The Superpower Podcast With Bob Costas: Olympic Games Broadcasting, Burnout, and the Power of Sleep

Before we begin: Bob Costas is a Saatva partner. The experiences he shares are his own personal stories—not medical or professional advice. 

Welcome to Superpower, the podcast about how sleep, recovery, and mental resilience drive peak performance. In this episode, iconic sports broadcaster Bob Costas discusses the unseen demands of covering 12 Olympic and Paralympic Games, including how sleep, routine, and mental preparation shaped his longevity on the world’s biggest stage. 

You can listen to this episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or watch the episode below.

Superpower podcast with Bob Costas: transcript

Introduction 

Dave Briggs: Hey guys, Dave Briggs. Just finished an awesome episode of the Superpower podcast with the legendary broadcaster Bob Costas, who hosted 12 Olympic Games. He shares his top four moments from that 30-year period, as well as some of his more viral quotes from the Games, from Greek mythology to race walking and curling. Some interesting thoughts on what makes the Olympics so unique compared to the NFL or Major League Baseball. What Bob would like to see at the Opening Ceremonies for LA 2028. We start with how the LA Times described Bob’s retirement from the Olympic broadcast as being like Christmas without Santa. Here’s Bob.

“Christmas without Santa”

DB: Okay, so Bob, I read this great quote as I’m preparing for this—and it was shortly around the time that you stopped doing the Olympics, and it was in the LA Times: A Winter Olympics without Bob Costas, is well, it’s Christmas without Santa. And for me and my generation, that sounds about right? Does that—what do you think of that statement?

Bob Costas: Well, it’s very nice, and I appreciate it, and I understand it. I’d like to think that some of it has to do with having done a good job, but also some of it has to do with longevity. When I was in my first few Olympics, there were people who said, yeah, we like him, but we miss Jim McKay. Mike Tirico is now doing the Olympics. My successor, another Syracuse guy. Got the first Bob Costas scholarship at Syracuse University in 1987. He was the perfect person to succeed me as the Olympic host and Al Michaels as the Sunday Night play-by-play guy. So he’s doing an excellent job by any objective measure, but there are still some people who, for the past many years, were used to me, and so if they miss me in that respect, fine, but I don’t want to harp on that, because it seems to, in some small way, diminish Mike Tirico. And I think that’s the right thing. I think he’s picked up, you know, I handed him the baton, and he’s taken off with it, just as I hope I did when I took it from Jim McKay.

DB: There was no dropping of the baton. He does a terrific job.

BC: Yes, he does.

Most memorable Olympic Games moments

DB: I’m curious, when you close your eyes. Is there a performance? Is there an athlete? Is there a particular Games when you think of the Olympics and you close your eyes? Or is there two or three?

BC: There are a handful. One—even though it is no longer the record—is Michael Johnson speeding down the track in Atlanta wearing those golden shoes as he anticipated winning gold medals, which he did in both the 200 and 400 in record time, and because it was in Atlanta and all the flashbulbs popping all around the Olympic Stadium and a home crowd rooting him on, that’s one of them. At that same Olympics, Ali lighting the cauldron in such a dramatic and unexpected way—it was a complete surprise to almost everyone, including me and Dick Enberg. Dick Ebersol didn’t want us to know. We always knew whether it was me and Dick or me and Matt Lauer, me and Katie Couric, whoever I was doing it with, we always knew so that we’d have some notes on each of the torch bearers and then the final torch bearer. But he said to us, you will recognize him or her immediately, but we want your reaction to be as spontaneous as that of the people in the crowd, and you’ll know what to say, you’ll think of what to say, and that’s the way it turned out. And what to say, or the right thing to say, was close to nothing, because the visual was so arresting that we put the smallest possible caption beneath it, and then just let that unforgettable image speak for itself. So that came from the same Olympics. In 2008, Usain Bolt blazing down the track. Michael Phelps, going eight for eight. All those images stay with me. There are a lot of them. And then also just images of the host cities and country, which were not necessarily connected to competition—just images of things I saw as I tried to familiarize myself with the host city and country.

DB: Favorite host city?

