Bob Costas Quotations

Any good broadcast, not just an Olympic broadcast, should have texture to it. It should have information, should have some history, should have something that's offbeat, quirky, humorous, and where called for it, should have journalism, and judiciously it should also have commentary. That's my ideal.

I wish I had said 'some athletes here are competing unfairly.' It was my opinion, never an accusation.

I don't want to be in the Jerry Sandusky business.

I don't feel any different than I did when I was 40. But I realize mathematically, I'm equidistant between that and 80. I'll keep doing this for a while, but I'm not going to be one of these people who hang on just for the sake of being on the air.

It doesn't seem that long ago to me that the word 'irreverent' seemed affixed to my name. 'Irreverent newcomer.' I went from irreverent to venerable in what seems to me like the blink of an eye.

I can't do anything about how people who are all but completely unaware of my actual motivations and my actual thought process and my actual worldview, how they characterize me. There's not much I can do about it, except never say another word other than 'there's a ground ball to shortstop.' And I don't think that's going to happen.

Mickey Mantle was baseball.

Yes folks, their gold medal looks the same as everybody elses.

If every university president said, 'The revenue producing sports: basketball, football - potentially revenue producing at most universities - maybe in a few cases women's basketball, if every one of them had a monitor that reported directly to the university president and no 'student-athlete' ever gets into this college or university who could not plausibly be admitted if we did not have a football or basketball team, end of problem. It won't happen because it's like unilaterally disarming. You know your opponent won't do it and then you'll get crushed in every game, but it's a simple thing.

When we lose Fenway, we lose the sense that somebody sat here and watched Ted Williams hit.

commenting on baseball players who test positive for steroids: It?s an announced test, so you not only failed the steroid test, you failed the IQ test.

There are some times when sports rises to the level of news and when sports broadcasters acquit themselves as well as the best news broadcasters do, they aren't there to dramatize. They're there as journalists.

If Jovan Belcher didn't possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.

(He was) a fragile hero to whom we had an emotional attachment so strong and lasting that it defied logic.

He was our symbol of baseball at a time when the game meant something to us that perhaps it no longer does.

17 seconds from Game 7, or from Championship number 6,Jordan, open, Chicago with the lead. Time out Utah, 5.2 seconds left, Michael Jordan running on fumes with 45 points.

If that's the last image of Michael Jordan...how magnificent is it!?

It occurs to me as we're all sitting here thinking of Mickey, he's probably somewhere getting an earful from Casey Stengel, and no doubt quite confused by now.

We're used to comeback stories in the world of sports, but the Gail Devers story is remarkable. This is a comeback from an illness which almost killed her.

The National League game is chess; The American League is checkers.

America's gun culture demonstrates itself in the Wild West, Dirty Harry mentality of people who actually believe that if a number of people were armed in the theater in Aurora, they would have been able to take down this nutjob in body armor and military style artillery. When in fact almost every policeman in the country would tell you that that would have only increased the tragedy and added to the carnage.

Our current gun culture simply 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.... What I believe is, if (Belcher) didn’t possess/own a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.... 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.

People will speculate about what they want, but that is not my intention.

All that's missing for Utah is a blindfold and a cigarette.

If OJ Simpson did not have a handgun, Nicole and Ron would still be alive today.

We're still buzzin' about Bruce Springsteen at halftime, but I'll tell you if there was one guy we weren't thinking was 'Born To Run' it was James Harrison.

His doctors said he was, in many ways, the most remarkable patient they'd ever seen. His bravery, so stark and real, that even those used to seeing people in dire circumstances were moved by his example.

You have to be simultaneously well-prepared and spontaneous. You don't really know for sure what percentage of the preparation you are going to use, and you don't know exactly where it will apply. So you have to be prepared, but not locked into that preparation.

If Vin Scully calling a game is just as good in 2013 as he was in 1963, that's the way a game should sound. If Jack Buck were around today, I don't think anybody would ask him to change his style. My style has always been a little bit of a combination of old and new, if only because my frame of reference, personally, was different than that of Ernie Harwell or Jack Buck or Harry Caray. I was a younger guy. Just as Joe Buck's frame of reference is somewhat different from mine. But the nuts and bolts of how to call a ballgame well, I think remain the same.

Champions don't become champions in the field---they are merely recognized there.

The best thing about sports is the sense of community and shared emotion it can create.

I don't believe there's a single American sitting around saying, 'I'd like to see Bob Costas' take on this.'

He was cocky, but in an entertaining kind of way. He would track people down at all times of the day and night in all parts of the country to come on the air. He was aggressive, but in an effective way.

He's got to do something (because) his tenure is going to be largely defined by this punishment. Bold action here is not the same as rash action. If he's got the evidence and he's in the right, he should take bold action. Even if he's defeated in court, he will win in the court of public opinion -- if he takes bold action. ... You can be deliberate and you can still be bold. Once he has it, he should do what he feels is in the best interest of baseball and let the chips fall where they may.

Hal was the go-to guy when it came to the rules of baseball.

The amazing thing about Hal and those guys is how much of the game's history they witnessed.

Figure skating is always a huge deal. Winter Olympics frequently create new heroes in America, even in rather obscure events ... or at least some unforgettable characters, like (British ski jumper) Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards who managed, quite flamboyantly, to not get himself killed when flying off a ramp 18 years ago at Calgary.

You had the gold, gold, gold all but in your hand. By your folly you have disappointed everyone at home and, worse yet, NBC and its advertisers. You were showboating, weren¹t you?

What's happened is that teams have latched onto the notion that Spring Training can be a big revenue producer.

Baseball is in a horrible position. Baseball could be celebrating this achievement while (questioning) it. ... (Selig) is in a delicate position. But it comes with the territory.

There were no hard feelings at all. It's not a big deal. I'm sure there are countless topics that will be mutually acceptable in the future.

I loved Seaver, but you have to put Clemens ahead of him. He's on a short list of being one of the greatest of all time. In my lifetime, no one was better than Koufax at his best. I would pick Sandy for one game. But Clemens is ahead of Gibson and Seaver at their best.

In your view is Dennis Rader enjoying what's going on now? He's a much bigger celebrity. Outside of Wichita he was not as well-known as other notorious types. Now he is extremely well-known. Is he enjoying this?

I get a call that says 'Michelle Kwan has withdrawn from the Olympics' and at that point I was thinking 'Wait, what Olympics am I at? Lillehammer? Sarajevo?' and the next thing I know, 45 minutes later I'm interviewing Michelle.

I didn't think the subject matter of Thursday's show was the kind of broadcast that I should be doing, ... respectfully declined to participate.

I didn't think the subject matter of Thursday's show was the kind of broadcast I should be doing. I suggested some alternatives but the producers preferred the topics they had chosen.

You can't ask for a better setting. It will be a glorious Olympic setting.