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Now in his “emeritus stage,” Bob Costas hardly recognizes the sports journalism industry he spent most of his career in. There are, however, some exceptions—most notably, Pablo Torre.
In a wide-ranging interview with Front Office Sports Tonight’s Matt Iseman, the legendary broadcaster bemoaned the state of sports media, singling out the demise of HBO Sports. The former On the Record with Bob Costas host said that he was hit especially hard by the cancellation of Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel in 2023, as well as several other moves that have signaled a lack of commitment to sports journalism.
“HBO used to be the gold standard,” Costas said. “HBO Sports doesn’t exist anymore—Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, gone. Bomani Jones’s show, gone. My show, gone. All the sports documentaries, gone.”
That’s not to say investigative journalism no longer exists in sports. In particular, Costas pointed to the work that Torre has done on his Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast, which won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the Clippers-Kawhi Leonard salary cap circumvention scandal.
“You can look to someone today like Pablo Torre—I mean, he broke the Kawhi Leonard story with Steve Ballmer, he’s all over Mark Walter and the Lakers,” Costas said. “This is first-rate sports journalism, worthy of 60 Minutes or Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, in the here and now.”
Costas’s comments come just weeks after the NBA announced its punishment for the Clippers and Leonard, including Ballmer being banned for a year, a $30 million fine for the franchise, the loss of five first-round picks, and a $700,000 fine for Leonard. After investigating the matter on the NBA’s behalf, lawyers at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz began their report by pointing to Torre’s podcast, an indication the situation may never have come to light without his investigative efforts.
Factor in his reporting on the NFL Players Association’s leadership, NBA guard Malik Beasley’s involvement in a federal sports-betting scandal, and a variety of other topics (including Bill Belichick’s relationship with Jordon Hudson), and Torre has established himself as one of sports’s most prominent investigative journalists. But to Costas’s point, that niche used to be the norm, as examples of such efforts have become fewer and far between.
“There’s not much of that,” Costas said.