BC: You know, this has a personal bias a little bit. I loved Barcelona in ‘92. That was my first one as the prime time host. I had been the late night host in ‘88 in Seoul, Korea. Bryant Gumbel was the prime time host. So I felt as if there was a lot at stake for me. Could I measure up? Could I do it as well as I hoped to do it, and it all turned out very well. And Barcelona, for whatever Catalonia’s overall problems may be, and I’m certainly not an expert, not more than 30 years removed, but it is a charming old world European city right on the Mediterranean. So if there’s a romance to sports, if there’s a romance to the Olympics, the romance, at least at that stage of my life and that stage of my career, the romance of the Olympics was never higher for me than it was then.

DB: I thought you might say the Dream Team only because that was such a global moment. And for me it’s in the top five. Anything figure skating, Simone Biles, Michael Phelps, Dream Team, Miracle on Ice—although that’s probably more because of the movie, to be honest. And here’s one that’s strange to Bob. The first thing that comes to mind for me, image, Kerri Strug. I don’t know why, to me, it is the iconic Olympic image.

BC: It’s up there, sure.

DB: Because whether people think she overacted or not, there’s a young woman sticking a landing on a freshly injured ankle and gutting through it. It rebranded grit to me, and I don’t know, it personifies the Olympics to me. Is that weird?

BC: Ultra dramatic and theatrical, a definite, defining moment from 1996. Of course, the Miracle on Ice. That’s 1980. That’s Al Michaels moment, and Jim McKay was the host of the Olympics then. That’s well before I became involved, but it’s certainly, certainly on the short list of the greatest moments.

What separates the Olympic Games from other sporting events

DB: What separates the Olympics from most traditional sports we know and love? You’re now doing the NBA with NBC, from the NFL, from MLB, from others.

BC: Well, there are many things. Obviously, the global nature of it, but also this, which is really pretty simple when you talk about the drama of it. The Super Bowl is a culmination of a season, and the viewership is larger than any other game, but only incrementally. The World Series is the culmination of a season. You don’t have to tell even a casual baseball fan who Shohei Ohtani is. We all knew who Brady and Peyton Manning were and all the rest because it’s an ongoing story from year to year. And whether you win it or lose it, you’re right back at it, unless you retire—right back at it within a few months, when the next season starts, or the next training camp or spring training starts. But with the Olympics, for the vast majority of competitors, they are preparing and training in the shadows, relatively speaking. Especially in the United States, we don’t pay that much attention to the world championships as they may in some parts of the world—world championship to track and field and whatever. If Michael Phelps had put together a competition two weeks after the conclusion of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, bringing together every competitor who was in the pool with him in the Olympics, and we showed it in prime time, it would have gotten a rating of 3 in the Olympics. In the context of the Olympics, it rivets the entire nation. And so what you have is, unlike other sports, where the difference between the biggest events and the average event is a matter of degree—in the Olympics, especially in terms of American viewership and interest, it goes from close to zero to off the chart. And it also means this—that for those competitors, often in competitions that last seconds, maybe minutes, all those years of preparation, are distilled down to literally a moment.

DB: It’s funny you say that because a prior guest on this show is Tara Lipinski, and I said to her, you were 15 years old, and four minutes would define your life. 

BC: That’s right. 

DB: And she said to me, that’s why I love the sport. And that blew my mind because I said to her, Rory McIlroy can drive under the wrong hole at the Masters and birdie that hole and win. If she makes one mistake, it changes her entire life.

BC: You’ve got it exactly right. You’ve got it exactly right—that, it is the ultimate do or, in effect, die. Do or die.

DB: It’s truly remarkable how it comes and goes in and out of our memory. Would we know the names Michael Phelps, Simone Biles, Tara Lipinski, Ben Johnson, obviously on the other side. I mean, would these names be lost to history without the Olympic movement?

BC: Largely—not to the real devotees of those sports. There are people two years removed from the Olympics who are aware of who the top pole vaulters are or cross country skiers are. There are people around the world and in the United States that fit that category, but that is an infinitesimal number of people compared with those who at least casually follow baseball, football, basketball, hockey, golf, whatever it might be.

