Crossing The Line: Costas Rant Inappropriate, Insensitive

Anyone who tuned in to watch Sunday Night Football and returned to the couch from their bathroom breaks and beer runs in time to see the halftime commentary may have been a little taken aback … and appalled. This was the time that NBC’s well-known sports analyst Bob Costas chose to go on a politically driven rant about gun control.

On the heels of the untimely and shocking murder-suicide in which Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher killed his girlfriend and then drove to Arrowhead Stadium and killed himself, I don’t have to tell you how insensitive Costas’ diatribe was. The fact that he was quoting someone else’s opinion piece makes no difference to me. There’s a time and a place to express these types of opinions and halftime of the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles game was definitely not it.

At the end of his tirade about how the world would be a much better place without guns, Costas summarized sportswriter Jason Whitlock’s column, saying “if Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”  Not only is that the most inane comment I have ever heard, but Costas goes out of his way to exploit this most recent domestic tragedy as a means to tout his own political propaganda. “Yes, Bob Costas, guns are the problem. Nicole Brown Simpson would be alive today if OJ hadn’t shot her with that knife,” South Carolina attorney Todd Kincannon tweeted in response to Costas’ insinuation that guns are the only weapons that take lives.

I’m a firm believer that people should be allowed to carry guns; after all, it is our Second Amendment right. And, in accordance with the First Amendment, I believe that Costas should be able to say whatever he wants. However, I think national television at halftime of a football game is pushing it. I, for one, watch football so I don’t have to be subjected to the tragedy and propaganda that have taken over our news outlets. When I watch a halftime show, I expect to hear game analysis, second-half predictions and scores and highlights from the rest of the day’s games, not political blasphemy. Is that too much to ask? No wonder I can’t take NBC seriously as a legitimate sports network anymore.