Who knew that a few comments on the new Olympic event of Slopestyle would spark a controversy among NBC's on-air Olympic staff? On the Tuesday edition of NBC's Today program, Olympics primetime and late night host Bob Costas, who is no stranger to speaking his mind, compared the new event to MTV's Jackass.
Costas told host Matt Lauer, "…this stuff is just Jackass stuff that they invented, and called Olympic sports."
This did not sit well with ESPN X Games host Sal Masekela who is scheduled to be a SportsDesk reporter for NBC in Sochi. He proceded to rip Costas on his Twitter account and it just so happened to show up on NBC Sports' public relations website as captured by Paulsen of the Sports Media Watch site.
Sal Masekela ripping Bob Costas … on NBC's PR site. pic.twitter.com/Gq7RuKvmp2
— Paulsen (@paulsen_smw) January 7, 2014
Masekela proceeded to skewer Costas several more times before the tweets were deleted. The above instance on the NBC Sports PR site in which Bob was called "uninforormed and pompous (sic)" was also taken down. One tweet had Sal wishing to meet Costas personally.
While Masekela erased his tweets, it did not stop the skiing and snowboarding community from attacking Costas' comments.
It's extremely rare to see announcer-on-announcer crime especially within the same network. The one thing NBC did not need was to have their own personalities fighting over an Olympic sport just less than a month before the Games.
It will be interesting to see if Sal vs. Bob becomes a storyline in Sochi or if Masekela is told to stay home.
