The Press Box - Bob Costas Remembers ... the Great NFL Pregame Wars

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan is joined today by broadcasting legend Bob Costas to discuss the great NFL pregame wars of the 1980s and 1990s. They dive into everything, starting with him becoming the host of NBC’s pregame show in 1984. Next, they discuss Bob’s competition before turning to what made NBC’s show special (07:42). They continue by going through Bob’s pregame costars and his memories from working with them (26:042). Lastly, the show wraps up with Bob explaining why he stepped back from the pregame desk (43:36). All that and so much more, here on The Press Box. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Bob Costas Producer: Bruce Baldwin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Pressbox. You've got Brian Curtis. You've got producer Bruce Baldwin. And today, you have a very special guest. It's Bob Costas. The last time Bob Costas was here, we talked about the glory days of the NBA on NBC.

Well, this time around, I asked Costas to revisit another fascinating corner of sports TV history, the great NFL pregame wars of the 1980s and 90s. Now, sports television today has the occasional head-to-head matchup, ESPN's College Game Day versus Fox's big new kickoff, for instance. The 1980s NFL pregame wars were way more fun. CBS's pregame show, which was the ratings leader in the category, was hosted by Brent Musburger.

On the other side of the dial, NBC's insurgent pregame show was hosted by Costas. CBS had a cast that included a former Miss America and a bookman named Jimmy the Greek, NBC had Amad Rashad, OJ Simpson, Frank DeFord, even Larry King. There was a marriage proposal made to a famous actress on NBC's air, a live studio audience, a producer named John Filippelli, otherwise known as Flip, who filled the paper with wicked quotes about the competition. And playing quarterback for NBC during these very fun years of television was Costas. So as you begin, you're a Thanksgiving football.

binge, kick back in the Barclamanger, pick up your oversized 1980s remote control, and listen, as Bob Costas remembers, the great NFL pregame wars. All right, Bob, let's take a time machine back to the 1984 NFL season. Yes. You were 32 years old. You've been doing baseball and football play-by-play for NBC. What was your ultimate goal at that point? My ultimate goal was to be a play-by-play.

especially a baseball play-by-playman, and things had fallen right into my lap beautifully, because not only had I started in the early 80s as the lead guy, if that's the right word, on the backup game, but that was with a variety of partners. When the incomparable Vin Scully came over, they made the right decision that the best pairing would have been with Garragiola rather than with Quebec. And so I get Quebec on the backup game. not only does that immediately elevate the game, but NBC recognizes that as well. And it wasn't 50-50, but they gave us a larger chunk, if there were two games going at once,

a larger chunk. And very often, they went to double-headers so that both games were national. And in the years when we had the LCS, beginning in 83, Tony and I did the LCS. And then in years we had the World Series, Tony and I would do the American League, and Vin and Joe would do the National League. And in years that we had the World Series, I would host the World Series, and Vin and Joe would call the World Series. What could be better than that? Plus, my football partner was Bob Trumpy, who sadly just recently passed away, and many people thought that that was a heck of a good team. So I was as happy as I could possibly be. In 1983, they asked me to host the All-Star Game, which I did from Kamisky Park. And I had never hosted anything except on the radio in St. Louis. I didn't know what a teleprompter. I knew what it was, but I'd never seen one.

And so I had lived the entire pregame. But I knew baseball so well in its history, that was no problem. So at that point, Mike Weissman becomes enamored with me as a host. And Gumbull has gone to the Today Show. And I am resistant for two reasons. One, I don't want to fail. And I'm not so sure I can do this. But also, what I had to be assured of was this will not, even though it takes me off football

with Trumpy, it will not affect the baseball. And when we get to October, football will not have precedence over baseball, whether it's the LCS that I'm calling or the World Series that I'm hosting. I'm going to have baseball first. And when they assured me of that, I agreed to do it. And the first few years, I just used note cards. I didn't use a prompter at all because I just felt more comfortable doing it that way. And what we did was a little bit more freewheeling. That was because of Weissman and also John Filippelli.

Mike was the executive producer, and John Filippelli produced the pregame show. And we had a more freewheeling show, I think, than CBS had. CBS was established. The NFL today was the template. It's one of the most important shows in the history of sports television. So we just kind of slipped in and tried to do something different on our own terms. Did announcers see hosting a studio show as a lesser art form than play-by-play? I don't know if it was lesser.

It was certainly a learning curve for me. and it brought me much more attention. Because no matter what game you were seeing, no matter how the nation was split, everybody saw Brent Musburger, everybody saw me. And I didn't know it at the time, but that would logically lead

to be hosting the NBA when we got it and me eventually becoming the primary host of the Olympics. So I didn't even know what good fortune I was just kind of stumbling into. And it was fun because Ahmad Rashad was so much fun to work with

and so too was Pete Axtone, who was NBC's answer to Jimmy the Greek. But it was a little more, I mean this not as a slap at Jimmy. Pete was a great writer. He was a more literate guy. So you could do different things with Pete that I imagine Brent was able to do with Jimmy. Let's set up the two competing shows here. The first thing people should know is that your show and CBS' show were only 30 minutes long. Did anyone ever go to Bob Wright or the NBC front office and say,

Why don't we do an hour? Not that I'm aware of, no. When you think about the primacy of football now, not just in sports TV, but in all of American television, if they could figure out a justification, they'd probably do a Super Bowl-length pre-game show every Sunday. But no, half an hour was all it was.

The other thing that used to bug some people in the press department at NBC was that people somehow couldn't figure out the very simple idea that the pregame ratings corresponded almost exactly to the game ratings. And generally speaking, CBS, having the NFC, had the bigger markets. And so the NFL today, not just because it was a good show and it was established before, you know, NBC had a variety of things, grandstand with Jack Buck and Bryant, and then Bryant doing the show and then me doing the show.

And so CBS had the head start with an established show, but they also had the better markets. They did a good show. almost always the pre-game and halftime ratings corresponded exactly to what the game ratings were. But CBS tried to push that as, oh, we have the better show. And our thing was, no, we have a good show on our own terms. Maybe you prefer one to the other. But the ratings are almost directly affected by what the game is.

If they've got the Cowboys against the Bears and we had, let's say, the dolphins against the Bengals, well, they're going to get a better rating. Absolutely. And you start in 84. that's the year the 49ers win the Super Bowl and start a run of 13 straight NFC Super Bowl wins, which only makes them matters worse, you know, in addition to the market

size. You're right about that, hadn't thought about that or hadn't remembered it until you reminded me. Okay, you mentioned CBS has the NFL today, one of the most important shows of its kind to that point in TV history. What did viewers like about the NFL today? I think they like the pace of it.

I think they liked the texture of it. You had Irv Cross, former player. You had Jimmy the Greek, wink, wink, you know, he couldn't mention, it's so quaint today with gambling everywhere, but he couldn't specifically mention the line, but he has little code words. Brent was a very deaf host, and they had Phyllis. You know, when we never had an answer to Phyllis, if we were looking for one, and later they had Jane Kennedy, you know, Phyllis, some people, you know, old school people said, well, we don't like this. She's not a football expert. Why did she have to be

a football expert. She was a very good performer on television, and people opened up to her in interview settings. It wasn't the same interview that I would do or Brent would do, but didn't have to be. You know, they had a very good formula. I love when announcers talk about other announcers, so tell me what was Brent's great talent? Brent was an extremely deft traffic cop. He had a signature. You are looking live. Plus, you know, when they had the NBA, he did the NBA. For a while, be doing the big college football game on Saturday and then be doing the NFL on Sunday. He was doing daily updates on CBS radio when network radio meant something different than it does today. So he was a presence and he was very, very good at what he did.

We know from watching a few million of these football shows that there's going to be certain elements that are on every Sunday. Yeah. The running back with a twisted ankle is he going to play is so-and-so coach on the hot seat? Beyond that stuff, what did you think a show like this could do? What it could do and what it did do were different things. We often change things. We were always looking to try to make inroads. These decisions weren't mine, but one year I think it might have been 86.

We did it in front of a studio audience in David Letterman's studio and what is now Stephen Colbert's studio. No, no, they moved eventually. I'm wrong. That's CBS. They moved to the Ed Sullivan Theater. But when they were in studio 6A, I think it was, that's where Letterman did his show. And then we would take over. And in fact, David would sometimes make jokes on Monday.

The sports guys left this place a mess or whatever it might have been. So we took advantage of the fact that there was a room for a studio audience. I didn't think it worked all that well. Yeah, we tried goofier stuff. You know, Flip was kind of off the wall in a good way. Like you would take a look at the format. And usually these shows are very meticulous. formatted. And there would be times when he would just write do-dad, do-dad, or Bob will do

something. Like, you have like a six-minute thing that, Bob will think of something. Okay, I guess I will. And NBC's show during this period had kind of a unique name. Do you want to tell listeners how you name the show each year? Well, once it was, for a while, was NFL live, then it was the year, NFL, you know, 87, 84, 85. I've forgotten. You may, you may, you've, you know, may have done more research here. Yeah, it was like an album almost every year. We were releasing NFL 85 to be followed by NFL 86 in the game. Right, right.

A couple of scenes from the pregame wars that I want to run by you. You mentioned the live studio audience. Thanksgiving, 1985. Ahmad Rashad was doing a remote from the Silver Dome, and he proposes on the air to actress Felicia Ayers-Allan, who is the star of the Cosby Show. Yeah, she was Claire Huxable to Bill Cosby's, Dr. Huxable, yeah. But I'd like to take this time today to try to make this a better day.

Bobby, I got something I want you to do for me. There's a lady that I'm in love with, and you know the lady as Claire Huxbill on the Cosby show. What I'd like you to do is dispatch somebody. She's there in New York at the Macy's Day Parade. Now, this isn't all serious now. I would like to send this message to her. Felicia, would you marry me?

Would you get back to me, Bobby, on that answer? You're not kidding, are you, Amad? I am bed serious. You have proposed on national television to Felicia Ayers-Alan. Is that right? Either I will be the happiest person in the world or the biggest turkey on national television. What do you remember about that day? Well, I was sort of, and this is a dated reference,

I was sort of the Jim Lang from the dating game or Chuck Woolery from what was that love connection. I was the interlocutor here where I had to field the question, and then eventually he posed the question on the pregame show. And it was a genuine surprise. I didn't know he was going to do it. I don't think Flip knew he was going to do it. I definitely didn't know. And so I said something like, you're really serious here. Okay.

Then we went and found Felicia, who was at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade for NBC. So we bring her into the studio. And now at halftime, she's able to. to give her answer. And she did a nice, you know, she's an actress. She did a nice little pregnant pause. Maybe that's the wrong word. A nice little theatrical pause. And then she said, yes. Everybody erupted in applause. And I guess it was a big story. And I guess in the minds of the press department, it helped the show. I always felt like I had to distance myself from some stuff that I wasn't 100% comfortable with. So I remember saying something like, you may have the video,

something I turned to the camera and said something like, and now in a continuing effort to boost our ratings, PEDAC's film plans to soon be seen in a secluded grotto with Dr. Ruth Westheimer. And then everybody on the set laughed. It did work. I mean, it was in every newspaper in the country the next day. So if you're the insurgent show trying to get attention,

trying to bite into some of CBS's ratings, there you go. But you were not wised up about this, because there was some question in the newspaper. Who knew in advance? Did Felicia know? I didn't know. You didn't know at all. I don't know if Felicia knew.

I didn't know. That's amazing. And Cosby Show, number one show in America at this point. We should also note, mid-80s, this is Brandon Tarticoff and NBC having all the mojo

with Cosby, Cheers, Family Guys, Miami Vice. In fact, during the World Series, you know, think about the 86 World Series, for example, the Red Sox and the Mets, getting gargantuan ratings. This is when the World Series still could rule

the ratings. When game seven of that World Series went against Monday Night Football, which was Washington against the Giants, they demolished it. Game seven of the World Series got a rating in the 30s, and the football game got single digits. But still, on a Thursday night, I think it was game five at Fenway, the first pitch wasn't until a little after 830 instead of a little after 8 because you couldn't knock the Cosby Show off the air. And in fact, that was part of that Thursday night lineup that included Cheers and maybe some others, I'm forgetting which. And so they sent me out to California and we did a bit from the Cheers Bar because Ted Danson's character, Sam Mayday Malone, had been a former Red Sox Relief pitcher. So it was the Red Sox Against the Mets. And we did a whole

bit with me and Sam Malone talking about his career. So another scene from the pregame wars for you. You mentioned Jimmy the Greek, one of the most, probably the most famous gambler in America in the 80s. At that time, sure. He's picking. games over at CBS. Paul McGuire is picking games over at NBC. And when McGuire's picks would be better than the Greeks picks, you would put a graphic up on the screen showing that McGuire was superior. You know, I hadn't even remembered that, but I guess we did. And then there was another bit where he picked the jets, either picked for them or against them. It's against them. Every week. Against them like eight weeks in a row and they went on a winning streak. This is back in prehistoric days,

when the Jets were actually good, and they were in the playoffs, right? And we did some bit where he went out to the Meadowlands, to the stadium for the pregame show, and emerged from like a Brinks armored truck. And I forget what the payoff was, but Paul was up for anything. He would do anything.

He'd put a stupid hat on. He'd do any kind of goofy thing. Yeah. We primarily, I think, in later years, would know him as a game announcer. But he worked in that pregame format? He worked in the pregame format because he was a good sport.

He was a Hale Fellow well-met, and he was a really good game analyst, and he did an amazing thing. He just took the flip card that you would get if you were covering the game for the, you know, the Bergen County record. He just took the flip card. That was his preparation, and he did everything just from the gut from what he saw, and he was very effective. Here's another scene. See if you remember this one. Sunday in 1987, NBC Huff Football, and you were going to show the skis. Ginsburg game golf tournament on tape delay after football. And during a halftime reporter of our on CBS,

Brent Musburger went on the air and gave away the results of the tape-delayed golf tournament. Yeah, I guess that was a tactical move. See, I didn't really get involved in that stuff. I just kind of was amused by it and take it all that seriously. But now that you bring it up, I've thought about it in decades. Yeah, it ticked off a lot of people at NBC. the press departments went back and forth. And, you know, it was happening.

Rudy Martsky wrote every day in the USA Today. Every day, five days a week, Monday through Friday, there was a sports on TV column, which some research said was the most red column other than Larry King's Monday column of various Hollywood and broadcasting tidbits. So people became obsessed with what Rudy gave a thumbs up to or a thumbs down to. And I understand

that sometimes there was cloak and dagger stuff where the press department wouldn't just pump up their own network. If somebody made a mistake or did something that flopped, oh, did you see what happened over there, just see Musburger did this, or Costas did that,

trying to get a negative mention from Rudy Mardsky. I myself thought, hey, Brent's good at what he does. I hope I'm good at what I do. You know, we'll just do the best we can. But I guess that was a little, kind of a quaint point of view. Yeah, you were more statesman-like, But you mentioned Flip.

That's John Phillip Pelley, your producer. Yeah. He had some unbelievable quotes in that Martsky column during this period. He dismissed the NFL Today as Muck pregame show. He said the last original idea CBS had was I Love Lucy. This is another one of my favorites here. This is Flip again. The NFL Today has done for network TV what Chernobyl has done for nuclear power.

