Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple jumped to the defense of Bob Costas in a Monday morning blog post entitled, "Bob Costas, please keep spouting off." While Wemple avoided stating whether he agreed with Costas and Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock on gun control per se, he made it perfectly clear he had a low view of the average Joe at home wanting to escape the world for three hours watching a football game.
This is "the mentality of the sports consumer," Wemple groused, "Give me the game, the X's and the O's, the instant replays, the halftime highlights and leave the rest of the world out of it." But, "NFL players live in our society and are bound by our laws. The things that they do affect the public beyond whether their teams cover the point spread," Wemple argued, concluding (emphasis mine):
[F]ew cases better exemplify that dynamic as powerfully as the Belcher incident, in which the player shot and killed his girlfriend and later himself.
Those circumstances didn't merely provide Costas with a chance to raise larger issues on "Sunday Night Football"; they provided him with an obligation to do so. My impression of NFL game coverage is that commentators have tended to shrink away from commenting on serious issues that affect the game and society. They cowardly stick to analyzing the play of the offensive and defensive lines or the breakdowns in the cover-two, to the detriment of addressing things that actually matter.
So I say: More editorializing, more coverage of the nexus between sport and society and government, more spouting-off of the sort that'll anger all those guys who wear team jerseys every Sunday.
So to summarize: NFL fans and their desire to escape the real world for a few hours of football is leading to "cowardly" sportscasting that fails to address "things that actually matter."
It's typical liberal journalist mindset: we know what's best for the unwashed masses, so shut up and enjoy the bias!
