NBC sportscaster Bob Costas used his regular halftime segment Sunday night to speak out in favor of gun control in the wake of the murder-suicide incident involving a professional football player.
“You knew it was coming,” said Costas, who is perhaps best known for anchoring the network’s coverage of the past few Olympic Games. “In the aftermath of the nearly unfathomable events in Kansas City, that most mindless of sports clichés was heard yet again, ‘Something like this really puts it all in perspective.’ Well if so, that sort of perspective has a very short shelf life since we will inevitably hear about the perspective we have supposedly again regained the next time ugly reality intrudes upon our games. Please.”
The broadcaster’s commentary came just over 24 hours after Kansas City Chiefs player Jovan Belcher shot and killed his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, at the couple’s home before driving to his team’s practice facility and killing himself in front of Chiefs head coach Romeo Crennel and general manager John Pioli.
“Those who need tragedies to continually recalibrate their sense of proportion about sports, would seem to have little hope of ever truly achieving perspective,” Costas said, before citing a piece by Fox Sports.com columnist Jason Whitlock criticizing National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell for allowing the Chiefs’ game with Carolina to proceed as scheduled.
“Football is our God,” Whitlock wrote. “Its exaggerated value in our society has never been more evident than Saturday morning in my adopted hometown. There’s just no way this game should be played.”
According to The Kansas City Star, several players defended the decision after the game.
“The least-worst option was to play the game,” center Ryan Lilja said. “Suffering a tragedy like that, maybe the best thing was to be together and do what we do — and that’s what we do, we play football.”
But in his column, Whitlock — who Costas said he does not always agree with — said such reasoning spoke to how numb Americans had become to gun-related violence, and that he believed that if Belcher did not own a gun, he and Perkins would still be alive.
“Handguns do not enhance our safety,” Whitlock wrote. “They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it.”
#3. To: COSTAS GUN CONTROL COMMENTARY GETS NOTICE (#0)
NEW YORK (AP) -- Bob Costas' "Sunday Night Football" halftime commentary supporting gun control sparked a Fox News Channel debate Monday on whether NBC should fire him and a Twitter storm involving Ted Nugent, Rosie O'Donnell, Herman Cain and many more.
The NBC sportscaster, who frequently delivers commentary at halftime of the weekly NFL showcase, addressed the weekend's murder-suicide involving Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher.
Costas said that the shooting has invoked the "mindless sports cliche" that "something like this really puts it all in perspective."
"Please," he said. "Those who need tragedies to continually recalibrate their sense of proportion about sports would seem to have little hope of ever truly achieving perspective."
He then paraphrased and quoted extensively from a piece by Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock.
After praising the column, Costas said: "In the coming days, Jovan Belcher's actions and their possible connection to football will be analyzed. Who knows? But here, wrote Jason Whitlock, is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn't possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today."
Belcher shot and killed Perkins, the mother of his 3-month-old daughter, on Saturday morning, then drove to Arrowhead Stadium and committed suicide in the parking lot of the team's practice facility.
Quickly, Costas' comments renewed one of society's most contentious debates, made more intense by people who believe that a football halftime show was not the right place for Costas to be speaking on the issue.
"You tune in for a football game and end up listening to Bob Costas spewing sanctimonious dreck," tweeted Herman Cain, the former GOP presidential candidate.
Above a headline "Advocacy Gone Awry?" the hosts of Fox's morning show "Fox & Friends" read letters from viewers criticizing Costas' stance. On Megyn Kelly's afternoon show, there was a debate on whether Costas should be fired.
Rock star and gun advocate Nugent was quick to criticize via Twitter: "Hey Bob Costas we all kno (sic) that obesity is a direct result of the proliferation of spoons and forks. Get a clue."
Former talk show host Rosie O'Donnell, however, tweeted "way to go, Bob Costas." His former NBC colleague, Keith Olbermann, observed that it was "amazing that all those ripping my friend Bob Costas would, had he taken opposing view, be defending him for using the 1st."
There was no immediate comment on Monday from NBC Sports or from Costas.
Before the Olympics this summer, Costas criticized the International Olympic Committee's decision not to hold a moment of silence to mark the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches killed by Palestinian gunmen in Munich in 1972. But he stopped short of repeating that criticism on the air.
