FanHouse BobCostas

Does Jose Canseco refuse to leave the spotlight, or does the spotlight refuse to leave him? No matter the case, the two are married to one another. Since his days as a household name, he's managed to find a dozen different means of attracting attention. He was hit on the head by a fly ball. He attempted to pitch and threw out his arm. He wrote a bestseller, the impact of which has rivaled that of his playing career. He's appeared on reality television, he's launched a mixed martial arts career, and now he's suing Major League Baseball. The spotlight will not leave him, and he will not leave the spotlight.

Tonight's Dugout is the first part of a series exploring the history of this sophisticated, decades-old relationship. Read it after the jump.

John Madden's retirement became a little less tear-filled today when NBC announced that Cris Collinsworth will be his official replacement on Sunday Night Football, joining Al Michaels in the booth.

This is according to a statement from NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol.

Bob Costas has always been, first and foremost, a baseball guy. So although he's been a consummate professional on HBO (as host of Inside the NFL, On the Record and Costas Now) and on NBC (as host of Football Night in America and the network's Olympics coverage) it always felt like he belonged on a network that would let him return to calling baseball.

Now that's what he's doing. Costas has left HBO to take a deal with MLB Network that will expand his baseball duties and allow him to call live games again. He'll interview Dodgers manager Joe Torre on Thursday, host other shows throughout the year, and, according to USA Today, "call an unspecified number of the channel's 26 regular-season TV games."

A few weeks ago, MDS pointed out that during last year's Super Bowl, FOX tag-team duo Joe Buck and Troy Aikman enjoyed a free ride to University of Phoenix Stadium as they prepared to call the Giants-Patriots game. According to the Inspector General (via the Smoking Gun), it was "inappropriate" for the United States Marshals Service to use federal vehicles to transport Buck and Aikman to the game. You think?

Seems like common sense, really, but clearly it's not. At least that was the story a FOX spokesman was pushing after the fact. "We were unaware, however, that those arrangements were in any way inappropriate, and regret to learn now that they apparently were."

New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick got one vote among the 50 members of the media who selected the Associated Press NFL Coach of the Year, and that one voter is none other than NBC's NFL studio host, Bob Costas.

Mike Reiss of the Boston Globe contacted Costas to ask why he voted for Belichick, rather than Falcons coach Mike Smith or Dolphins coach Tony Sparano, who were by far the two top vote getters, with Smith edging Sparano by one vote. Costas replied:

"I thought he deserved a nod for what might have been the best, or certainly one of the best coaching jobs of his career," Costas said. "He loses [Tom] Brady, and it's not just losing Brady, but also that [Matt] Cassel basically never played. It's not the same thing as losing Johnny Unitas and you have Earl Morrall. He brought the kid along."

I don't ever recall a coach getting any Coach of the Year recognition after a season in which his team's win total declined by five from the year before. Then again, I don't ever recall a coach leading a team to a 16-0 record, then losing his MVP quarterback in the first game of the following season, only to go 11-5 with a backup quarterback who had never even started a game in college, let alone in the NFL.

I probably would have gone with the plurality who selected Smith, but I don't have a problem with Costas's choice. The argument for Belichick as coach of the year is a legitimate one.

On Thursday afternoon, the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks hit the ice at Wrigley Field in the Winter Classic. After a sluggish first period that saw Chicago jump out to an early 3-1 lead, the Red Wings roared back and claimed a 6-4 victory, thanks in large part to a pair of goals from Jiri Hudler, and a highlight reel goal by Pavel Datsyuk. You might have heard a thing or two about it, as it was a pretty big deal. NBC even let Bob Costas cover it so, in the words of Empty Netters, he could pretend like he cared about hockey.

Meanwhile, Eric McErlain was everywhere in Chicago, collecting locker room insight from the Red Wings and interviewing crazed fans taking in all of the excitement.

