Bob Costas
Sports Media with Richard Deitsch
Audacy
4.5 • 757 Ratings
🗓️ 10 October 2022
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode 247 of the Sports Media Podcast features a conversation with Bob Costas, who will call one of the American League Division Series for TBS (alongside Ron Darling) and will host TBS’s coverage of the American Championship Series alongside Pedro Martinez, Jimmy Rollins and Curtis Granderson. In this podcast, Costas discusses his evolution as a baseball game-caller (he will call the Yankees versus the winner of the Guardians-Rays series); his observations of the coverage and language on sports television around Tua Tagovailoa’s head injuries; whether NFL game broadcasters can be critical of owners; how he views the resignation of Vince McMahon; being offered jobs by David Letterman and 60 Minutes; his work on “Later with Bob Costas”; the genius of Dick Cavett; the accurate story of why he ended his broadcast association with the NFL; being turned down by Jack Nicholson for a halftime interview during the NBA Finals; the cognitive dissonance sports fans have when it comes to events such as the Olympics, the NFL, the World Cup and others, and more. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, and more.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Jack Nicholson, most people don't know this because they've seen Jack through the years in movies, |
| 0:05.0 | and they saw him on television sitting courtside at Lakers games. |
| 0:08.1 | But Jack Nicholson never did 60 minutes. |
| 0:10.7 | He didn't do Johnny Carson, even when everybody was flocking to be on Johnny Carson in the last month before he was going to leave. |
| 0:16.7 | And he once explained, he said, look, I'm a movie star. |
| 0:20.1 | People plucked down their money. They leave their house. They sit in the dark and they watch me on a big screen. That's a different experience than on the small screen. Even if one of those movies eventually shows up on television, the primary experience is in a theater. I don't want to break that |
| 0:38.3 | mystique. Okay, so that ties to this story. I knew him a little bit because I saw him at the |
| 0:44.4 | Laker Games and he was a sports fan and we had some mutual friends and I was at a large dinner once, |
| 0:49.2 | not just the two of us, probably 10 people. And he and I were sitting across from each other. |
| 0:53.0 | He was very, very nice. |
| 0:56.1 | Okay, so he's in Chicago shooting Hoffa. |
| 0:58.7 | And the Bulls are playing the trailblazers |
| 1:01.5 | in the 92 NBA finals. |
| 1:03.9 | So day of shootings done, he's a huge basketball |
| 1:06.1 | fan, and we look down and there he is. |
| 1:08.0 | He's seated not center court like |
| 1:09.8 | at the Lakers. He's on the |
| 1:12.1 | baseline near one of the baskets. And the producer says to me, do you know Jack Nicholson? I said, well, a little bit. Go down there because I'm upstairs on the old Chicago stadiums before the United Center open. I'm way upstairs like in a catbird seat. Go down and ask him if he'll come on with us at halftime. I'm like, this is ridiculous. As a fool's errand, |
| 1:31.1 | he's not going to. I'm way upstairs like in a catbird seat. Go down and ask him if he'll come on with us at halftime. |
| 1:28.3 | I'm like, this is ridiculous. It's a fool's errand. He's not going to, oh, you owe it to us. All right, so now I got to go down the winding ramp. And I come up behind him and I wait until the timeout with four minutes to go in the second quarter. And I tap him on the shoulder. And I can still see his face turning over his right |
| 1:45.8 | shoulder, coming around, and he's got that expression, at least it seemed to me, like from the |
| 1:50.2 | shining. And then he sees that it's me and he recognizes me. And his face softens and he goes, |
... |
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