Top 31 Quotes & Sayings by Bob Costas

It doesn't seem that long ago to me that the word 'irreverent' seemed affixed to my name. 'Irreverent newcomer.' I went from irreverent to venerable in what seems to me like the blink of an eye.

I wish I had said 'some athletes here are competing unfairly.' It was my opinion, never an accusation.

I don't feel any different than I did when I was 40. But I realize mathematically, I'm equidistant between that and 80. I'll keep doing this for a while, but I'm not going to be one of these people who hang on just for the sake of being on the air.

Any good broadcast, not just an Olympic broadcast, should have texture to it. It should have information, should have some history, should have something that's offbeat, quirky, humorous, and where called for it, should have journalism, and judiciously it should also have commentary. That's my ideal.

I don't want to be in the Jerry Sandusky business.

We're still buzzin' about Bruce Springsteen at halftime, but I'll tell you if there was one guy we weren't thinking was 'Born To Run' it was James Harrison.

I can't do anything about how people who are all but completely unaware of my actual motivations and my actual thought process and my actual worldview, how they characterize me. There's not much I can do about it, except never say another word other than 'there's a ground ball to shortstop.' And I don't think that's going to happen.

If every university president said, 'The revenue producing sports: basketball, football - potentially revenue producing at most universities - maybe in a few cases women's basketball, if every one of them had a monitor that reported directly to the university president and no 'student-athlete' ever gets into this college or university who could not plausibly be admitted if we did not have a football or basketball team, end of problem. It won't happen because it's like unilaterally disarming. You know your opponent won't do it and then you'll get crushed in every game, but it's a simple thing.

Our current gun culture simply ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead... What I believe is, if he [Belcher] didn’t possess/own a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today... Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it.

If Vin Scully calling a game is just as good in 2013 as he was in 1963, that's the way a game should sound. If Jack Buck were around today, I don't think anybody would ask him to change his style. My style has always been a little bit of a combination of old and new, if only because my frame of reference, personally, was different than that of Ernie Harwell or Jack Buck or Harry Caray. I was a younger guy. Just as Joe Buck's frame of reference is somewhat different from mine. But the nuts and bolts of how to call a ballgame well, I think remain the same.

His doctors said he was, in many ways, the most remarkable patient they'd ever seen. His bravery, so stark and real, that even those used to seeing people in dire circumstances were moved by his example.

Mickey Mantle was baseball.

America's gun culture demonstrates itself in the Wild West, Dirty Harry mentality of people who actually believe that if a number of people were armed in the theater in Aurora, they would have been able to take down this nutjob in body armor and military style artillery. When in fact almost every policeman in the country would tell you that that would have only increased the tragedy and added to the carnage.

commenting on baseball players who test positive for steroids: It?s an announced test, so you not only failed the steroid test, you failed the IQ test.

Yes folks, their gold medal looks the same as everybody elses.

17 seconds from Game 7, or from Championship number 6,Jordan, open, Chicago with the lead. Time out Utah, 5.2 seconds left, Michael Jordan running on fumes with 45 points.

(He was) a fragile hero to whom we had an emotional attachment so strong and lasting that it defied logic.

The National League game is chess; The American League is checkers.

He was our symbol of baseball at a time when the game meant something to us that perhaps it no longer does.

If Jovan Belcher didn't possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.

It occurs to me as we're all sitting here thinking of Mickey, he's probably somewhere getting an earful from Casey Stengel, and no doubt quite confused by now.

People will speculate about what they want, but that is not my intention.

If that's the last image of Michael Jordan...how magnificent is it!?

There are some times when sports rises to the level of news and when sports broadcasters acquit themselves as well as the best news broadcasters do, they aren't there to dramatize. They're there as journalists.

Champions don't become champions in the field---they are merely recognized there.

When we lose Fenway, we lose the sense that somebody sat here and watched Ted Williams hit.

If OJ Simpson did not have a handgun, Nicole and Ron would still be alive today.

All that's missing for Utah is a blindfold and a cigarette.

The best thing about sports is the sense of community and shared emotion it can create.

We're used to comeback stories in the world of sports, but the Gail Devers story is remarkable. This is a comeback from an illness which almost killed her.

You have to be simultaneously well-prepared and spontaneous. You don't really know for sure what percentage of the preparation you are going to use, and you don't know exactly where it will apply. So you have to be prepared, but not locked into that preparation.