The early returns are in, and it seems that this year's version was an even bigger success than the first Winter Classic in Buffalo a year ago. This was actually the third outdoor game in NHL history, as the Oilers and Canadiens played in the Heritage Classic back in 2003. Oh, and in case you haven't heard, Ty Conklin played in all three games.

So, seeing as how the NHL has actually marketed something correctly for a change, and in the process has created a monster that will need to be fed each and every season -- or so it seems -- now is as good a time as any to start looking ahead to 2010.

Matt Millen, the man who turned the Detroit Lions into the worst team in NFL history, has made his first public appearance since he was fired as team president in September, appearing on NBC's pregame show before today's Falcons-Cardinals game.

Asked by NBC's Dan Patrick how he felt watching the team he built go 0-16, Millen said, "It was brutal, obviously. Knowing everybody up there ... watching it unfold, it was probably harder watching it from home than it was when you're up there."

Millen said he was "completely responsible" for the Lions' 0-16 record, adding, "You can say something about the coaching, you can say something about the players, but inevitably, I'm responsible for them."

When Patrick asked Millen, "Would you have fired you?" Millen answered, "Yeah, I would have."

Dara Torres won three silver medals in Beijing at age 41, serving as an inspiration to middle-aged people everywhere. But she couldn't possibly keep it up through the 2012 Games in London, could she?

Actually, she's not ruling it out. In an appearance on HBO's Costas Now, Torres said flatly that she is not retired, and that she might just be in the pool in London.

"You have to put it in perspective," Torres said. "I am 41. No one in their 40s has swum in the Olympic Games and medaled before."

January 1 will be a very big day for baseball. Following in the footsteps of the NFL, Major League Baseball will launch their very own cable channel that day. And they've trumped the NFL, still at odds with cable providers about carrying their channel, by ensuring that it will be the largest launch of a new channel in history.

What they'll actually have for programming remains a mystery but once the season starts they'll be broadcasting games. Who will call those games? A story in Sports Business Daily ($ via Biz of Baseball) hints that Bob Costas may be on the top of their wish list.

"The network has discussed using Costas – a noted baseball fan – on some of its game coverage, which will consist of at least one game per week, or its studio coverage, which will be on air for several hours per night during the season starting at 7:00pm ET."

I always liked Costas as a play-by-play guy but wouldn't be too thrilled to see him as a studio host. It's a waste and would offer him too much time and space to revive his tired arguments against the Wild Card, steroids, the internet and anything else that's got a bug up his craw. There's some truth in all of his arguments but we've heard them before while calling games would provide a chance for him to just talk about what's going on in front of him.

I find it whimsically amusing that over 30 years after he began his broadcasting career (roughly around the time he used the word "blowjob" as a synonym for the word "choke" in an ABA game) he is somehow being redefined by a one-sided shouting match between a blogger and a vitriol fueled author.

However, if your motivation for watching Costas Now this evening (9 p.m., HBO, natch) is to see a Bissinger - Leitch II, then Costas would prefer you not bother changing the channel. So sayeth Bob to the WSJ.

"I'd like everyone interested in sports to tune in," he says, "but if all they're looking for is a repeat of 'Bissinger vs. Leitch' I'd just as soon they watched something else."

"The truth," says Mr. Costas, "is that this issue was a powder keg waiting to explode somewhere, and ours just happened to be the match that set it off. I think Buzz realizes he did a disservice to the journalistic standards he was claiming to uphold by jumping on Will that way. At the same time, it's easy for many of those in the blogosphere to dismiss Buzz's outburst as representative of the objections the mainstream sports media has to the excesses of the Internet."

No, the truth is that you cannot ignite a powder keg without some sort of spark, regardless of how flammable it is. Matches don't just come careening out of space, flames flying everywhere, looking for powder kegs. In other words, we all know that Costas wanted the Bissinger - Leitch eruption, which makes this kind of palms-in-the-air denial a little hypocritical and certainly tough to stomach.