A Fun Guy, No Kidding

NBC hired Costas in 1980 and put him to work on regional NFL games. But the real Costas was yearning to breathe free. Before the 1983 Super Bowl in Pasadena, he interviewed Mr. T and couldn't resist whimsy. " Mr. T," he said, "I believe I speak for all Americans when I ask this question: When are you going to cash in this angry-young-man act, ditch the hardware and slip into a nice three-piece suit and a pair of Thorn McAns?"

Letterman discovered Costas when he couldn't locate Albert, Don Criqui or another sportscaster to lend an air of NBC Sports authenticity to his elevator races. After Costas's dramatic call, Letterman invited him onto the set and asked what was next on his agenda. "Well," Costas said, "I've got to hop a plane for the West Coast, where I'm going to work the Don Cornelius Pro-Am." Letterman broke up at the mention of the Soul Train host, and since then Costas has been back on Late Night covering swivel-chair races and taxi-cab races.

Costas has the confidence—or is it gall—to occasionally pass himself off as an expert, even when he's not. Take hockey. He had never called a game when he landed a minor league job in Syracuse by sending the station some basketball tapes. ("I don't happen to have any of my hockey tapes available right now," he said.) Or take basketball. He had worked only 10 college games when he became KMOX's play-by-play man for the ABA Spirits of St. Louis. To land the job, Costas doctored a tape of his call of a Syracuse- Rutgers game, splicing out dull moments, turning down the treble and boosting the bass so that he would sound older.

It was much the same with baseball. Just a few weeks ago, NBC executive producer Mike Weisman, who then was coordinating producer of baseball coverage, was stunned to learn that when he assigned Costas to announce the NBC backup games in 1983 with Tony Kubek, Costas had worked only four games in his life—and two of them minor league ones at that. When Costas began broadcasting Cardinal games on KMOX last month, he was making his major league baseball radio debut.

Costas was also green as clover when he took over the NFL '84 show. In 1982 when he was first asked to join the pregame show, Costas was reluctant to come into the studio, partly because he was afraid to fail and partly because he would miss some September and October baseball games. "Finally, when he said yes [in 1983]," Weisman recalls, "I was all excited. Then a week later he says, 'You know, Mike, I've never worked in a television studio before.' " Weisman was flabbergasted, not to mention apprehensive. "Before the football season I brought him into the studio to do three-minute breaks between [boxing, Sports World and other] shows. I told Bob I did it to reassure him, but I actually did it to reassure myself."

So nimble, self-assured and versatile is Costas, he probably could handle any sort of role—host of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, anchor of the NBC Nightly News—and be at home.

"If there's one thing he has to be careful about, it's overconfidence," says NFL studio producer John Filippelli. "If he ever came to the point where he began to believe all his press, that could be the beginning of the end."

Says Weisman, "I still think he's too talkative. Instead of letting a good point sink in, he tends to hit the audience with another good point and another good point and another. He also has to realize that he doesn't always have to be funny."

A lesser talent than Costas would not have got off as easily as he did in 1983, when he walked off the scene during the telecast of the Arlington Million horse race. Costas, who doesn't know a furlong from a fetlock, hadn't wanted to work the show in the first place. When the producer asked him to "wing it" while NBC's racing experts lined up postrace interviews, Costas did so for a while, but finally he became annoyed ("I was done trying to kid the audience") and abruptly said, "And now let's go back to Bill Macatee in New York." He then removed his headset and walked away, while viewers watched a replay of the finish and the credits being rolled. NBC officials were upset at Costas's pouting on the air, but they also apologized for putting him on the spot.

"If he had a choice between NFL '86 and Letterman, he'd take the Letterman show," says NBC Sports publicist Kevin Monaghan. "But if the choice was between Letterman and the backup Game of the Week, he'd take the baseball."