DB: Yeah, it truly is remarkable. You’ve studied these stories over the years. And I’m curious what if anything—is there a difference between an NBA athlete, an NFL athlete, and an Olympic athlete? And I say that because as I’ve begun to interview them, it’s a grit that these Olympic athletes have, that I’m not saying LeBron doesn’t have, but he was put on this earth to be one of the great basketball players of all time. And I wonder if his like will over skill is just greater in Olympic athletes, if that’s the separating factor, whereas for an NBA or NFL player, it’s just sheer ungodly talent.

BC: Well, even given the talent, especially in the modern era, where everyone prepares differently. It used to be the off-season, you had a steak and some potatoes at a banquet, and then you did a bunch of sit ups and wind sprints at spring training to get into shape. It’s not like that anymore. You know, LeBron literally invests millions of dollars on an annual basis in his physical well-being—in fine tuning his body, which is not only his moneymaker, he’s got enough—but it’s the key to his legacy and why he’s been able to play at a very high level into his 40s. But generally speaking, it’s a generalization, we think of Olympic athletes as solitary performers. Everything we are citing here are team performers, and so it’s a bit different in that respect.

DB:  Yeah, and, I guess what I mean is Shaun White lived out of his car with his mom for years to support. You don’t see that with an up-and-coming basketball, football, or baseball player. Jesse Diggins, who was on this program, literally has been known to collapse at the finish line for giving 120% and having nothing left. Maybe that’s not unique to the Olympics, but it is rather unusual.

BC: If you’re not going to give everything you have to give at the Olympics or at the Olympic trials, when will you? You know, again, it’s not a perfect comparison, but Yamamoto would not have pitched on consecutive days in June after throwing a near complete game the night before and then coming out and throwing three and a third or whatever he did in Game 7. You do that because it’s Game 7. You might not even do it Games 3 to 4 in the World Series. So in the Olympics, for most competitors, it’s always Game 7.

American interest in the Olympic Games

DB: That is the reference. That is it. I think another thing that is underappreciated because it’s every couple of years is, loving America has fallen out of favor, Bob. I saw a number that 58% of Americans are extremely or very proud to be an American. That’s down 9% in a year, and down 30 points since 2001. But during the Olympics, it’s a pro-America, I love this country and the flag, and for me, it’s something I can’t find in any other sport, and it means the world to me, because I still am very, extremely proud to be an American,

BC: As am I. And there are different reasons why people are proud to be Americans. I’m sure that if that number of 58% is accurate, and I assume it is, whatever number no longer answer yes to that, they would have different reasons for no longer answering yes to that, coming from different directions on the political spectrum. So what we can hope for in the Olympics, especially one on American soil, upcoming in ‘28, is that partisan politics do not infringe upon it.

DB: I do very much worry about that. Certainly when it comes to the 2028 Games. Women’s sports now have gotten their—maybe not their just due—but Caitlin Clark certainly changed the world. But what Olympic sports did for women’s sports prior to Caitlin Clark. How would you put that in context?

BC: Well, in the Olympics—and the viewership backs this up—interest is equal here in the United States, and in some cases, greater toward women. You talk about gymnastics, compare women’s gymnastics to men’s gymnastics, figure skating, and a few other things. And superlative performances within the Olympics by women are valued just as much as those performances by men. So if you want to talk about something where Title IX sees its ultimate fulfillment—in 1996, I think, in fact, I know I said at the Olympics in Atlanta, we are looking at the first Title IX generation of American women—because Title IX comes in 1973, I think. This is the first flowering of that. And of course, it’s happened many times over. So yeah, it’s a great thing now. What Caitlin Clark did, obviously, specifically for women’s basketball—it’s not just increased interest in women’s college basketball. She took that with her to the WNBA, and despite whatever misguided resentment she as an individual may have faced, these are people who are blind to what’s happening right in front of them because her tide has raised all boats. She has been good for every one of them, no matter their background, no matter their politics. She’s been good for every player in the league and for the league itself, and they better not alienate her to the point where she says, you know what? I can go make $10 million a year playing in Europe someplace. The hell with this, if you’re not going to treat me right.

DB: It’s the Tiger Woods effect, isn’t it? And I don’t remember the bitterness towards him.

