>> A legend who knows the score this week on "Firing Line."

>> Hello, everybody.

I'm Bob Costas, and tip-off for Game 5 is minutes away.

>> For more than a generation, Bob Costas shared some of the greatest moments in sports.

>> Look who gets it next.

>> The Olympics, the Super Bowl... >> The Vince Lombardi Trophy is at stake today.

>> ...and the World Series... >> The New York Yankees... world champions, team of the decade!

>> ...weaving together what he sees and what he knows about history and sometimes politics.

>> This remains an authoritarian state with an abysmal human rights record.

>> As sports intersects with the three defining stories of 2020 -- the pandemic, the election, and the fight for racial justice -- what does Bob Costas say now?

>> "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by... ...and by... Corporate funding is provided by... >> Bob Costas, welcome to "Firing Line."

>> Hi, Margaret.

How are you?

Thanks for having me.

>> Look, you are one of the most thoughtful and effective voices of sports and have been for a generation.

But you're also a sports fan, and I want to know as a fan, what has 2020 been like for you?

>> Well, it's certainly been different.

That's the understatement of all time.

But one thing I think has shined through -- the athletes themselves are passionate about the competition.

Even with no fans, even with abbreviated seasons, they still play with heart, with effort, with passion.

It still matters to them.

>> How about for you personally, though?

I mean, what has it felt like for you as a fan?

>> It has felt like a diminished experience, but one which I'm still interested in, even if it's something I'm no longer covering.

I'm no longer covering basketball, for example, which is my second favorite sport after baseball.

But I still watched the NBA playoffs, and some of the games were incredible.

Is it the same even as a viewer when you have hometown fans and a sense of place and all those things?

No, it can't possibly be the same.

Ridiculous to say so, but I had, I don't know, 75% same interest.

>> Look, because of the pandemic, every sport has restricted live spectator access and other changes like the NBA and NHL bubbles have affected the way the players relate to each other.

Major League Baseball -- you mentioned MLB, for instance, has changed some rules in its game.

So which of the COVID changes in sports do you think will stick and which ones should stick?

>> Well, the bubble was available to hockey and basketball because they were at the ends of their regular seasons.

So they could just complete it by getting into the playoffs, basketball, especially smaller rosters.

They were able to pull that off very successfully without a single positive test.

What you might see, football will be a test case when they get down to maybe four teams and they don't want to run the risk of teams being decimated like your Denver Broncos were a week ago.

>> Alright.

You mentioned my Broncos.

I was -- It was hard to believe that all three quarterbacks were unable to play a couple of weeks ago.

But, look, every team in the NFL except the Seattle Seahawks has had COVID cases.

So there's a sentiment out there that perhaps it's time to just cancel the rest of the season.

There's just no way as the numbers tick up with COVID, as you know, January and February, according to Dr. Fauci, are going to be miserable months for this disease.

Why would we stick with it through the Super Bowl?

>> Money.

Television money.

Every sport is reliant to some extent on gate receipts.

Baseball takes a huge hit by having nobody in the stands.

But football gets a disproportionate amount of its income on a yearly basis from network television.

Every game, in one sense or another is a network game.

They are hell-bent on getting from here all the way through to the Super Bowl and collecting that television revenue.

And the players have an interest in that as well.

>> What you're saying, though, is that if this is all about money, there's -- there's -- this is money versus lives.

>> Yeah.

Although football will say that -- and other sports will say that we've had the best possible medical advice.

We have had, in the case of baseball, Freddie Freeman, for example, who winds up as the National League's MVP in the short season.

He had COVID and had it pretty severely before they started playing games.

So he had symptoms.

But we're not seeing extreme cases among professional athletes.

>> Maybe you don't see it amongst professional athletes, but they get it and they spread it to others maybe who have underlying conditions, vulnerabilities, intergenerational families.

It's not just about the players themselves getting it.

It's that they become vectors for spreading this contagion.

>> You're 100% right.

I'm not an apologist for them or the decisions that they make.

But this is their thinking behind those decisions, their risk/reward thing.

Now, when you talk about college sports, that's where I think it's really outrageous.

These players are not compensated.

They do not have a union to protect their interest.

Nothing else on the campus is happening as it normally does.

The debate team isn't doing what it normally does.

Classes aren't being held as normal, but damn it, full speed ahead.

We are going to play big-time football and eventually big-time basketball because that's what we do.

If there's ever been anything that doesn't expose the hypocrisy of this and the sham nature of it, they might as well have slogans or information on each player's uniform.

This has nothing to do with college.

>> According to a September Pew poll, only about half of Americans said they would definitely or probably get a COVID-19 vaccine.

And projected participation amongst minority groups is even lower.

Only about a third of black adults say they would definitely or probably get vaccinated.

