Bob Costas

NYT Sports Columnist William Rhoden Wishes NFL Would Ban Gun Ownership by Players
By Clay Waters | December 5, 2012 | 11:10 AM EST

On MSNBC's The Ed Show Monday night, New York Times sports columnist William Rhoden defended NBC sportscaster Bob Costas's controversial comments, made during halftime of an NFL game Sunday night, on the murder-suicide committed by Kansas City Chief player Jovan Belcher, even agreeing to the idea that the NFL commissioner try to ban players from owning guns.

Costas had quoted an anti-gun screed by sports columnist Jason Whitlock, in part: "Our current gun culture 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." (Video below.)

Fox's Gutfeld Scores Direct Hits on Costas Hypocrisy, Whitlock's Bigotry, Media's Predictability
By Tom Blumer | December 5, 2012 | 8:44 AM EST

In a video posted at the Daily Caller by Jeff Poor (HT Hot Air), Fox News's Greg Gutfeld went after Bob Costas's opportunism and hypocrisy on gun rights in the wake of the Jovan Belcher tragedy. He also took on Jason Whitlock's inexcusable characterization of those who believe that the Constitution's Second Amendment means what it says and insist that our government to continue to act as if it does as racists.

The video and a transcript follow the jump (internal links added by me; bolds are mine):

NFL Wouldn't Let Players Own Guns if Ed Schultz Ran the League
By Jack Coleman | December 4, 2012 | 6:20 PM EST

You could see this one coming and hardly a surprise that it came from Ed Schultz.

On his radio show yesterday, Schultz was talking with a caller about Kansas City Chiefs' linebacker Jovan Belcher killing his girlfriend and committing suicide over the weekend when Schultz made a predictable suggestion (audio) --

Hall of Famer Namath to Piers Morgan: Blame Violence on the 'Animal We Are', Not Guns
By Matthew Balan | December 4, 2012 | 4:58 PM EST

Football Hall of Famer Joe Namath called out NBC's Bob Costas on Monday's Piers Morgan Tonight for gratuitously inserting his pro-gun control views into a NFL telecast: "As a football fan, I'm not up to that kind of a halftime take. There is a time and a place for it, and I wasn't pleased about that."

Namath also hinted that gun control efforts were ultimately futile because of humanity's unpredictable nature: "I think there's always going to be a problem dealing with firearms, with knives. It's the animal we are that cause the problems." [audio available here; video below the jump]

CBS Blames Jovan Belcher Murder-Suicide on 'Gun Culture' in NFL and U.S.
By Matthew Balan | December 4, 2012 | 2:20 PM EST

Jim Axelrod filed a completely one-sided report on Tuesday's CBS This Morning linking the Jovan Belcher murder-suicide to a lack of gun control inside the NFL  – and in the country in general. Axelrod turned to only pro-gun control advocates as talking heads – Brady Center flack Marcellus Wiley, NBC's Bob Costas, and New York Times sportswriter William Rhoden.

Rhoden blamed the widespread availability of guns in the U.S. for sportsmen getting involved in violent incidents: "Why do athletes love guns? Well, the reality is that this is a gun culture. Lots of people - and lots of people with money - own guns." The correspondent also outlined that liberal newspaper journalist "says the issue of guns and athletes is about youth, money, and perceived power." [audio clips available here; video below the jump]

Bret Baier Quotes NewsBusters' Sheppard On Costas's Sunday Night Football Gun Rant
By NB Staff | December 3, 2012 | 8:16 PM EST

On Sunday, NewsBusters broke the story about NBC's Bob Costas blaming guns for the previous day's murder-suicide by an NFL football player.

During a Grapevine segment involving the incident on Fox News's Special Report Monday, host Bret Baier quoted NewsBusters' associate editor Noel Sheppard (video follows with transcript):

Another Tragedy, Another CNN Push for Gun Control
By Matt Hadro | December 3, 2012 | 6:38 PM EST

CNN took Bob Costas' gun control rant and ran with it on Monday. The clip of the NBC sportscaster decrying handguns ran multiple times during the morning coverage and again on Monday afternoon, with anchors hoping gun control legislation is in the works.

