Spring Break
The Daily OrangeCostas answers questions in two-hour marathon
By Justin Perrelli
Posted: 9/23/07, 10:12 PM EST Section: News
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Sports broadcaster and SU alumnus Bob Costas cut right to the chase before a standing room-only crowd of students and faculty at the new Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium in Newhouse III.
"I'm not going to take up too much of your time here just talking on my own," Costas said. "I think the idea here is to open it up to questions and answers and find out what the students are interested in."
Students asked questions about all different aspects of Costas' career, but the questions centered mainly on sports. He fielded questions about current scandals, such as the controversies surrounding Barry Bonds and the New England Patriots, as well as his favorite Syracuse memories and why he wanted to become a broadcaster.
Fairness was something Costas focused heavily on.
"This is the year of the cheater," Costas said. "The absence of ethics and whether or not you can believe in the integrity of the competition is the prevailing story in sports now. The key is that we believed in the integrity of the competition. It's all predicated on fairness.
"Fairness is the ability to weigh everything that is available, that you can find, that would have some bearing on the truth of a circumstance, and then reaching as clear-eyed, as fair-minded, a conclusion, as you can," Costas said on the Bonds and steroids issue.
He said it's unfair that Major League Baseball and the media didn't accuse Bonds of cheating at first. Costas and Bonds exchanged remarks about a month ago in which the SU alumnus aired a piece criticizing Bonds' refusal to admit he took steroids and Bonds responded by calling Costas "a little midget who knows nothing about baseball."
"Everyone had kind of skirted around the issue - rumored, alleged, controversial," Costas said. "I simply acknowledged it. But, in acknowledging it in a straightforward way, I also presented evidence."
Costas described how he presented to the inventor of THG - the undetectable steroid many believe Bonds used - the fact that there were no drug tests until 2004, evidence from "Game of Shadows," a book exposing the issue, and the changes is Bonds' physical appearance as well as the rapid improvement of his statistics at an age when players' performance usually decline.
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Donald Carlow
posted 10/02/07 @ 6:28 PM EST
I have read both articles by Justin Perrelli about Bob Costas' visit to Syracuse University. I thorouhly enjoyed his writing style. I felt like I had been there and heard Costas speak in person. (Continued…)
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