BC: No, there might have been some jealousy. I don’t remember, you know, real antagonism. He was almost otherworldly, not just because of his racial background, but because his talent. Not only was he better, but he seemed to play a different game. There was a time, I think it was Ben Hogan. I don’t know as much about golf as I do about some other sports. I know a bit. I think it was Ben Hogan, or it might have been someone else of that era or just before, who said of Jack Nicklaus, he plays a game with which I am not familiar. Tiger Woods in the ‘90s and early 2000s was playing a different game than Ernie Els was playing, or Vijay Singh was playing, or Phil Mickelson was playing, great as they may have been. So there might have been some combination of awe and jealousy, but I don’t remember real antagonism toward him from other golfers or from the public. In fact, the public was fascinated with him. He moved the needle on ratings of everything.

DB: He still does, and he’s an old man. We still can’t get enough of Tiger Woods. 

BC: Yeah, even if he’s barely making the cut. They’re going to show his every shot, and they’re going to show you where he is on the leaderboard, and no network that covers golf should be criticized for that. They’re not gilding the lily or exaggerating the quality of his performance. They’re responding to the audience’s interest. 

Remembering first Olympic Games experience

DB: Yeah, I watch anything that man does. Let’s go back—12 Games. I know the first as a late night host, 1988. Take me back to that first Olympic experience. What are your memories there?

BC: Well, we did it live. Mike Weisman was in charge, and it was his thought, because of the time difference, that we could do it live. Prime time would be late afternoon, early evening in the States, the Eastern time zone, whatever, might be prime time, and then the late night, my portion, was actually prime time on the West Coast. I was very surprised when I came back and the Dodgers happened to be in the World Series, and the Olympics was pushed back a little bit because of its location in Korea. So it concluded in late September. So when I got back, and we’re doing the World Series, it was very close to when the Olympics had been on the air, and I’m in Los Angeles for that epic Dodgers series with Kirk Gibson’s pinch hit home run and Orel Hershiser and all the rest. And I was so surprised by how many fans at Dodger Stadium were calling out to me and recognizing me, and it was because I was on in prime time from Korea for, you know, three, four hours every night for two and a half weeks. And I had never had that kind of sustained television exposure in prime time prior to that. And it was actually surprising to me because I wasn’t thinking in those terms. I was just trying to do the best job I could because I’d never done it before, and I wasn’t as familiar with all the aspects of the Olympics as I might have been with baseball or the NBA or whatever. So it was a real homework assignment to get up to speed.

Sleep and wellness routine

DB: And now that you’ve done 12, and you just mentioned it, I’m curious how your body adjusted, how you learned to train yourself to sleep, whether it was Beijing or Australia or South Korea. The value of a good night’s sleep. How did you reset your clock? Walk me through that process.

BC: Dave, I always went three weeks to a month before. When it was Australia, it was a full month before because there, you’re literally on the other side of the world. Hosting the Olympics in Sydney, I felt like I was on the History Channel because we would come on at 10 am let’s say on a Thursday, talking about what had happened on Wednesday night. Some of those events—and this was really the only Olympics where I was able to do this—I would finish, and then I’d walk across from the broadcast center to the Olympic Stadium. I’d watch the track and field, or I’d go watch the basketball, and then I’d be talking the next morning about events I’d already seen. So there was no plausibly live there. But I’m not good with jet lag. You know, some people are. Some people can take a flight to Paris, hop off the plane, and take a meeting. I’m blown away for a day or two, and that’s just over one ocean and a seven hour flight from New York or whatever. When I got to Australia, I was a zombie for the better part of a week, and I was even worse coming back, even worse coming back to the United States. So I got there a month before, partly to acclimate myself, get my body rhythm straight, to your question, but also I tried to do this with every location, not so much in the United States. The two I did in the U.S. were in Salt Lake City and Atlanta, and obviously I was familiar. But when I was in Australia, I went everywhere. I went to the Great Barrier Reef, I went to the Outback, I went to Brisbane, I went to Melbourne, not just around Sydney in the Opera House. Because I tried to embody as best I could what Jim McKay had told me. Remember, yes, it’s a sports event, but it’s a three week miniseries, and it’s a travel log, and it’s a cultural panorama—and you are, for the large part, their guide. And so I tried to prepare to do that.

