NBC's Bob Costas will mark the 40th anniversary of his debut in professional broadcasting this weekend when he hosts coverage of Sunday night's game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the New York Giants.
Ahead of the NFC East showdown, Costas offered his take on a myriad of issues that have faced and are currently facing the NFL - a number of which have caused him to take heat over the years.
One such instance was his decision to speak out against guns and gun violence in the wake of the 2012 suicide of Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher.
"It was a commentary on the pervasive, irresponsible attitudes towards guns among athletes that often leads to tragedy, and never leads to anything good," Costas said. "That's not an anti-second amendment position - that's a common-sense, eyes-open, look-at-the-evidence take on something that the leagues need to be concerned about, and which played itself out in the Jovan Belcher situation. The Belcher situation was also an obvious example of domestic violence, and I said that."
Costas said that he tries to tie in the issues facing the broader world when he develops topics to discuss during the various games he covers.
"The gun culture that pervades sports was something that I was talking about, and I did it when it was connected to sports," he said. "I didn't talk about it after Aurora, or after Newtown, or after the Gabby Giffords incident, I talked about it when it was connected to sports... But this idea that I'm routinely looking for places to talk about things that are not connected to football, or not connected to sports, is ridiculous, and provably so by the evidence."
He also spoke on his past commentary on head trauma in the NFL.
"I talked about concussions and head trauma in the NFL years ago, and I said that the NFL was going to face lawsuits - some people scoffed at that, saying, 'Well, you know, it's willing assumption of risk on the part of the players,' [but] we see the lawsuits," Costas said. "I asked Roger Goodell four years ago what he would say to the parents of a 13- or 14-year-old boy who would say, 'We're football fans, but knowing what we're now learning, we're not going to let our kid play football' - what would you say about that? Well, that's a huge issue for the league now, [as] participation in youth football is down some 10 percent just over the last two or three years, and you can see how concerned the league is."
He also spoke about the name-change controversy surrounding the Washington football team.
"I don't know how anyone could think that the controversy over the Washington team name isn't a football issue," he said. "It is a football issue, and Washington was playing on NBC that night, against Dallas, and NBC asked me to do a commentary about it, which I did. They didn't tell me what to say, but they asked me to do it, and I did."
In the end, Costas says, he wants to use his position - a position that allows him to reach millions of people - to further the conversation on issues he sees as important to the world at large - not just within the realm of sports.
"I think that reasonable people are able to enjoy sports, but also acknowledge that there are issues that inevitably are part of it," he said. "And to have somebody in a prominent position at least occasionally address those issues - never at the expense of the game or the ongoing action, but finding a place to do it, and doing it as concisely as possible - I think serves a purpose."
