Bob Costas: Imprimatur Of The Macabre

I wasn’t watching the game between the Carolina Panthers and the Kansas City Chiefs so I did not witness the macabre comments proffered by the toupee-wearing, heavily plasticized 60-year-old know-it-all Bob Costas.

At halftime, Costas chose to preach to the audience following the murder-suicide of Kansas City linebacker Jovan Belcher:

“Those who need tragedies to continually recalibrate their sense of proportion about sports would seem to have little hope of ever truly achieving perspective. You want some actual perspective on this? Well a bit of it comes from the Kansas City-based writer Jason Whitlock, with whom I do not always agree, but, who today, said it so well that we may as well just quote or paraphrase from the end of his article.” 

“’Our current gun culture,’ Whitlock wrote, ‘ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead. Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it.’ 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.’”

Clearly, Whitlock was advocating for gun control.  Costas chose to legitimize Whitlock’s flawed opinion.  That choice created a maelstrom for Costas. 

So intense was the criticism of his remarks that the little man with the colossal ego spoke through a surrogate about his on-air comments.  Greg Hughes said that Costas “feels an unfortunate leap was taken that he was advocating taking away Second Amendment rights. He was not.  He is pro-sensible gun reform and pro-attitude adjustment on guns.”

As someone who has made millions through his association with the NFL, Costas seems to be running interference for the league in light of the devastating lawsuit filed against the NFL on behalf of thousands of former players and their families who claim that the league hid information from them that linked head injuries to long-term brain problems like chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

Professional football is a violent game.  There are those who would make it more so as evidenced by the New Orleans Saints’ Bounty Scandal.

In March, the NFL announced that its investigation showed the Saints put together a bounty pool of up to $50,000 that rewarded 22 to 27 players for game-ending injuries inflicted on opponents. "Knockouts" were worth $1,500 and "cart-offs" $1,000—with payments doubled or tripled for the playoffs, the league said.

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports that one in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime.  An estimated 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year.  The report reveals that 85% of domestic violence victims are women.  Sadly, most cases of domestic violence are never reported to the police.

Stories are emerging in the wake of Belcher’s suicide that he had a troubled past, possible anger management issues, drinking problems, pain killer addiction and the haunting mindset of “if I can’t have her nobody will.”

The gun Belcher used is not the problem.  Cowardice is.

Costas and the NFL are guilty of not addressing the heart of their cowardice.