Anchor Brooke Baldwin remarked "perhaps Congress is listening" after her guest advocated tougher gun laws. Piers Morgan went on another Twitter rant about the need for more gun control. Anchor Carol Costello asked if the incident should "cause us to rethink gun control?" 

WaPo Media Critic Praises Costas NFL Rant: ‘Cowardly’ to Only Talk Sports
By Ken Shepherd | December 3, 2012 | 4:26 PM EST

Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple jumped to the defense of Bob Costas in a Monday morning blog post entitled, "Bob Costas, please keep spouting off." While Wemple avoided stating whether he agreed with Costas and Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock on gun control per se, he made it perfectly clear he had a low view of the average Joe at home wanting to escape the world for three hours watching a football game.

This is "the mentality of the sports consumer," Wemple groused, "Give me the game, the X's and the O's, the instant replays, the halftime highlights and leave the rest of the world out of it." But, "NFL players live in our society and are bound by our laws. The things that they do affect the public beyond whether their teams cover the point spread," Wemple argued, concluding (emphasis mine):

Jim Gray Sides with Costas & Whitlock on Gun Control, Then Backtracks: WaPo Calls for More Editorializing
By Ryan Robertson | December 3, 2012 | 3:50 PM EST

In an appearance on Monday's America's Newsroom program on Fox News, veteran sportscaster Jim Gray at first expressed what seemed like absolute agreement with NBC's Bob Costas regarding the need for more gun control in light of the horrific Jovan Belcher murder-suicide on Saturday.

In what turned into a sanctimonious lecture during halftime programming on Sunday Night Football, NBC's Costas endorsed an anti-gun screed by Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock. Asked for his thoughts by Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum, Gray wholeheartedly agreed with Costas and Whitlock, but then oddly backtracked just as the interview was concluding [ video (via MRCTV's Ian Hanchett) and transcript below ]

Columnist Who Inspired Bob Costas Drops New Bomb: 'The NRA Is the New KKK'
By Tim Graham | December 3, 2012 | 12:09 PM EST

Kansas City sportswriter Jason Whitlock loves to stoke controversy. So after he blamed Jovan Belcher's murder-suicide on the "gun culture" -- inspiring NBC Sports lecturer Bob Costas --  in an interview with Roland Martin, he added fuel to the fire by claiming "the NRA is the new KKK."

Apparently, black youths are "armed" by the NRA, and they're also responsible for loading up black neighborhoods with drugs:

NBC's Bob Costas Blames NFL Murder-Suicide On Guns
By Noel Sheppard | December 2, 2012 | 10:57 PM EST

NewsBusters reported Saturday the tragic murder-suicide involving a Kansas City Chiefs' football player and his girlfriend.

During halftime of NBC's Sunday Night Football, Bob Costas chose to lecture America about how guns were to blame for the incident concluding, "If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Ex-WashPost Columnist Slams NBC's Bob Costas for Insisting Olympic Race Barriers 'Have Long Been Down'
By Tim Graham | August 5, 2012 | 8:35 PM EDT

Anna Holmes, until recently a Style section writer for The Washington Post wrote a piece for Yahoo News called "The White World of Sports." She began by attacking NBC host Bob Costas and his "man-child hairdo" (?) for not sounding more like Al Sharpton when Gabby Douglas won the all-around  Olympic gold in gymnastics.

"You know, it's a happy measure of how far we've come that it doesn't seem all that remarkable, but still it's noteworthy, Gabby Douglas is, as it happens, the first African-American to win the women's all-around in gymnastics," Costas proclaimed. "The barriers have long since been down, but sometimes there can be an imaginary barrier, based on how one might see oneself." Holmes hated that: