Ley to receive well-deserved honor from Hall

SETON Hall is plenty proud to have former ESPN anchor and oldschool broadcast journalist Bob

Ley as a Class of ’76 graduate. And Sunday afternoon, before Seton Hall’s game vs. St. John’s at Prudential Center, it will prove it with a reception and ceremony to honor Ley.

During the game, which begins at 2, Ley will return to his broadcasting roots, helping call the game on WSOU 89.5 FM, the school’s station and launch pad since 1948.

Ley, with ESPN for 40 years, was a thoughtful, probing, literate and honest voice of sports. His “Outside the Lines” programs — they rarely were “shows” — provided wellwritten, sober overviews of issues with a strong blend of significant outside and inside investigation and examination.

Significantly, he only rarely was squeezed to serve as a shill for ESPN programming. But likely unknown to his bosses, the unfettered, independent Bob Ley was a great reflection on ESPN. ➤ I don’t like hitting those who are down, out and wounded, but Peter Kostis, 73 and 30 years a CBS golf voice — mostly as an on-course reporter — continues to trash CBS for letting him go late last year, as if he’d been a tremendously popular presence. He wasn’t.

His continuing, on-the-record anger with CBS, while understood and worthy of sympathy, is heard and read as overly inflated self-evaluation. Kostis might’ve expressed more gratitude than fury toward CBS for employing him for 30 years.

Not that candor is encouraged on golf telecasts, but Kostis was another flat, cliché-driven participant given to saying that the course “is in pristine condition,” conducting dull, pro-forma interviews and noting slight shifts in the wind.

He had a very good run. Why go out kvetching?