NBC’s Bob Costas Discusses Gays in Sports

Billy Bean, Tiim Hardaway/Photo credit: Jean Baptiste Lacroix Wire Image

AE: But there was pretty extensive coverage of the event that he won. And he won in extraordinarily dramatic fashion. I mean the Chinese were expected to sweep. He received the highest score ever awarded for an Olympic dive. And to mention the historic nature of that just seems like it makes total sense.
BC: Yeah. And it might have been the kind of thing that could have been handled in a two or three minute profile. You know – Here’s this athlete: ba-boom.

AE: And you wouldn’t have been reluctant to do that?
BC: Oh, God, no.

AE: Do you see from a gay perspective how enormously powerful this would have been for the gay community to have one of their members acknowledged in that way in that moment? And although certainly this wasn’t what this was all about for Mitcham, it was a part of it, because he had given these interviews prior to the games.
BC: Yeah. I agree with you on all of that. And it certainly seems to me like a worthy topic. I just don’t want to appear as if I’m criticizing any of my colleagues.

[Costas is informed that interview will run as Q&A with entire questions and answers in full so that everything he says will appear in context.]

BC: What’s more important from my perspective – since I don’t know all the ins and outs of this specific thing – but from my perspective, I think that these issues are more than valid. And if a person is already out and willing to talk about it, then certainly that’s significant in its own way. Just as it is significant if someone is the first African-American coach in the SEC [a Southern college football conference]. Or if someone is the first woman to hold this position or that [position]. These are significant issues, and they’re interesting.

Certainly the American culture at large – I mean there may be pockets of resistance and resentment, some of them large pockets – but by and large discussing issues related to gay people is no longer taboo in the mainstream media. It hasn’t been for a long time. So I don’t see why there should be any particular reluctance where appropriate to discuss them when it comes to sports.

While you can’t do this on game coverage or event coverage, you can in magazine coverage like ESPN’s Outside the Lines, or Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, or my show on HBO. The general issue on gays in sports is something that could be addressed more. And we have addressed it, and I would plan to address it more in the future.

And I think there’s always a reasonable question as to whether you discuss people who have not publicly come out. I happen to believe that is that person’s prerogative.

AE: There are certain situations where it’s part of the story, it becomes the story. There may be an issue in their personal life which is having an impact on their game play, and you can’t discuss that because they’re not out. Whereas you would discuss that with a straight person, revealing that they’re straight. Do you see any kind of double standard?
BC: That would depend. … How much I would discuss a straight person’s personal circumstances. That’s a judgment that you make case to case according to those circumstances.

AE: Let me make it more specific then. Have you ever not covered a story because in covering it you would have to ‘out’ someone?
BC: Not that I’m aware of.

AE: Of course the larger issue that’s hanging over this whole conversation is the fact that in almost all male team sports in America there are no professional out gay athletes, which is amazing in 2008.
BC: You figure that some of them may believe that it would impact their marketability and endorsement opportunities. Which is A) sad if that’s true. And B) sad also that even if it is true that some people aren’t willing to run that risk to take a more honest and principled stand. So it’s on both those levels.

AE: Do you also think that there’s concern for their safety? Especially in football?
BC: Yeah, in team sports. Esera Tuaolo [an NFL player who came out in 2002 after leaving the sport] who we’ve had on the air at HBO, he said he was concerned [about safety]. It’s a hyper macho atmosphere. A number of players – I don’t know that they represent the majority – but a number of players expressed almost Neanderthal views about sharing a locker room with a gay person, and being a teammate with a gay person and what the consequences of that would be.