Which is a wonderfully 80s kind of joke. Now that you remind me, yeah. Yeah, you know, and what does it all amount to? You know, everybody involved did pretty damn well, I think. Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned Rudy. I mean, Marv Albert told me this one time that during that period, announcers did not have a social media following.

Of course, no. You couldn't attach. Yeah, it didn't exist. You couldn't attach a rating to your name, your performance for the reasons you explain. So that when an announcer went to a network and say, wanted a raise or wanted, you know, a certain gig, having a handful of newspaper columns saying that you were really good at your job, that was really

helpful. Yeah. Yeah, that created buzz. No doubt about it. And I probably benefited from it because I was a newcomer, a relative newcomer, and a lot of that press was positive. You know, and then going on David Letterman and whatnot. You know, now I'm an emeritus guy, so it seems so long ago. But there was a time when the word irreverent was practically attached to my name and doing you know, the more freewheeling pregame show and doing Letterman and that kind of stuff probably added to that and it probably helped me. So you got a few years into this. What satisfaction did you get from hosting a studio show versus calling a game?

Yeah, I guess I became better known, certainly became better known. You know, play by play guys didn't get as much on camera time, generally speaking. But one benefit was that we would go on the road, and so would CBS, go on the road. in the postseason. So then you got that feel of being at the game. Cold weather in Cleveland. Again, kids, Cleveland used to be in the playoffs. You know, cold weather in that old ballpark off Lake Erie or wherever you might have been. You still had that sense of place. And I always valued the sense of place, no matter what the sport was. I knew I was good in the studio, but I liked being at the games. And we did it like in the NBA. We had the NBA. In the finals, we were always at

the games, you know, and I would do interviews on off days at practice with players and what, you just had more of a feel of it. So all things being equal, I'd always prefer that. The way I always thought about studio versus play by play from afar was like this. As you say, if you're hosting a show, people see your face. There's a more intimate connection with the audience. On the other hand, if you're calling a game, your voice gets imprinted on that great play, on that game-winning touchdown in a way that's very hard to do from a studio in New York City. No question. So how did you weigh those things as you went along throughout the 80s? As long as I had the baseball, I was okay.

And I understood when we got basketball, when we got the NBA for the 1991 season, there was some conversation because at that point, you know, because of the late night show that I was doing that wasn't a sports show. So the promos for that are on Carson and Letterman. I was just more of a presence. And there were some people within the NBA and within NBC that thought that I should call the games. Because they knew I had a background. I'd done radio of the spirits of St. Louis and the old ABA. I'd done the Bulls for a season in the late 70s, early 80s, on WGN.

And I immediately said, and this is just obvious. I hope I'm not patting myself on the back here. I said to Dick Ebersoll, look, Marv has to be the guy that calls these games. You know, he is the guy, and if someone in Omaha doesn't know that, they will soon enough. Plus, you can't leave Pat Riley.

It was a wise move, even though we got him for only a year, to bring Pat Riley in with all that glamour and fresh off all that Lakers success, that was a good idea. But you can't hang him out to dry. You need me there to steady that ship in the studio, you're going to be weaker in two places if I call the games.

So, you know, while you might in a perfectly blank slate world, say I'd rather call the games that host the games, it was much better for NBC that I hosted and Marve called the games. And, of course, when we had additional games, you're bringing in a guy like Tom Hammond, who's a really good play-by-playman at anything. Track and field at the Olympics, figure skating at the Winter Olympics, football, basketball. Well, he is one of the, I wouldn't say underrated, because people in the business know, but one of the most under-celebrated, really good announcers in the history of sports television. Plus, Dick Enberg sometimes did NBA games, and so did Greg Gumble.

So, you know, we had a really strong roster, and then as it happened toward the end, circumstances had me lucking into the last dance season. So I called the last dance season. But what was your question, Brian? No, that's it. You're talking about weighing both of those things. And as you said, there's certain circumstances that come up. So I was hosting all this stuff.

And then I was calling the World Series. And I got a chance to call the NBA finals. And then I would host the Olympics. So, you know, there you go. You told a reporter your first year on the pregame show, quote, I've got to work on not being so bothered when things aren't 100% right. If it's a 99% good day, I think about the 1% that's bad. You think of yourself as a perfectionist?

Yeah, you know, maybe the less than a, I hope I've learned, but should have learned sooner, is the old cliche or whatever the term is. Perfect is the enemy of the good. You know, yeah, Dick used to kid me. Later got a bad review from a paper in Schenectady when it first aired. And, you know, in the big picture, later is even now, through the rearview mirror, pretty well regarded. And it was, you know, wound up winning Emmys and getting all kinds of positive critical stuff. And I was like thinking, what is this guy in Schenectady?

saying. And sometimes Emerson would say in my ear, if I got upset about something, hey, this ain't Schenectady, you know? So yeah, yeah, I think, you know, trying to do the best you can, and caring about every little detail is a plus until you turn it into a personal negative. So Dick was right. What's something in your mind that you would do on a pregame show that would be wrong to you, but that the audience at home, all of us watching, wouldn't even be able to detect? Well, I seldom stumbled. And this is also true of Brent. You know, you have to be facile with that stuff. You've got to be able to, you know, get the shot sheet from a game that's going on while you're talking about another game. Boom, here it is. So you've got to be familiar with everything and you've got to be nimble with that. In fact, Flip, who liked to screw around, there was an ongoing joke. You can't make Bob stumble. And they set this thing up one Sunday, unbeknownst to me. You know, they're a lot. You know, they're a guy. You know, they're a longgoing joke. You know, They have rotating halftime shows. All those programs did.