Now, there are some public health experts who are now suggesting that athletes should get access to coronavirus vaccines even earlier than the general public to help overcome some of this vaccine skepticism.

What's your reaction to that?

>> I think people would resent, on the one hand, privileged people jumping the queue.

But on the other hand, it's a legitimate public health concern when people are so skeptical, and we know what the wretched history is that would be passed down from generation to generation of African-Americans not just being mistreated, but treated as guinea pigs.

That doesn't go away when it stops happening.

But if it's Barack Obama getting vaccinated on television, along with Bill Clinton and George Bush, or if it's LeBron James getting vaccinated on television or Patrick Mahomes or whomever it might be, I think letting those people jump the queue a little bit for the domino effect for the better, I'm okay with that.

>> So the International Olympic Committee made an unprecedented move in postponing the 2020 Summer Games for a year.

And the Olympic Games have only been canceled three times in history, as you well know, during war, but never rescheduled.

You know a lot about the IOC.

How would you rate their handling of this pandemic?

>> I think the real judgment will come after Tokyo in the summer, tentatively, of 2021.

I don't know that they showed any leadership in 2020.

Their hand was forced with the pandemic in full swing and with most of us knowing less about it than we do now.

It would have been ridiculous and irresponsible to the point of being criminal to bring more than 200 nations together for a Summer Olympics.

Let's bring them all together.

Let's have them live together in the Olympic Village.

Let's have them compete with each other, sweat with each other.

And we know what people in the prime of life, what young people do.

They do what young people do, especially after the competitions are over.

It's a bacchanal in the Olympic Village, you know, so let's do that and then have them all return to their respective countries.

You want to talk about a COVID Petri dish?

The Olympics would be it.

>> I mean, how do you expect Tokyo to go?

What do you expect and anticipate from Tokyo next summer?

>> It's in everybody's interest for one reason or another to make this work.

I don't think you're going to see packed stands the way you have in the past.

I don't think you're going to see gatherings in and around the Olympics, the social gatherings that you normally see.

But I do think they'll make every effort to have the competition because the television money is just so enormous.

>> So I'd like to ask you about the proliferation of sports gambling.

But first, for the sake of the audience who maybe doesn't know this part of your biography, tell me about your father and gambling.

>> My dad was a colorful character.

People of a certain age will get this reference.

He was a Runyon-esque character.

He was like somebody out of "Guys and Dolls."

He was charismatic.

He was funny.

But he had friends, and some of them weren't necessarily friends that come to collect, guys named "Three Finger" and "Fury," who actually showed up at our door.

And my dad made a good living for a guy in the '50s and '60s.

But the mortgage was often riding on whether the Yankees could beat the Tigers or the Celtics could beat the 76ers.

>> I mean, he made a good living as an electrical engineer.

Is it that he gambled his earnings and so that actually made you worse off?

Or is that he actually made more money gambling?

>> You know what would happen, Margaret?

I remember once going to a doughnut shop in Brooklyn with him when he collected from the bookie.

This guy slid a brown paper bag across the counter of the doughnut shop that my dad and I went out to the car and, under a streetlight in Brooklyn, he counted out $14,000 in $100 bills in 1966.

That was a whole lot of money.

When that would happen, my mom would insist that we do something we'd been wanting to do, like buy a new car or invest in the house so that he would spend the money before he could lose it back.

>> Mm.

>> I don't know if he was ahead or behind for his life, but I do know that the trauma and the emotion of losing was far more extreme than the happiness of winning.

But what he did attached me to sports because that's the way I connected with him.

He'd take me to the games.

We'd watch the games together, emotional roller coaster, but it attached me to him.

>> So, you know, the U.S. Supreme Court, as you know, has issued a decision that allowed states to legalize sports wagering.

And in the past two years, you've seen this rapid expansion of sports gambling.

And we've also seen a host of new partnerships between media companies and online sports books -- ESPN, CBS Sports, Fox Sports, Barstool Sports, DraftKings.

What is the impact, Bob, of these kind of partnerships on the fan experience?

>> Well, when we live in a culture which is suffused in conspiracy theories and all kinds of nonsense and anger flies around on so-called social media, every game that's affected by human error or that has a quirky outcome, you're going to have people claiming that the game was fixed.

They used to claim that without any evidence, usually without any evidence in the past.

Now, with gambling being an element for so many people, then that's going to become more prevalent.

Also, like everything in the culture, just about -- maybe not everything -- some of the romance and the charm of it is diminished by modern realities.

But if the primary reason you're rooting for something isn't for your team or your favorite player, it's for your bet, that becomes more transactional than emotional, and something that at least people of my generation grew up finding appealing about sports.

Something there is lost, but the money -- the money is so great, the leagues can't turn their backs on it.

