Bob Costas

Phillies president Bill Giles has a strong supporter for a new baseball stadium in sportscaster Bob Costas. "If the Phillies are going to prosper, they can't be in Veterans Stadium much longer," Costas said yesterday during a conference call for NBC's telecast of Tuesday's All-Star Game. Costas recalled wondering on one of his early "Game of the Week" telecasts on NBC why more baseball stadiums weren't being built. Said Costas: "It was in Veterans Stadium, in 1982 or '83, [when]

As expected, Jim Lampley was introduced yesterday as the replacement for Bob Costas as host of NBC's "NFL Live. " Lampley will work with new studio analyst Mike Ditka, plus holdovers O.J. Simpson and Will McDonough during the NFL season. Don't expect a major change in style with Lampley in the host's chair. Referring to his friend, the diminutive Costas, Lampley said, "We're similar in every way - except height. " Lampley was an Olympics co-host for NBC in Barcelona, co-hosted the Notre Dame football pregame and halftime shows and covered golf.

On a winless team off to its worst start in nearly four decades, St. Louis Rams running back Marshall Faulk apparently didn't care to discuss it when broadcaster Bob Costas came to town this week. During a Monday taping for this weekend's "Inside the NFL" program on HBO, Faulk abruptly ended an interview with Costas after being questioned about the Rams' dismal start, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in a story on its Web site yesterday. Costas got to get a few short answers from Faulk before asking him, "You've got a team that's 0-5 that by consensus was the best team in football . . . Something's got to be wrong.

Julius Erving makes his debut as a studio analyst on "NBA Showtime" tomorrow at 2 p.m. (Channel 3). Doctor J is featured on the "NBA Inside Stuff" at noon tomorrow on Channel 3. NBC has a strong Christmas Day lineup: The Houston Rockets meet Charles Barkley and the Phoenix Suns at 2:30 p.m., followed by the Houston Oilers-San Francisco 49ers NFL game at 5:30 p.m. At 8:30 p.m., it's back to the NBA with Orlando facing Chicago. GIFT IDEAS Need a last-minute Christmas gift?

As Eagles fans and the rest of the pro football world await Jimmy Johnson's announcement about his future on "Fox NFL Sunday" (Channel 29, noon) it's a good time to review how these coaches established themselves in television. Here's the script: You're a successful NFL coach between jobs. Whom do you call for interim employment? Either Fox, which, like Johnson, is in its rookie season, or NBC Sports, a k a the Coaches' Halfway House. Bill Walsh, Bill Parcells, Pat Riley, Mike Fratello, Mike Ditka and Joe Gibbs have passed through the revolving doors at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City.

Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, a "Lunch with Bob Costas" feature on the lead page of The New York Times Living section . . . perhaps you've read enough about Bob Costas to last a lifetime? Brace yourselves. Those watching the Olympics will spend 17 nights with Costas, starting tonight at 9 o'clock with NBC's Olympics preview (Channel 3). He is the prime-time host of NBC's Olympics coverage. The job for which ABC's Jim McKay subtly set the standard is both a coup and a career killer.

NBC sportscaster Bob Costas, vilified as a mealy-mouthed fluffmonger in a May 29 column in Sports Illustrated, is furious, and he's fighting back. "There is absolutely nothing wrong with an informed, intelligent difference of opinion or review of my work," Costas told sports editors during a luncheon in St. Louis Monday. "In this case I was not criticized, but attacked, so empty-headedly and so unfairly. " The bare-knuckles fracas stems from one of those back-page "Point After" columns in SI, in which staff writer Franz Lidz, who lives in Philadelphia, wrote that Costas and the rest of his ilk - namely Al Michaels and Brent Musburger - don't throw the journalistic fastball high and inside, as did the once-reviled Howard Cosell.

Michael Vick said playing for the Eagles next year would be "an everyday struggle" and said he "won't be a Wildcat guy. " The comments came in an interview with Bob Costas that aired last night during NBC's pregame show before the Eagles hosted Dallas. The Eagles signed Vick to a $1.6 million contract for 2009, with a team option for the second year at $5.2 million. "It would be hard," Vick said of returning to the Eagles, according to excerpts released by NBC. "It would be an everyday struggle.

Marv Albert and Matt Guokas were NBC's No. 1 NBA announcing team for three years. Now, Albert is history at NBC and Guokas has been reassigned to make room for Isiah Thomas. NBC announced yesterday that Thomas, until last week the general manager and minority owner of the Toronto Raptors, will pair with NBC veteran Bob Costas as the network's No. 1 NBA team for this season's telecasts. Thomas was reported to be offered a job at NBC even before he left his post at the Raptors last week.

Bob Costas worried about baseball's future before the strike. A strong opponent of this season's realignment, which created wild-card playoff berths, NBC-TV's Costas is really worried about baseball under the direction of many of the current owners. "The majority of owners are decent and capable people on their own," Costas said by car phone yesterday as he rode from the Newark Airport into Manhattan. "But as a group, baseball owners are the most clueless in all of American sports.

