So on yesterday’s NBC broadcast of Sunday Night Football, Bob Costas had a ninety second segment during halftime. He used it to talk about Jovan Belcher, who shot and killed his girlfriend and himself on December 1.
Costas spent most of the segment talking about and quoting an online piece for FOX Sports by Jason Whitlock about gun culture and gun control. I’m not going to express an opinion on gun control or focus on that. What I will say is that I’m really just amazed this happened during a nationally televised football game, and I’d have had the same reaction even if Costas expressed the opposite opinion.
What I really want to talk about are the first thirty seconds of the segment, where Costas dropped one of the fiercest burns on the platitudes of sports press conferences that I’ve ever heard:
In the aftermath of the nearly unfathomable events in Kansas City, that most mindless of sports cliches 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. Those who need tragedies to continually recalibrate their sense of proportion about sports would seem to have little hope of ever truly achieving perspective.
Sports press conferences are a disgustingly hollow spectacle where the same words are repeated day in and day out until they no longer mean anything. After Costas finished this thought, I just stared slack-jawed at the television for a while, and then I slow clapped harder than I’ve slow clapped in quite some time.