Bob Costas, Jones’ daughter to discuss ‘Sport in America’ at UTA

First and foremost, Bob Costas loves sports.

As he says, somebody who isn’t a “sports fan doesn’t have a Mickey Mantle baseball card from 1958 in his pocket and he’s 63 years old.”

But that doesn’t mean a fan needs to be blind to the machinations behind the sports industry that’s grown in popularity since he started his career as a minor league hockey broadcaster 40 years ago.

Costas will sit down for a conversation about the sports industry with Dallas Cowboys and NFL Foundation executive Charlotte Jones Anderson on April 13 at UT Arlington’s College Park Center as part of the university’s Maverick Speakers Series.

Instead of doing the lecture format that many of the speakers do, “Sports in America: Is It Still Only a Game?” will be a sit-down discussion between Costas and Jones Anderson about the state of the sports industry, while highlighting some of the memorable moments of his career.

There will also be a question-and-answer opportunity for the audience.

“Outside of HBO or a few other places, you’re not going to speak at great length on that topic on television when broadcasting a sports event,” Costas said. “We’ve got one broad topic and a whole lot of time.”

The Emmy-award-winning broadcaster has worked 11 Olympics, 11 NBA Finals, seven Super Bowls and seven World Series. If anyone is qualified to speak about the issues facing the sports industry, Costas has the résumé.

And he’s certainly no stranger to controversy. He turned off a lot of viewers when he used his Sunday Night Football platform to highlight a Jason Whitlock article about gun culture after the murder-suicide of the NFL’s Jovan Belcher in 2012.

In 2013, he used his halftime platform to call the Washington Redskins’ name “an insult, a slur.” And his comments on Vladimir Putin during the 2014 Winter Olympics earned the ire of political types.

But Costas continues to stand his ground and defend his comments anytime they’re brought back up, lamenting our general inability to advance reasoned discussion.

“It’s not going to get any clicks to say, ‘Here’s a reasoned argument. Here is where I agree with it and here is where I don’t,’ ” Costas said. “You need a provocative headline, and that leads to caricatures and misrepresentations.

“Whatever the hot button topic is, people say they want an honest discussion. But if you really have an honest, nuanced discussion, you’re going to get some heat from one side or the other.”

Anderson is an interesting choice to work with Costas. The daughter of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones recently offered her support of the Cowboys signing Greg Hardy, whose domestic violence conviction last year was overturned after the accuser wouldn’t testify.

As the NFL struggles to deal with domestic violence, the time would seem ripe for Costas to dive into the subject with Anderson.

Costas was originally scheduled to speak at UTA last September, but was summoned to call Derek Jeter’s final game at Yankee Stadium instead. Because for all of the controversy he’s stirred up over the years, Costas said it still boils down to the game and the sports themselves.

“If we didn’t love sports so much, then all of this stuff would be moot,” he said.

This story was originally published April 5, 2015 at 7:43 PM with the headline "Bob Costas, Jones’ daughter to discuss ‘Sport in America’ at UTA."