>> I want to ask you about sports and politics.

Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Mandela famously turned to sports in the 1995 Rugby World Cup to unify South Africa, and he said... You know, in this moment of perhaps new beginnings in politics, do you think that sports could help break down the deep divisions that we see in America now?

>> I think sports has served that purpose in the past.

I don't begrudge any athlete expressing their opinion and using their platform to make a point that they deeply believe in, but that is also divisive.

It's one of the costs of it.

Colin Kaepernick, for example, when he first knelt and then couldn't find a place on an NFL roster post-San Francisco, I'm certain I was the first network broadcaster and may still be the only one to flatly say that he was being blackballed by the NFL.

On the other hand, there are people who have been rushing to anoint him as the natural successor to Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, Arthur Ashe.

But I have to say wait a minute.

We got to go case by case.

Colin Kaepernick says that we should not just defund, which is questionable enough, we should dismantle the police.

Colin Kaepernick says he never votes because the oppressor will never allow you to vote your way out of your oppression.

I guess he missed the history lesson about John Lewis and how he put his life at stake for that sacred right.

Colin Kaepernick goes to Miami when the Niners played the Dolphins, and extols the virtues of Fidel Castro, wears socks depicting cops, not rogue cops, but all cops as pigs.

I'm off the Colin Kaepernick train.

That stuff is not going to unify anybody, nor does it make a convincing point to inform reasonable people.

And I think there are a lot of people like, let's say, let's take the modern NBA with LeBron James, who's an admirable person.

You think of the school that he finances in Akron that takes care of those kids and demands of them academic performance, sees them through.

His heart is totally in the right place.

LeBron James is a good man.

But when the NBA, not for one game or two, when the NBA kind of puts it in your face every game, I think those who are in substantial sympathy with LeBron James and with the cause might have said, as I did, "Yeah, this is a one-off.

This is a special circumstance in this summer of racial reckoning, post-George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and all the rest.

Okay, have at it for this period of time in the bubble."

But I've spoken with Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, about it, and he agrees with me this can't be the case going forward.

These players have access to other platforms.

Every league has its own network.

But if every time you turn on a game or attend a game, that's being thrust in your face, even those who are sympathetic might say, "This is where I go to escape for a little while."

>> In 1967, during the Vietnam War, Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the U.S. military on religious grounds, and he was banned from boxing and stripped of his title.

And he was here on "Firing Line," the original program with William F. Buckley Jr., just one year later.

And I want to show you a clip of that interview.

Take a look at this.

>> You believe that you were drafted only because you changed your name to Muhammad Ali and joined the Muslim religion, is that correct?

>> Yes, sir.

They knew that I wasn't going.

And they know -- the government -- they know that Elijah Muhammad has followers.

The jails are packed with Muslims.

But this would justify my title being taken.

>> Yeah.

If you hadn't changed your name and your religion, in your judgment, you would have continued to have been listed as undraftable?

>> I believe so, yes.

But it's debatable.

You have a right to, you know, say what you believe.

>> Oh, sure.

>> And I have a right to say what I believe.

>> Sure, sure.

Let's not fight over it.

[ Laughter ] >> You knew Muhammad Ali.

I mean, you knew Muhammad Ali.

>> I did.

>> What do you remember about him?

How do you think about that decision that he made?

>> Well, remember, boxing is an individual sport, so it's different in the way people respond to it.

But he was vilified in that time.

And what he -- What was done to him was outrageous.

I have to say this, though, about Muhammad Ali.

He evolved as a person and he became, toward the end of his life, an international symbol of goodwill.

And in a moment that I was privileged to be part of, the opening ceremony in 1996 in Atlanta when he emerged as a total surprise out of the shadows, in that moment, that was one of the greatest moments of reconciliation you could ever imagine writ large.

And I think everyone, even those who were strongly against him, said, look, "Even if I disagreed, he walked the walk."

I think everybody -- what just took me two minutes to explain -- in two seconds, everybody in that stadium and everybody watching got all those things all at once.

And some little blue-haired lady in Des Moines, Iowa, who might have said, "Darn that draft dodger," or worse, she had a tear in her eye too because ultimately you had to say, "This is a hell of a man," and he was.

>> In 1968, the Olympic Black Power salute was also -- it was a big moment in sports, partly because sports wasn't frequently a venue for political speech in that time.

Now, it's different, right?

Sports and politics have become so interwoven.

Do you believe that sports and politics will ever become disentangled?

>> I don't think they'll ever be completely disentangled.

Now, when you talk about team sports, where they're going to be playing a game, you know, many games, game after game, and also in an era of social media, so everybody has a Twitter account and an Instagram account or whatever.

And forgive me if I don't regard every quarterback or point guard with a Twitter account as Frederick Douglass in Nikes.

You know, I go on a case-by-case basis.