Rotating halftime, because they don't all arrive at halftime at the same time. So they picked one game that had a small regional point-to-point. I think it was the Seahawks against somebody. And what they didn't tell me was, this wasn't for real. So I think we're on the air. And they're putting up the wrong graphic, the wrong score. I ad-lib into the clip of a play, and it's a different game or the wrong thing. and in my ear, I'm hearing from Flip, Bob, what's going on?

And they're trying to get me to crack, okay? And I mean, the shit has hit the fan here, not once, but like 10 times already in the space of like three minutes. But I think we're really on the air to Seattle. Thank God not to the whole country. And finally, I just look in the camera, and I go, folks, I have no idea what's going on here. Maybe it's my fault.

Maybe it's not. But I have no idea what's going on. And then finally Flip is in my ear going, Bob, we're not on the air. And then there was some stuff that I can't even repeat on a podcast, alone on national TV. Oh, that's fantastic. I love it. Let me ask you about some of the people you worked with.

You mentioned Ahmad Rashad. I think younger listeners know him as, you know, sidelines on the NBA and NBC as Michael Jordan's friend in the last dance. What was Ahmad the football announcer like? First of all, Amad was a damn good football. player. I think he finished like third in the Heisman voting when he played for the Oregon Ducks at some point in the 60s. He is damn good football player and was on really good Viking teams that went to the Super Bowl. Didn't win it, but went to the Super Bowl. But he was also, yeah, he had star power.

He was charismatic. He had a presence and he had a great sense of humor. You could joke around with him. He and I were always telling these other stories and jokes off the the air. We had a good shorthand. And I think that a lot of the online press did not give him full credit. Oh, he's Michael Jordan's pal. Like he's supposed to be Mike Wallace on 60 minutes. We got the interview after every game with Michael Jordan, who actually was fairly forthcoming. He didn't just speak in athlete cliches, fairly forthcoming given what that setting is. It's, you know, two minutes or something. We got info.

You know, Amad would get stuff from Michael and from the other bulls. Ahmad was magnetic. I once went to spring training with Amad in St. Petersburg, and we're hanging around. The Cardinals had just come off a World Series. Ozzie Smith, Vince Coleman, blah, blah, they all wanted to be around Amad.

And Amad got in the batting cage and took some swings in the natural athletes. He's sitting line dry. You know, he was such an asset to everything we did. And people judged him from like as if he was supposed to be me, or he was supposed to be Dick Engberg or we couldn't be him. He didn't have to be us. Nobody could be him. He had the presence and the connection and athletes responded to him, not just because he had been an athlete, but because he had star power and a great personality. You know, he is one of the favorite people I've ever worked with.

Here's something that really surprised me. Rashad told USA Today during those years you were working together that Bill Murray would call him every week to give him advice on his television presentation. Yeah, they were pals. And in fact, again, everything leads to a story. The famous Sandberg game, which came back up this past year when tragically Ryan passed away at age 65. But that was the signature game of a Hall of Fame career

and happened when the game of the week really meant something different than it's meant in more recent years. The whole baseball world watched the game of the week. And that was the day that Ryan went five for six with two home runs, one of the ninth, one of the tenth, to tie this crazy game. And when that game happened,

Bill Murray, a huge Cub fan, who named one of his sons Homer Banks Murray for Ernie Banks, He was in Europe filming a movie called The Razors Edge. So, you didn't have links then. He heard about the Sanburg game, but he didn't see it. So one day the phone rings in my New York apartment. This is like, you know, maybe December of 84.

It's a mod. No one had a cell phone then. Certainly I didn't. Landline. Are you home? Yeah. You're going to be there a while? Yeah.

Can I come over? Yeah. Be there in 10 minutes. Bing, bong. I opened the door, and Amad is standing there with a guy who, for a minute, I thought, was homeless. It's like a skull-capped thing, and I look. It's Bill Murray, okay? And Murray goes, I understand you have a tape of the Sandberg game. Yeah, I do. But then that meant VHS tapes. There was such a long game. We were like four of them, right? So we sat down, we called out for pizza, and we started like in the seventh inning, which is when the rubber started to hit the road in the game.

And there's Murray, and there's Amad, and we're watching the Sandberg game. So it doesn't surprise me that Murray would call with his reviews every week because they were that tight. That's unbelievable. I'm glad you didn't have anything scheduled, you know, that afternoon. Right, right. So am I. Full baseball games. So am I.

