Bob Costas Quotes

It's kind of my intention to be myself on the show. My main priority on FOX is to do play-by-play. Nobody's tuning in to listen to me. If I didn't show up to do the games, people would watch, and the ratings probably wouldn't be all that different. That's not why people are watching.

Broadcasters calling a big game are often reminded to let the action breathe. A great moment of a televised game doesn't need any narration, which is why the announcers - the good ones, anyway - shut up at the celebration and let the pictures do the talking.

I get this call and they go, you know, 'Do you want to do the finals?' and I go, 'Yeah, I guess, I've never, never done the finals.' Especially for somebody who's done as many thousands of games as I have, it kind of takes you one step further.

If you're the play-by-play announcer, I think it's your job to be better than just saying what's on people's TV screen.

My dad talked a good game. [I'm as a] child got only the World Series on the radio.

There's a little bit more of a freedom when you're doing radio play-by-play as opposed to television. I prefer the television side of it.

I think by its very nature, it's redundant, you know, being the play-by-play guy on television.

I think baseball has moved on in many ways and the focus on the competitions on the field is really what the game is all about. It seems to be healthy. It seems more people are watching it.

I loved making The Imitation Game and it's really gratifying to hear the audience's response to the character that I play. It was just a little thing that I did because I really liked the film and I liked Benedict [Cumberbatch] and I loved Morten's [director Morten Tyldum] previous film, Headhunters. For me, it was something I did thinking, "Wow, this is a lovely quality piece of work."

I don't mind people trying to pick apart my policies, and that's fine and that's fair game. But, you know, I don't think we're serving our nation well by allowing the discourse to become so uncivil that people use words that they shouldn't be using.

I'm at a really good spot in my career, to the point where I feel like I could explode at any moment. If I keep progressing with my game at this rate, I think I'll be a big factor

I've been a fan of video games since the old school, I even have a lot of the old school arcade games at my house.

Can I - do I have to be obsessed with it and proceed from that? Not always. But when I'm on top of my game, I definitely think about the way that the world sees me and the way that the world thinks about painting. You must.

In my career, there've been three stages really. There's been the stage when you come into a team, you don't feel the nerves, you just go out and play. Then through your 20s you start thinking a lot more about the games and what's at stake. And then, as you get more experienced towards the end of your career, you enjoy it a lot more and you're a lot more relaxed.

I'm quite insufferable about fitness, I suppose. I think it's really important, though I'm not a body nut.

Think ahead. Golf is a next-shot game.

Studios are run by those who are way too old or mostly young, who don't think creatively.

Even in Japan, I don't think that the game culture is established. For example, my father will watch movies but games don't appear in his life at all, I think that that's sad.

Don't think about what you want, think about what the world needs, and strive to fill that gap. Success is a game of inches.

I think ultimately what you really want is a few people within any label that are into the band enough to really work on it every day for a long time and to actually try a little bit. But obviously, the major labels have more money to spend, so if they feel like spending it, they have bigger resources there when you need them. It doesn't always necessarily translate into them doing a better job for a band, but I think especially if you're playing the game of commercial radio and making videos and stuff like that, that's sort of an expensive proposition.

I think the preseason helps a lot, just to feel a little bit about the speed of the game.

Expect to succeed even before you start. All winners, no matter what their game, start with the expectations that they are going to succeed. Winners say, "I want to do this and I CAN do this", not "I would like to do this, but I don't think I can."

I really think, if anything, there is more evidence to show that the violent games reduce aggression and violence. There have actually been some studies about that, that it's cathartic. If you go to QuakeCon and you walk by and you see the people there [and compare that to] a random cross section of a college campus, you're probably going to find a more peaceful crowd of people at the gaming convention. I think it’s at worst neutral and potentially positive.

My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements.

I think sometimes, you have to pick your spots about when a game gets intense or when the game's outcome is pivoting in that moment.