Taking a Stand: Bob Costas’ Groundbreaking Comments on Gun Control
Real Clear Politics
Sports is not a minstrel show. In light of Bob Costas’s commentary on the role of American gun culture in the murder-suicide of Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher during halftime of Sunday Night Football, there has been a tidal wave of outrage directed at Costas for injecting a serious and controversial topic into something supposedly as frivolous as sports. This demeans the role of sports in society and diminishes an award-winning journalist like Costas.
At halftime, Costas spent 90 seconds weighing in on Saturday’s horrific tragedy when Jovan Belcher murdered his girlfriend and then drove to the Chiefs’ training facility where, in front of both the team’s coach and general manager, he pressed the barrel of a handgun against his temple and pulled the trigger. Costas quoted a column by Jason Whitlock, a Kansas City-based writer for Fox Sports, stating:
Our current gun culture,” Whitlock wrote, “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. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions, and its possible connection to football, will be analyzed. Who knows? But here is what I believe, If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”
Not everyone will agree with Costas’s statement, which, contrary to headlines, did not mention gun control laws once. But it’s important that he made it. Sports has served as a prism for American society for over a century. The playing field has been an important forum for Americans to sort out issues of race, class and gender. It has produced heroes like Jackie Robinson, Curt Flood and Muhammad Ali who have become icons not just for their athletic accomplishments because of their important role in broader societal struggles.
This criticism of gun culture is controversial and Costas almost certainly had to know it would be. But his role is not to smother this tragedy in cliche but rather to try to put it in a broader perspective. It’s what Jim McKay did during the 1972 Olympics; it’s what Howard Cosell did at his best.
Sports is meant to be fun, escapist entertainment but the games aren’t played in a void. These aren’t video games with animated characters who disappear once the off button is pressed on the television. Costas’s commentary, even if it wasn’t right, was necessary and appropriate.
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