You know, and I'd cross paths with Bill from time to time, and it's almost always at Wrigley Field. All right, 1989, a mod is replaced by O.J. Simpson on the pregame show. Here's a question that's hard for me to process after everything that would happen later. was OJ a good announcer? OJ was a gigantic star. He was not as facile as Ahmad or as Paul McGuire, but he was OJ Simpson.

And in a similar way, athletes would respond to him. So if it was the Super Bowl or a conference championship game and we went on the road, then those interviews were different. There was kind of a running joke, and obviously everything you say

about OJ now, in some sense, is shrouded by what happened in June of 1994. But then it was just kind of, you know, a humorous thing. I would seldom give OJ a specific because I didn't want him to be trapped in one lane. So it was like a standing joke. I would go, juice, your thoughts. And then he could say whatever he wanted. So Will McDonough would finish his thought or I'd finish the highlight package and I'd go, juice, your thoughts.

That didn't put him on the spot. You mentioned just him being just a pop culture entity. I mean, he'd done the original, and to my mind, superior, naked gun movie in December 88, a few months before you guys started working together on NBC. I mean, is it crazy to say that in terms of just pure stardom, pure name recognition during this period, he's not that far off from Tom Brady

when he started working for Fox a year ago? Well, you know, Brady's in a different television era and had played in 10 Super Bowls. So I don't know that that's a direct comp, but O.J. Simpson was a gigantic sports star. He was on, if you're just talking about stardom, he was on the Mount Rushmore of modern sports stars at that moment. Plus, if you made a very short list of cultural stars, you know, people that could walk out on the Tonight show and be the first guest, not the third guest. O.J. Simpson was on that list. Here's the name I didn't remember working with you on the pregame. In 1985, Larry King was on the show. What in the world was Larry King doing there? That was kind of my idea

because Larry and I were tight. And I had been on his mutual radio show. People who only remember him from CNN, that overnight mutual radio show was fantastic. And he could get anybody. He's doing it from D.C., so he's getting all the Beltway people, but it was a radio show, so people could just pick up the phone. And sometimes people would call if they had the number. Like he'd be talking to Henry Kissinger and Albert Brooks would call a show. Larry, Larry, Albert, you know. So, and I was a fan, and I thought that Larry would bring something, you know, that dot, dot, dot style of his Monday column. That's what I wanted him to do, to do kind of a dot, dot, two and a half minutes. Here's stuff that's happening around the NFL. The problem with that was that he wasn't connected to the NFL,

you know, the way Will McDonough was connected to the NFL. So a lot of his stuff was either not all that much of a scoop. Some of it was wrong, as it turned out. You know, they're both gone now, and I like them both very much. Acts kind of resented Larry being there, might have cut into his time, you know, Axx was not just a television presence. He was a great writer, one of the great sports writers of his time. It didn't work out all that well. Speaking of great sports writers, Larry was out after 85, and the next year, in comes the late great Frank to Ford of Sports Illustrated. Yeah, talk about a change. There you go, right? What was the thinking of bringing Frank to the pregame show? A completely different avenue to go down, because Frank would do essays.

He wasn't doing dot, dot, dot. He wasn't doing dot, he wasn't doing. and what Acts did, or what McDonough would do, or what the Greek certainly did on CBS. He was doing essays, short versions of what he did so brilliantly at Sports Illustrated. And then, and I enjoyed this very much, I would have a reaction to what he had, to what he had done. You know, they'd put B-roll into what he wasn't just sitting there reading an essay. There'd be all the television components, and then he and I would discuss it. and that forged a lasting friendship between me and Frank. And one of the things I feel good about,

you know, sometimes things that people don't remember all that much, but they resonate with you. There was a memorial service for him, I think, in 2018, and it fell on the weekend of the Belmont Stakes. And I asked Rob Highland, who was the producer of the Triple Crown, can you give me two minutes to say something about Frank to Ford? and that was one thing about NBC. Generally speaking, they were willing to do things that weren't in the format.

If the person asking had some credibility and if it made some sense. And they said, yes. And I tied it, you know, Toriko at that point I think was hosting. And somehow I made the transition and said something about Frank that was an appreciation of not just him, but when you think about it, it's less than a decade ago. an appreciation of a kind of sports journalism that it still exists, but it's not front center like it used to be when everybody waited till Tuesday or Wednesday to get their hands on Sports Illustrated to see what DeFord had written, to see what Bill Nack had written, to see what

Gary Smith had written and all the other great writers through the years, Rick Riley, and I'm leaving so many names out. You know, Tom Verducci still does it on baseball and a few others that Sports Illustrated, but it just doesn't have the primacy that it once had. And I just wanted to tip my cap to Frank. So this was the long answer. How did I feel about Frank? I idolized him practically. So many other people ran through that show.

You mentioned McDonough. Ralph Wiley, another sports writer, later known from ESPN's page two, was on the show with you, Bobby Bethard, who constructed Super Bowl teams in Washington and San Diego. Bill Parcells was on the pregame show with you. We watched now television before a football. game and it looks like election night with the number of panelists that are on television at the same time. What's the right number of people for a pregame show? You know, I'm not necessarily the best authority on that now because it's been so long since I was at the center of it. But my sense is

four. I hadn't thought about this until you asked four. And maybe one of the four isn't really on the desk, but is just over here doing what he or she does. But, you know, all, The sensibility of all this and the expectation of the audience is so much different. You know, when we brought Parcells in, it's sort of along the same lines as bringing Pat Riley in. You know when a guy has committed to it. Like Madden committed to it. He didn't know how good he was going to be, but he was done with coaching. And then, you know, the guys were just a way station.