DB: And in part, that three to four weeks early, is that because you do really value a good night’s rest and know that broadcasting an Olympics without it is impossible? What’s your routine there? Are you an eight-hour guy?

BC: Yeah, I was then a seven- or eight-hour guy. You know, I always had them put a treadmill or or a bicycle in the room so you could get some of that out of the way at whatever hour. But also, one of the reasons you do it is that you shut a lot of stuff out, especially before everybody had a phone in their hand and everybody could be contacted at all hours day and night. You get out of the way, so the phone isn’t ringing. You don’t have a zillion people asking you for tickets or for favors or to come and do this or that, and that’s where you do your final preparation. You’re a fool if you think you can cram for the term paper or something—but you can get the last 10, 20 percent of it done away from everything, with no distractions except the Olympics itself. And when people say, when I came back from the Olympics, people would frequently say, boy, you must be exhausted. And in truth, 15 hours of the day I was just about either being in the broadcast center or preparing. There was nothing else distracting me. I wasn’t thinking about anybody else or doing anything else. I might have been thinking about somebody else, but not doing anything else, you know, other than sleeping. That was it. So actually, there was, there was a regimentation to it that was liberating in a way.

DB: Wow, that’s interesting. And working out is still part of your routine? I mean, you’re in insane shape. You don’t seem to age from this side of the camera. What’s the secret? 

BC:  I keep hearing that BS, and then I’m shaking and I’m going, I’m falling apart. I can show you photographic and video evidence that that isn’t true. But what I tend to say is, a little bit of good genes and some good lighting. Although, right now I’m not sure there’s any lighting at all.

DB: So there’s no wellness routine, no strict—?

BC: No. You know, my wife is very health- and fitness-oriented, and so she shames me sometimes. But when I’m in New York, I have a trainer. I’m out in California now, so you do it on on your own, but we have access to a gym, and you try not to—I love food. People are shocked. I could eat a linebacker under the table. If I didn’t have the metabolism of a hummingbird, I’d weigh about 300 pounds, and it would be a very unsightly situation. But here’s the thing, I don’t eat junk food. I won’t just grab a bag of potato chips. If I’m going to overeat, I’m going to have two cheeseburgers at PJ Clark’s, or I’m going to eat the entire pizza at Patsy’s, or John’s Pizza in the Village. For me to go to excess, it has to be at the top of the pyramid, and then the rest of the time, I’ll make up for that. I’ll have a salad the next couple of nights for dinner. Here’s what I always say—this is more information than you want. I say to people, I have to be a welterweight. If I become a middleweight, then I gotta watch it. I gotta be at the welterweight limit of 147 to 150. If I get into the 150s, then I’m a middleweight and I’m out of my weight class. I got to come back.

The pink eye story

DB:  I remember the pink eye. 

BC: Oh, really, I don’t. Refresh my memory.

DB: What’s your recollection of that story?

