I mentioned earlier that Bob is 61. That said, he’s been in broadcasting for nearly 40 years, entering the fray in 1974 St. Louis before hitting the big-time nationally in the early ‘80s. That said, the Redskins have played (including playoffs) about 640 games since Costas was given a megaphone to voice his opinion. NBC owned rights to the NFL during the start of Costas’ career at the network until 1997, and again from 2006 to present day. Having that said, Costas had literally hundreds of opportunities to voice his opinion on the Redskins name during an NFL telecast.

But only after a few other prominent white sports writers and reporters came out against the name did Costas have his epiphany, find his voice on taking on Dan Snyder—the owner of a NFL’s most profitable team…a team that hasn’t seen even a blip in loss of revenue for using a name for 81 years that Costas now deems as a racial slur.

Of course, if he had led on the topic, as ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser (formerly of the Washington Post) has since 1992 (and was basically a lone major voice on the topic in sports media until recently), that’s one thing. But for Costas to raise a hand and be part of the “Me too!” crowd is, quite frankly, an obvious show of conformity for conformity’s sake.