Not a criticism. I'm glad we had Riley. I'm glad we had Parcells. But you know, they're going back. And so they're going to be a little more circumspect about what they say. Let's walk up to the end of the pregame wars, or at least your tour of duty there. 1990, Brent Musburger got dumped by CBS on April Fool's Day, which is one of the biggest stories of this period. And that he did the championship, knowing that, he did the championship game that night, the NCAA basketball championship game, and did it very, very well, very professionally.

Crazy to think about it. NFL today, root-tooled around Greg Gumbull and Terry Bradshaw, who I think has had a decent, career doing pregame shows. Yeah, I'd say so. Did you guys see that as an opportunity on NBC? Finally, this franchise has been broken up or been changed. Now, maybe we've got a shot at dethroning them. You know, maybe, but I just never thought of it that way.

I just wanted to do a good show on our own terms, whatever that hand we were dealt. And I didn't obsess about what the ratings were. I hope that people felt favorably about my performance, but it didn't bother me if people like, you know, we're praising Brent Musburger in their show, what there is to make, you know. It isn't just, it isn't a zero-sum game. If I succeed, Brent doesn't fail and vice versa. You know, I admire anybody in this arena who's good at their craft. After all, as a viewer, I'd rather watch somebody who's good than somebody who isn't. So whatever was going on in the executive suites in 1990 or 1991, I was.

home in St. Louis. I'd get on the plane on Friday or Saturday. I'd come to the studio and I'd do my job and then I'd go back home to St. Louis. You hosted this show for NBC in the 1992 season. You did pregame and postgame at the Super Bowl in Pasadena at the end of that year. And then you left the pregame. Why'd you leave? I felt there was too much on my plate. My kids were young, six and three, seven and four in that area. I was still doing the late night show later, which my meant a lot to me. I felt there was even more of a signature for me than some of the sports stuff that I was doing. And quite honestly, I was beginning to feel misgivings about football, some ambivalence about the violence of it and the network's celebration, not just tolerance of that violence.

You know, they pulled it back now, but there used to be videos that ESPN sold. He got jacked up. They celebrated it, you know? And this is not me trying to retro. fit a take. There's video that I had forgotten about and someone sent me of me on Charlie Rose in like 1993. And he's asking me and I said, violence and the celebration of that violence had something to do with my decision. But quite honestly, it was also greater factors commuting from St. Louis and the other things I was doing, especially later, because to do later well, you really had to dive into the research and do a lot of prep. You're doing four episodes later a week by 902. Sometimes more. For the day, there wasn't a Friday show.

But sometimes we tape as many as six in a day if we wound up doing a double. Six in a day. Yeah, what the schedule would be, let's say it's football season or even NBA season and the games then just on Sunday. I might fly in from St. Louis on Saturday, do the football or basketball show. Then I was still doing the Costas Coast to Coast syndicated radio show. Again, different world. Let's not like on 300 stations and there's no Sunday night football at that time. or Sunday night baseball.

So the stations that carried sports, they all carried that show, pretty much, 50,000-watt stations. And we got a lot of good guests, so they'd be prepped for that. And then I'd probably be up until 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning in the hotel room,

preparing to tape maybe five guests on a Monday. We'd start like at 11 a.m. And I could still make the 715 TWA flight from LaGuardia back to St. Louis. But I was in my 40s then, and I had a little more energy. And it was a little more nimble-minded So I was able to do it.

It seemed like a great ride. But even I realized at that point, something's got to come off the plate. And eventually later did two, and that I regret. Not that I could still be doing it. I did it for six years. I could have done it for 10 or 12, and I wish I had. 92, we're not even mentioning primetime host of the Summer Olympics in Barcelona that year, too. So that was a very, very full plate.

There was a lot of preparation for that. And in fact, we moved. We kept our house to St. Louis, but we moved with young kids to Connecticut for a year and rented a house there. so that I could just take a car into New York and not have to be doing all the travel with all the preparation leading up to Barcelona being part of it.

Here's a quote you gave to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch around this time. Boy, you know what... You've done some research here. I got to respect that. We're getting into the Dan Caesar archives here, Bob. He's still doing it, by the way. I know, which is amazing, right?

Yeah. We lost Rudy, we lost so many people, but Dan Caesar is still on the beat. Quote, there's no way I'll ever host a football show again. Now, this applied until Dick Ebersol called and say, hey, Bob, we got the rights back. We need you one more time. One more tour of duty. Well, also applied, to be precise, to when Ross Greenberg in, like 2002, the main appeal to me or attraction was they wanted me to do a show, which became on the record with Bob Costas, which, you know, really was hit the bullseye for me.

