Costas is moving on from football

Bob Costas will stay on the phone nearly an hour, and in a world without other obligations we could’ve made it nearly a week. In a world without other obligations, maybe you’d have time to read all of it, too.

You don’t, of course, so Costas will do his best to quickly explain why one of the greatest and most influential sports broadcasting careers of the last generation is now all but done with football and taking on more and more baseball.

“I’m going to get in trouble for this, no matter how well you write it,” he said. “And I know you’ll write it well, and it’ll get picked up in 50 places, and by the time it gets to the fifth or sixth place it’ll be: ‘Costas Hopes NFL Dies.’”

This is complicated, in other words, and at a time when Costas has felt comments made at a recent journalism symposium about the NFL were taken out of context by many, he’s as aware as ever about the value of context.

Here’s a good place to start, though:

The recently announced winner of the Ford Frick Award given by the Baseball Hall of Fame is increasing his time in that sport while giving up a football gig that helped him reach 20 million people every Sunday night.

The feelings behind the comments at the symposium — “The reality is that this game destroys people’s brains,” he said — are at least a small part of this.

The line about football destroying brains was a response to a question about what he believed the biggest issue in sports is today. Costas has long been one of the most outspoken network broadcasters on the issue of brain trauma in football and was annoyed that some took the line as a shot at football on his way out the door.

But the truth is the feelings behind those words are part of an altered view of football that make it easier for him to give up one of the highest-profile jobs in American sports television — particularly as it means more time with baseball, a sport he’s always loved.

Some of this is a 65-year-old man not ready for retirement but motivated to simplify his schedule to the things that matter most. He decided to give up hosting the NBC’s Olympics and Sunday Night Football coverage this year. His last scheduled football work is the Super Bowl in February.

Meanwhile, he did more baseball work in 2017 than he had in years, and he plans on doing even more in 2018.

That means embracing a smaller audience for work around a sport he enjoys more.

“Do I feel some ambivalence for football?” he said. “Yeah, I do. I recognize how exciting and dramatic it is. You can’t watch Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady operate, or Tyreek Hill in the open field or Antonio Brown, and not appreciate that. And some of the best people I’ve met in sports are football people.

“I’m also aware of the less pleasant realities.”

Those “realities” were part of his work at NBC, including halftime essays, a 90-minute show on football and head injuries in 2012, and interviews on three documentaries about concussions. Last month, the Concussion Legacy Foundation honored Costas at its annual gala.

Football’s future has long been hotly debated. We hear and talk a lot about falling TV ratings, or empty seats at stadiums, or declining participation at lower levels. The world is too complicated to blame all or even most of this solely on the fear of head injuries.

TV ratings are down for nearly all programming, there have never been more options for entertainment dollars and kids have more activities available to them than ever before. Besides, any “problems” with the health of the NFL as a business must be taken in the context of a $14 billion-and-growing industry.

But Costas has done this a long time. He’s proven himself versatile, smart and adept at reading the winds of change.

That’s why it’s notable that in the same calendar year, he has given up football and taken on more baseball. He has been honored for promoting awareness of head injuries around football and received the top broadcasting award from the Baseball Hall of Fame.

This is a small part of what change looks like.

“It wasn’t a matter of rejecting something else, as much a matter of, if you’re going to slow down, what is it you really want to do?” Costas said. “And if I’m going to confine to a few things, I wanted it to be baseball.”