Former NBC Sports broadcaster Bob Costas was forced out of last year’s Super Bowl 52 broadcast over comments he made about football’s connection to brain damage, according to an ESPN E:60 segment that will air Sunday.
Costas, who left NBC at the end of last year, says in the piece that he was told he could “no longer host the Super Bowl” and that he had “crossed the line.”
Costas was named NBC’s Super Bowl 52 host nearly a year in advance. In a February 2017 conference call announcing that he would cede his NFL and Olympic hosting roles to Mike Tirico, Costas told reporters that he was nonetheless scheduled to host the Super Bowl. The move was a necessity due to Tirico’s Olympic commitments.
When NBC announced its Super Bowl broadcast team in January 2018, Costas was conspicuously absent. He later put out a statement through NBC saying that he had chosen to skip the Super Bowl in deference to Dan Patrick and Liam McHugh, who had hosted NBC’s studio coverage throughout the season. Costas, at the time: “Dan and Liam have done the job hosting NBC’s NFL coverage all season. It wouldn’t be right for me to parachute in and do the Super Bowl.” He then told Sports Business Daily that the decision had to do with his “ambivalent feelings about football” and the need to “leave the hosting to those who are more enthusiastic about it.”
In between February 2017 and January 2018, Costas made waves for comments about the NFL’s link to concussions. In a November 2017 roundtable at the University of Maryland, he said football “destroys people’s brains” and that he would “certainly” not let a hypothetical son play. After his absence from NBC’s Super Bowl coverage was publicized, he stressed that the decision had nothing to do with the Maryland comments: “I’ve been making the same points for several years, often on NBC. … [The idea] that NBC was taken aback by what I said at Maryland is just wrong.”
Within months of being pulled from the Super Bowl, Costas and NBC began buyout talks. He quietly left NBC by the end of last year, with no on-air acknowledgment or fanfare.
[News from E:60/Twitter 2.8; Mark Fainaru-Wada/Twitter 2.8 via Awful Announcing 2.8; Sports Business Daily 1.24.18; USA Today 11.8.17]