But in order to make the deal work, Ross wanted me to also be involved with insolves. the NFL. And I agreed not just because it was HBO, but since it was HBO, it was a different kind of football show. You didn't have to rattle off scores and highlights. NFL films did that, and very artfully. And there was a place for journalism. You could interview Paul Tagliaboo or whatever it was. It was just different than the other show. So I was good with it. And then, and I've never really gotten into this very deeply, but this is the answer, Brian. Dick Ebersoll, who is a kind of my patron professionally and my lifelong, at least from the time that we've met, close friend to this day, had an unspeakable tragedy in his life. His plane went down in Colorado over Thanksgiving weekend in 2004.

He was nearly killed, and his youngest of his three sons was killed. And everybody knew that part of Dick's grieving. process was that he threw himself back into his work. And when he got in kind of a great poker move, no one expected it to happen in the negotiations, he kind of snuck in at the last moment and got Sunday night football. And he called me, we had just a different kind of relationship. Dick would take care of me. He knew I had young kids. We had a Christmas night basketball game in Chicago featuring Michael Jordan. He'd send a place. plane to St. Louis and say, spend Christmas morning with your kids. Get on the plane like at three o'clock.

Don't worry about the pregame. Call the game and fly back and you'll be home before midnight. He did that kind of stuff for me all the time. Now, of course, he did it because I was, you know, I was his main guy. I was doing a damn good job. So, you know, there was a professional and personal reason for it. But personally, he was great to me. And he called and said, we want to put together, these are his words. We want to put together on Mount Rushmore. We're going to bring Michaels and Madden over, and we're going to put Chris Collinsworth in the studio with you. And I think the implication was that when Madden stepped aside and this the way it worked out, that Collinsworth would be a successor, I need you to do this. If it had been any other circumstance, even if it had been Dick that asked,

but without the circumstance that he was in, I would have said no. I said yes, solely because it was Dick. I wasn't really into it, to be honest, doing the studio show. I did it professionally, but it wasn't like I was, you know, on Monday thinking about the Sunday night game and all the other games on the schedule. I just did it professionally, but I think people could tell that I wasn't as engaged as I once had been. So then Dick came up with the idea of how about if we send you on the road. And you'll be with Al and Chris and you'll feel the excitement of it and you'll host it from the site and you'll do a halftime essay or whatever. And that was better suited to me at that point. And by the time Comcast came and Dick left, I re-uped with Comcast for a period of time, but specifically said

that after 2016, I'm done hosting the Olympics and I'm done hosting Sunday Night Football. And they said, well, what about an emeritus role after that? And that's what we agreed upon. There you go. There's the whole story, Brian. There you go. All right, last question for you. When you watch TV now, do you ever hear any notes from the time of the great NFL pregame wars from your show or from CBS? You know, not specifically. You know, I imagine that just as generations were influenced by Kurt Gowdy or baseball announcers who could hear them influenced by the one and only Vince Scully. And every kid at Syracuse when I was there was doing their pale Marv Albert imitation.

or the one, yes. You know, I guess that Brent and I influenced people in how it was done. I think Brent more than me because he was the guy who really established it. There were other shows prior to that, but it was like a guy standing in front of a wall of scores and holding note cards. You know, Brent was at the helm when the whole form was taking shape, so he deserves more credit. But people tell me, all the kids at Syracuse and whatnot, but soon enough, if it hasn't happened already, it's Tariko or it's Iron Eagle and pretty soon Noah Eagle.

But for a while, just because of my prominence and doing all the various things, and I hope doing them reasonably well, you know, there's probably some echoes there. Bob, it's so much fun to explore this little nook of TV history with you. Thanks so much for coming on the press box. Brian, my pleasure. Thanks a lot. That is the press box. I'm Brian Curtis. But I see Magic by Bruce Baldwin. I got two things to tell you before we retreat to the table for our turkey and green bean casserole.

Number one, the next time you're going to hear from us will be Monday, December 1st. And you're going to hear the debut of a brand new press box series. We're calling this episode the December issue. to be followed, of course, by the January issue and the February issue and so on. For the December issue, we're going to take an in-depth look at a single topic, The New Yorker. The New Yorker is celebrating its 100th birthday this year. There's a new Netflix dockout next week.

Here's what the pod will include. David and I are going to start with a fun, sprawling conversation about the magazine and its history, including Harold Ross and Joe Liebling and Joe Mitchell and Tina Brown. We're going to have some fun and pick up. our favorite New Yorker writers, our favorite movies or TV shows that have emerged from the magazine. Is it adaptation, which came from Susan Orleans, The Orchid Thief? Or is it Wednesday that sprang from Charles Adams' cartoons? We're going to talk about how a magazine, the best magazine, has tried to transform into a website

and a podcast network and a festival and an outlet that released a film that won an Oscar this year. We'll do that, and then I'm going to interview editor David Remnick. about the past, present, and future of the New Yorker. And since we're playing around with the grammar of magazines, the December issue of the press box will have its own magazine cover, designed by David, that you'll see in the next few days on our Instagram page, at Pressbox Ringer. I cannot wait for you to check all of that out.

All right, that's number one. Number two, however you're celebrating Thanksgiving this year, with family, with friends, with nobody at all. Just know that your friends at the press box are thinking about you. Have a wonderful long weekend. We're back Monday with the December issue and more lukewarm takes about the media.