BC: Well, there’s a lot of things. First of all, think of the timing. What are the chances that an adult gets pink eye to begin with, or more accurately, viral conjunctivitis—but that it would literally come on on the morning of the first broadcast of the Olympics. And that its duration, since it was viral conjunctivitis, is almost exactly the duration of the Olympics. So I wake up that morning and I don’t feel bad getting out of bed. I don’t feel bad. You go into the bathroom, splash a little water on your face to wake up, and I look, and I think it was the left eye that was red and kind of approaching a slit. And so, you know, I get dressed, I feel fine. I go into the broadcast center and go to the infirmary, and the NBC doctors say, they theorize, it’s some kind of bacterial infection. How, I don’t know. So they give me antibiotics. But then they realize, when the next day, it jumps from my left eye to my right, it’s not a bacterial infection, it’s full-blown viral conjunctivitis. So what can you do, except try to make light of it, which I did. But think about it. We’ve all gone to work. If you’re a professional at all not feeling well, if you’re sick as a dog, you do a version of Michael Jordan’s flu game. If you had a broken leg, they put a cast on it. It’s under the table, and no one sees it. But this is literally written on your face, so you can’t disguise it. Even though I tried to blunt it by wearing glasses rather than contact lenses. There’s nothing you can do. And I tried to hang on, Dave, as long as I could. And you hear all kinds of stupid things, especially in a social media era where, you know, every nitwit knave has the same access to it as a genius does. And so people say whatever they say without the slightest bit of actual, credible information. So the people who said, boy, he just couldn’t bear to give up that Olympic seat. The only reason I did it was that no one else had prepared to do that job. If you pull someone off the swimming venue or the gymnastics venue—A, someone has to go do that job that isn’t fully prepared for it, and then that person has to step in, and the best they could possibly do is read off a teleprompter. Plus, if you’re not going to the sports staff—ultimately, what they had to do, when I had to wave the white flag because after six or seven nights, it got to where I couldn’t even be in the lights. I couldn’t read a prompter, but I was always a pretty good ad libber, so I was ad libbing a lot of the stuff for several days, but then it got to the point where I couldn’t be in the light. I just couldn’t keep my eyes on, it was too painful. When it got to that point, then they had to pull Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer off the Today Show. So they’re doing all kinds of double duty. The reason why I tried to hang on as long as I did, and came back as quickly as I could, was because I felt it was my obligation, not only to my specific on-air colleagues, but to all the people, the producers, the researchers, all the people that had devoted literally years to preparing for this. You’re their front man. They’re the offensive line. You’re carrying the ball. You got to do your part. So I tried.

Rapid fire questions

DB: All right, a couple quick name associations, and we’ll get you out of here. Mitt Romney.

BC: Mitt Romney saved the Salt Lake City Olympics. It was a difficult circumstance no matter what, because it came so soon after 9/11, and so there was a bit of a pall hanging over it. Some people looked at it as here’s a chance to celebrate and feel good about things and in a happy shared experience. But there was also trepidation. We didn’t know when the next thing might happen on American soil, or in this case, on American snow and ice. But also, the Salt Lake City Olympics almost collapsed prior to that because of a bidding scandal that implicated a whole bunch of people, and there was a congressional investigation and a black mark on the reputation of the Olympics, and Mitt Romney had to step in—he wasn’t part of the original group—step in and pull all this together, really, in a matter of months. Plus, the added security concerns, and it all came off without a hitch.

DB: I don’t think people talk about that enough. Snoop Dogg, now part, of course, of the Olympic broadcast.

BC: Yes, apparently Snoop Dogg is now America’s sweetheart. Those who remember Shirley Temple, are shocked by that, but he and Martha Stewart are America’s co-sweethearts, and my feeling is, whatever works, whatever works. I met Snoop a couple of years before he became part of NBC’s Olympics in ‘24 in Paris. And he’s a huge sports fan and a knowledgeable sports fan, so he was almost ridiculously kind to me, like how he was thrilled to meet me. I don’t know why, but, you know, because of sports. And so, he made a video message for my son, and his message was something to the effect of, your dad raised me. Now I don’t want to be responsible for everything he did. Leave me out of that. But apparently, when it came to sports, I was among probably those that he thinks of growing up and following sports. 

DB: Well, you are the GOAT, sir. “Al” Al Michaels. Are you aware of “Al” Al Michaels?

BC: Fully aware of “AI” Al Michaels. And according to Al, my good friend, he thought, quoting him here, it sounded 97 percent like him at the Paris Olympics.

DB: How do you use AI? 

BC: I don’t. I don’t. As you’re well aware from trying to get me on this, it’s only a matter of a few years ago that I ditched a flip phone. I am being carried kicking and screaming into whatever the next technological frontier is.

DB: What social media app is on your phone?

BC: None, none. I become aware of social media because of coverage of it and whatnot. And if I look at something on YouTube or some platform, and then you look at the comments, it’s a reminder that not everybody out there is a member of the Mensa society.

DB: Anything you’re looking forward to in Milan or LA 2028? 

BC: Well, in Milan, I’m looking forward to watching it on television because I won’t be there, but I will be in Los Angeles in ‘28, and you know, a domestic Olympics, a U.S. Olympics, always takes on a little bit of extra meaning. And I would assume that every significant living American Summer Olympian would be there—that Michael Phelps will be there, that Carl Lewis would be there, that Mary Lou Retton would be there, etc., etc. That it would be a gathering of all those bold-faced Olympic names through history—that Jackie Joyner-Kersee would be there and on and on. And so I think that’s going to be an added plus, and I’ll be happy to be part of it.

