Bob Costas may finally achieve the grace note he desired at NBC Sports.
The face of NBC Sports for most of his nearly 40-year tenure with the company from 1980-2018, Bob Costas has returned to the network as the host of its new Major League Baseball package and a contributor to its NBA coverage, it was announced Thursday. He will make his official return on NBC’s primetime Diamondbacks-Dodgers game on Opening Day, March 26.
Costas described his new role as an “emeritus” position in a statement released by NBC: “As appreciative as I am of other aspects of my career, especially HBO and the MLB Network, for 40 years, my true broadcasting home was NBC. So many great moments, memories, and friendships. Now, I am very grateful to Rick Cordella and Sam Flood for inviting me back in an emeritus role to conclude my career where so much of it played out.”
Costas left NBC on negative terms in 2018 after he and the network got “sideways” over his commentary about CTE in football and the “IOC’s troubling affinity for authoritarian regimes,” he told the Sports Media Watch Podcast last year. Costas: “At that point, and I think it was shortsighted on both parties, some passive aggressive stuff going on. Both of us couldn’t see the forest for the trees and we threw up our hands and said, okay, it’s been a good long run.”
In the podcast appearance, Costas lamented that he had not been given a graceful exit from NBC, and said the relationship “should have ended more graciously and a more mutually respectful way.” He described his quiet exit from NBC as “a little off,” and said that it had left him “looking for the ribbon, and maybe, in a bit of poetic justice that ribbon is found right back at 30 Rock.”
Throughout the interview last March, Costas seemed to hint at a reconciliation with NBC. The relationship, he said, was “in the process of mending itself now, so that maybe I can achieve that grace note back where I belong at NBC.”
NBC acquiring the two leagues with which he is most associated — the NBA and MLB — would seem to have opened the door to a return. Just since that podcast last year, Costas has made multiple cameo appearances on NBC’s new NBA package — voicing the pregame teases for which he is well-known.
And two years ago during the Summer Olympics, Costas and Al Michaels joined host Mike Tirico for an on-air interview segment.