I don't think there's any way to stem the tide.

And by the way, a lot of people who say "Stick to sports," what they really mean is "Stick to sports unless you're saying something that I agree with and want to hear," because, you know, the "stick to sports" crowd, the "shut up and sing" and "shut up and dribble" crowd, they want Scott Baio.

They want Jon Voight.

They want Curt Schilling.

They want Lou Holtz.

As long as you're saying what we want to hear, no problem.

But if you say something we don't want to hear, stay in your lane.

Stick to sports.

You're out of your depth.

>> Listen to what President Trump had to say in 2017 when only a handful of players were taking a knee at each game.

Take a look.

>> Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, "Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out.

He's fired.

He's fired!"

>> It's not just players making political statements.

The President of the United States wading into sports.

>> Who politicized that?

Who put that?

Who amplified that way beyond what it initially was?

The President of the United States did, but the reason that the "stick to sports" crowd didn't object to that was because the sentiment he expressed, as crude and, may I say, stupid and graceless as it was, as much of a dog whistle as it was, didn't bother them.

He is the guy who politicized it, not by making a thoughtful point, but by playing to a crowd and at the same time not caring about what it said to another large portion of America.

>> You yourself think there's a place for people in sports to express an opinion about political issues.

And so I want to take a look at a moment from the opening ceremonies in the 1996 Olympics.

Here it is.

You have weighed in on China.

You have also weighed in on concussions.

How do you decide when to make those judgments and when to share your opinions?

>> Only when it is pertinent to sports.

That's the only time I've ever done it.

Not only was China an emerging power, obviously, but I also said this as part of that comment.

They are the nation that has the means and the motivation to replicate what the old Eastern Bloc did in terms of sports.

The Soviet Union had broken up at that point, but China had the resources, state-controlled athletic system.

And you want to talk about perhaps, given the size and influence, the single greatest human rights violator on the planet, you might be looking at it right there.

Sports occasionally not only has been a place to talk about issues, it's often been the best place because it draws the attention of people across generations and across demographics.

But you have to be judicious about when you address it.

So, in very small amounts, 1% or 2% in between, not when Michael Phelps was jumping in the pool or Simone Biles was doing her routine or Usain Bolt was blazing down the track.

But in those little moments, that's when I would try to fill in some of those aspects of it, and whether it was football or whatever, pregame show, halftime show or on a show like this, but never during the game.

I'm too much of a fan.

>> Last month, Kim Ng was hired as the Miami Marlins general manager, becoming the first female general manager to lead a team in the major men's sports.

Why did it take so long for a woman to be hired as a general manager?

>> Well, there are no women on the field at the major league level, and that's true.

There's a WNBA, but there's no women playing in the NBA, in the NFL, or in the NHL.

And it was thought for a very long time that people had to have some sort of high-level playing experience.

But a lot of front-office people are analytics nerds who never played, never played at all.

So I think that that, along with the slow evolution that women can fill virtually any role, we're slowly getting there.

I have my fingers crossed that Kim will be successful.

But, you know, there's a certain notion within sports that is just so stupid.

Even broadcasters get this.

"Hey, you never played.

What could you know?"

These are the same people who think that because Al Michaels or Mike Tirico or Bob Costas never played at the major league level, they couldn't possibly deeply understand that sport.

>> Pop trivia for you on presidential history -- do you know the only U.S. president to invent a sport?

>> To invent a sport?

Is it one of the big four or is it some like -- >> It's a little bit of a trick question.

Herbert Hoover.

Herbert Hoover, Bob Costas, actually invented a game called Hoover Ball because his doctor in the White House saw that he was gaining weight, and they gave him a medicine ball.

You play it volleyball rules, tennis scoring, with a six-pound medicine ball.

They played on the South Lawn of the White House.

>> That would help to get you in shape.

>> Listen, sports ultimately, as Jim McKay so famously put it, is about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

>> Yes.

>> Not so much the case in 2020, but what do you hope for as a sports fan for 2021?

>> I hope, as an American, as a human being, that we get our arms around this, that the vaccine, as we've been told, is around the corner and that sports responsibly starts to move back in the direction -- I don't think it can happen fully in 2021, but responsibly moves back into the direction where they can not only play the games, but where we can have the communal experience of attending the games.

That shared experience matters as much as the outcomes of the games themselves, the generational connections.

Nothing on television -- Prime-time hit shows don't get the large audiences that they used to.

Sports can still bring people together in that way.

So I'd like to see that happen as soon as it's responsible and safe for it to happen.

>> Bob Costas, thank you for joining me on "Firing Line."

>> Thank you, Margaret.

I hope I haven't gotten myself into too deep trouble.

>> "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by... ...and by... Corporate funding is provided by... ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> You're watching PBS.