DB: I hope you are. I want to put Bob down as part of the torch relay myself. Final question: If there was one Olympic event, winter or summer, you could compete in, it is what?

BC: The pole vault. I aspire to added elevation because I need it. It’s like, how in the hell, this is one of these things, like, you’re at this at the circus. How do the Flying Wallendas practice this? How do you practice the pole vault? I know there’s all kinds of pads beneath you, but how do you practice the pole vault, even with a fiberglass pole, how do you practice it without killing yourself?

DB: See, that’s why I did not think you’d say pole vault because to me, it looks terrifying. I mean, I thought you’d say something—I mean, for me, I’d probably say curling. I actually have tried curling. It’s very enjoyable, but I think I would break my neck.

BC: Well, the thing is, with all due respect to the curlers, when you have an Olympic sport, that you can actually compete just as well while having a beer, then it’s a little different, right? And, you know, I’ve often gotten into a little bit of trouble with at least a tiny fraction of the audience by being slightly irreverent about some of these things. So in ‘92 in Barcelona, we did a digest each night in prime time, a digest of Olympic events that didn’t get a lot of prime time coverage, but were nonetheless interesting. So in one package, there were a bunch of race walkers. Now, I don’t know how many avid race walkers there are in the United States—in Eastern Europe, if you’re a great Olympic race walker, you could be the toast of Romania. I’m not sure how it plays in the United States. So we come off the package of the race walkers, and I say something like, you know, having a competition to see who can walk the fastest is a bit like a contest to see who can whisper the loudest. Eventually, don’t you just start talking? Eventually, don’t you just start at least jogging? Now, this seemed to me to be harmless, but the small cadre of race walking devotees within the borders of the United States wanted my head on a stick. But that’s sort of the same thing with curling. I think actually part of the reason why people like it is that it’s so freaking goofy, like they figure their Uncle Fred could be, could be a curler. Not that it doesn’t take skill—of course, it takes skill, but it’s like billiards. Billiards is a sport, but you could be Minnesota Fats and still be good at billiards. You don’t have to be in tip-top Olympic shape.

DB: I still remember the quote about the race walker, so I can’t imagine what that community—they probably never forgot it, dude. 

BC: Luckily, they’re relatively few in number. You know, when you’re on the air as long as I’ve been and for as many of tens of thousands of hours, you don’t remember a whole lot of what you said. But only about a month ago, I was doing a thing at the Paley Center in New York, and Budd Mishkin, who’s a very smart and interesting New York area broadcaster, was the person interviewing me—and he said, you had my favorite Olympic line of all time. And I honestly didn’t know what he was referring to, and he reminded me it was the Opening Ceremony in Athens in 2004, and a huge part of the Opening Ceremony was devoted to Greek mythology. And so, they get to Oedipus, and I turned to Katie Couric, it just popped in my head, I said, Oedipus, as you know, Katie is the figure from Greek mythology who murdered his father and married his mother, a sequence of events that seldom turns out well. Now, I imagine, again, it was before social media, and before people could find you as easily as they do now. I imagine there were some people who believe that every moment of the Olympics has to be treated like high mass, who didn’t appreciate it, but to me, especially at the Opening Ceremony, it seems to me like it’s half Cirque du Soleil and half UN Security Council meeting. I’m just trying to split the difference. I must admit, I never figured out exactly how to do it, and I don’t think anybody ever has because it’s so many different things at once. 

In closing

DB: You did it better than anyone ever, and that’s why it is like Christmas without Santa. 12 Games. I like to think of you as the godfather of the Olympic broadcast, and the greatest of all time in sports broadcasting. And I think we need an Instagram feed with Bob Costas-isms. So we need to go through the entire catalog, and that would be magic. I will put that together, buddy. A great pleasure, always. 

BC: Thank you, Dave.

DB: The best, man. I appreciate it so much. We’ll get you that brand new beautiful bed when you come to New York. Thank you, sir.

BC:  Thank you very much. Take care. Good to see you, Dave.