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Doesn’t matter how you feel about the content of Bob Costas’ NFL halftime essay on guns last Sunday night on NBC, the notion such “political” opinions “have no place” within sports telecasts misses three points:
1) For better or worse, Costas’ segment is designed to provide his point of view. And he provided one during an NFL telecast on the day after Jovan Belcher of the Chiefs shot and killed the mother of his child, then shot and killed himself. The topicality of Costas’ essay was inescapable.
2) The NFL does, in fact, have a gun problem. And if you’re to think of that as a people problem, let’s compromise and call it a people-with-guns problem. Too many NFL players — often the most physically imposing men in any room — have and carry guns for no apparent good reason beyond the vague explanation, “Protection.”
3) NFL players produce a high incidence of assaults against women. Domestic battery charges have become so frequent — as common as DWIs and speeding on suspended licenses — they now barely make news or noise.
And is there anything to take from the fact most NFL gun-carriers and women-beaters are college men?
I would suggest what Costas did last Sunday was a shock to the systems of sports viewers who have become conditioned by TV networks never to hear such talk, regardless of the speaker’s and viewers’ opinions.
Consider: The Tigers played 15 postseason games on national TV — TBS and FOX — without a single mention that their No. 5 hitter, Delmon Young, this season was arrested then suspended for a drunken, anti-Semitic assault. Never made the cut.
On “Monday Night Football,” the night after Costas’ essay, neither Mike Tirico nor Jon Gruden commented that Redskins DB Tanard Jackson was suspended for the season after a third failed drug test. His absence was explained as “some off-the-field problems.”
Judging from what is seen and heard on TV, one would think that among the finest humans ever to have played in the NFL is Ray Lewis. That he is an unapologetic on-field head-hunter doesn’t matter. That he copped a plea to obstructing justice in a double-homicide, then reached a financial settlement with the families of the victims, well, who hasn’t? Not worth a mention.
College football coaches recruit high-risk players. Whatever it takes, ya know? One or two or three of those players are arrested then suspended, and what do we hear on TV? Sympathy for the coach for having to deal with “distractions.”
By TV’s standards, Costas’ “guns-too-available” essay was radical.
But he’s not stupid. He knows Belcher likely was out of his mind when he murdered the mother of his 3-month-old daughter, then killed himself. Costas’ impolitic side was identified when he suggested Kasandra Perkins and Belcher both might be alive if Belcher didn’t have a gun.
We’ll never know. Belcher might have used a knife. Or poison. Or a rope. Why did he spare the baby and Perkins’ mother, too? We’ll never know.
Is a homicidal/suicidal man any less of either or both if he doesn’t have a gun? I don’t know. He might just have to work harder at it.
There are too many guns out there, here, everywhere; that’s a fact. And the gun-toters are tracking younger and younger, into their mid-teens.
Yet, when the storeowner shoots the armed robbers — both parties illegally armed — we are glad for him that he had that gun, no? I am.
Regardless, Costas, as a TV presence, has been relatively radical for years. He was the first national TV sports voice to openly and confidently state that the sudden obliteration of long-standing home run records must be related to drug use, which also explained the sudden appearance of all the muscle-massed physiques.
Everyone else was busy telling us how great it is, watching all the baseballs fly out of the park!
Back when NBC had the World Series, it would relentlessly promote game-starts as 8 p.m. It was a lie, often by more than 40 minutes.
And among the first things Costas would make sure to say in his first 8 p.m., unadvertised pregame appearances, was the actual starting time of the game. He didn’t want to be party to his network’s lie. Imagine that: He was on our side. Yep, that radical.
Analyst can’t Kerr-tail bad trend
TNT’s Steve Kerr, if he’s going to distinguish himself beyond ordinary, has to learn how to say, “maybe.”
Early fourth quarter of Knicks-Heat on Thursday, over tape of the play, he congratulated Ronnie Brewer for a down-low block of a LeBron James shot: “Watch this block. LeBron goes into the body. Brewer holds his ground and gets a hand on that shot. Brilliant play.”
Except that’s not what we saw. It didn’t look as if Brewer touched the ball. More clearly, Brewer appeared to have beaten the rap for a hack on James. Besides, we don’t need any more analysts who tell us to believe what they say instead of what we see.
* While cable and satellite subscribers continue to pay for unplayed NHL games — again — the Garden will begin to refund Rangers ticket subscribers in the second week of January — three months after the first regular season games were canceled.
It’s the standard three-month minimum, interest-free loan that local team owners demand — and then some.
This season’s Rangers ticket subscribers were forced to make partial payment in April, thus they have extended Jimmy Dolan an eight-month, interest-free loan. And neither Gary Bettman nor Donald Fehr could care less.
J.R. Smith’s bad reputation — based in a bad reality — isn’t bad enough, Thursday he hit a 3-pointer then celebrated himself by making a three-sign with both hands and shooting them toward his crotch. What goes on in his head?
* ESPN continues to sell Lou Holtz and Mark May as an Odd Couple, insult-packed, college football studio show/comedy act — and that’s the only funny thing about it.
* Chris Maros of The Bronx suggests ESPN, when reporting that Kobe Bryant became the youngest player to score 30,000 points, might have added he joined the NBA out of high school. ESPN? Context? Fat chance.
* Dreamed last night that a Heisman finalist couldn’t make it to the presentation show because he was busy studying for finals.