show provided autonomy to offer commentary and typically conveyed a level of journalism.
But when NBC returned to football in , Costas says Ebersol asked him to return as host and he agreed "out of loyalty" and "as kind of a good soldier. Over the next decade, NBC would own Sunday nights, and Costas would become the emcee of "Football Night in America," setting the tone for a five-hour broadcast every week. He had a reputation as a trustworthy and reasoned voice, someone who was willing to offer his opinion but not shout it out like a carnival barker. At the same time, his relationship with football was growing increasingly complicated.
As evidence mounted tying the sport to brain disease, Costas says he felt compelled to talk about it. During Week 2 of the season, following a series of high-profile, concussion-related incidents, Costas presented his first essay about the topic to NBC viewers. It was a decisive moment in the history of football in America. Here was the preeminent voice of televised sports, looking straight into the camera, telling millions of fans who tuned in that he, they -- all of us -- were essentially complicit in the human destruction caused by a gladiator sport.
Equally surreal -- but unstated -- was the fact that even as Costas was describing the problem as "undeniable," the NFL was publicly denying any link between football and brain damage.
In the ensuing years, as research accumulated, Costas became more emboldened. His blend of humor, wit and unfiltered opinion was gold on the talk-show circuit -- from CNN to Bill Maher to NBC's "Today" show -- as well as to anyone who wanted to discuss the dangers of football.
Can I say it any more clearly than that it is unacceptably brutal? Costas says he never heard from anyone with the NFL complaining about his statements, nor does he say his bosses at NBC protested or suggested they had ever been contacted by league officials.
Gentile, the former CBS executive, says it wouldn't surprise him that Costas never received complaints from the NFL -- because the league officials always called Gentile and not the broadcaster himself when they had concerns. Still, Gentile says, the NFL was "never really dictatorial, at least in my lifetime.
And so it was that The Masters could force the network to banish Gary McCord from the broadcast for describing Augusta National's speedy greens as "bikini-waxed," or Jack Whitaker for referring to a "mob" of fans on the 18th green at the end of a playoff.
We conducted polls at Seton Hall and you could see the numbers go up of parents who didn't want their kids to play football. That doesn't speak well to the future, so I think there's a strong sensitivity there [from the NFL]. This is, 'Do we exist or not. So the more Costas talked definitively about the connection between football and brain damage, the more it created tension between him, his bosses and the NFL. But there's only one NFL, and only so many games to go around.
The result is a financial windfall for the league. Says Costas: "Look, the NFL isn't just the most important sports property, it's the single-most important property in all of American television. And it isn't even close. Because of the stakes, the NFL has enormous influence over how networks portray the sport.
When a broadcaster like Costas goes rogue, or investigative reporting touches on sensitive issues like concussions or politics, tensions inevitably surface. Those tensions have surfaced at ESPN, which famously cancelled its popular series Playmakers after only one season following complaints from the NFL.
Outside the Lines' yearslong reporting on football's concussion crisis has led to numerous complaints from the NFL. In , ESPN abruptly ended a partnership with PBS's award-winning program "Frontline" on "League of Denial," a documentary that explored the NFL's two-decade effort to deny and rewrite the science connecting football and brain disease. ESPN denied it, saying it dropped out over lack of "editorial control.
It's just kind of the way it goes. Everyone walks on eggshells around the NFL. He was moved by the film and even thought Will Smith might earn an Oscar nod for his performance as Dr.
Bennet Omalu, the neuropathologist who had ignited the NFL's concussion crisis a decade earlier by first positing that former players had died with a brain disease caused by football. The movie was set largely in Pittsburgh, and former Steelers great Mike Webster was a major character in the story.
Costas typically wrote his essays on the fly on game day, sometimes even as the first quarter of the Sunday night matchup was under way. This time, though, he wrote it in advance to give his bosses an early look, recognizing it could create problems. The essay, which has never been made public but was provided to Outside the Lines, began with a description of Omalu as "the neuropathologist who clearly demonstrated what just about everybody now understands -- but which for years the league denied: There is a direct and often tragic link between football and brain damage.
Costas says he sought to mitigate the potential embarrassment for the NFL by highlighting its efforts to improve player safety. He wrote, "To its credit, the NFL now has put millions into medical research and the possibility of improving equipment.
They have instituted rules changes aimed at making the game safer, awareness programs aimed at youth football, and stricter head trauma protocols, which, even if they don't always work, at least appear to be a step in the right direction. But Costas didn't hold back: "Even as the ratings rise, so, too, does a certain ambivalence. Because as much as we may try to push it into the background, there's a kind of Russian roulette going on on the field tonight and on our television screens throughout the fall and winter, since we know that for all the game's appeal, many of its participants will one day pay dearly for their part in our national obsession.
They said, 'This is a very well-written piece, wouldn't change a comma. We can't air it. Lazarus and Flood did not respond to requests seeking comment for this story. An NBC spokesman provided a statement that read, "We have historically given our commentators a lot of leeway to speak on our air about issues and controversies, and Bob has benefited most from this policy.
We're very disappointed that after 40 years with NBC, he has chosen to mischaracterize and share these private interactions. Even before he offered the "Concussion" essay, the tension had ratcheted up between Costas and the network. One ad showed female fans wearing their favorite team gear, working out, drinking coffee, taking walks with their similarly decked-out children; another had Packers running back Eddie Lacy mowing the lawns of fans who lived near Lambeau Field.
By the time the divisional playoffs rolled around -- less than two months after his "Concussion" essay was killed -- Costas had had enough. In speaking with Bob Raissman of the New York Daily News, he said of the league's promotion: "It's a little much to take, while watching a game, that you are constantly bombarded with 'Football is Family' [commercials]. He described to Raissman the significant number of players "acting like creeps and criminals" and concluded with, "You see all this stuff and the first thing that comes to mind is not a Norman Rockwell painting.
Yes, 'Football is Family. It didn't take long for Costas to hear from his bosses: Why did he need to take such a gratuitous potshot at NBC's biggest business partner? It's like, 'You know I sort of have to do this. I hope you get what I'm really thinking right now. Two months after Costas' "Concussion" essay was rejected and two weeks after he ridiculed the "Football is Family" ads, the NFL announced a contract with NBC to air five Thursday night games in each of the following two seasons.
He would host one more season on Sunday nights and then turn the show over to Mike Tirico.
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