Every Eagles national TV game this season is bound to feature the obligatory sitdown with Michael Vick, and last night's contest was no exception. Bob Costas was at the helm this time for "Football Night in America," eliciting the usual regrets over how Vick wasted his promise in Atlanta and evoking a few memories of how scary it was to go to prison for dogfighting. "In so many ways, I do," the Eagles' quarterback said, when Costas asked him if he felt he'd cheated the Falcons. "I feel like I cheated the organization.

Michael Vick said playing for the Eagles next year would be "an everyday struggle" and said he "won't be a Wildcat guy. " The comments came in an interview with Bob Costas that aired last night during NBC's pregame show before the Eagles hosted Dallas. The Eagles signed Vick to a $1.6 million contract for 2009, with a team option for the second year at $5.2 million. "It would be hard," Vick said of returning to the Eagles, according to excerpts released by NBC. "It would be an everyday struggle.

On a winless team off to its worst start in nearly four decades, St. Louis Rams running back Marshall Faulk apparently didn't care to discuss it when broadcaster Bob Costas came to town this week. During a Monday taping for this weekend's "Inside the NFL" program on HBO, Faulk abruptly ended an interview with Costas after being questioned about the Rams' dismal start, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in a story on its Web site yesterday. Costas got to get a few short answers from Faulk before asking him, "You've got a team that's 0-5 that by consensus was the best team in football . . . Something's got to be wrong.

St. Louis Rams running back Marshall Faulk walked out on a conversation with Bob Costas that was being taped for use on this week's edition of HBO's Inside the NFL, apparently because he was frustrated in discussing the team's terrible start, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on its Web site. Costas was interviewing Faulk and quarterback Kurt Warner about the Rams being winless nearly a third of the way into the season. After getting a few short answers from Faulk, Costas asked, "You've got a team that's 0-5 that by consensus was the best team in football.

Be on the lookout for flying pigs. Until last weekend, the idea that a TV network would cover the Winter Olympics and not show enough sappy "up-close-and-personal" features was as far-fetched as the notion of porkers taking wing. But NBC did it, with a surprising prime-time concentration on the sports themselves, leaving viewers longing for a few personality profiles, or at least a trip back to the Green Mountains so they might learn a little something about chipmunk-cheeked snowboard champion Kelly Clark.

Marv Albert and Matt Guokas were NBC's No. 1 NBA announcing team for three years. Now, Albert is history at NBC and Guokas has been reassigned to make room for Isiah Thomas. NBC announced yesterday that Thomas, until last week the general manager and minority owner of the Toronto Raptors, will pair with NBC veteran Bob Costas as the network's No. 1 NBA team for this season's telecasts. Thomas was reported to be offered a job at NBC even before he left his post at the Raptors last week.

Television directors are like mothers: They worry a lot. Andy Rosenberg, the director for last night's NBC telecast of the All-Star Game on Channel 10, sat on a sofa in a trailer outside Veterans Stadium on Monday and worried about his crew being rusty. "We haven't worked together as a crew on baseball [this season]," Rosenberg said. Rosenberg and producer John Gonzalez conducted a rehearsal game Monday night at the Vet, using off-Broadway Philadelphia semipro players.

Phillies president Bill Giles has a strong supporter for a new baseball stadium in sportscaster Bob Costas. "If the Phillies are going to prosper, they can't be in Veterans Stadium much longer," Costas said yesterday during a conference call for NBC's telecast of Tuesday's All-Star Game. Costas recalled wondering on one of his early "Game of the Week" telecasts on NBC why more baseball stadiums weren't being built. Said Costas: "It was in Veterans Stadium, in 1982 or '83, [when]

On the air, Al Michaels isn't the most opinionated person in sports television. As the play-by-play manager for ABC telecasts of the baseball playoffs and "Monday Night Football," Michaels's role is to describe the action and blend in his analysts. Nobody does it better. Put Michaels in an informal setting, however, and he comes out throwing verbal lefts and rights. During a conference call yesterday on the World Series, which opens tomorrow on Channel 6 at 7 p.m., Michaels dealt pointedly with baseball's troubles, and even nominated an unsuspecting soul for baseball commissioner.

As Eagles fans and the rest of the pro football world await Jimmy Johnson's announcement about his future on "Fox NFL Sunday" (Channel 29, noon) it's a good time to review how these coaches established themselves in television. Here's the script: You're a successful NFL coach between jobs. Whom do you call for interim employment? Either Fox, which, like Johnson, is in its rookie season, or NBC Sports, a k a the Coaches' Halfway House. Bill Walsh, Bill Parcells, Pat Riley, Mike Fratello, Mike Ditka and Joe Gibbs have passed through the revolving doors at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City.