NBC's Costas golden; 'Meet the Press' next?

0 Comments | USA TODAY, August, 2008 | by Al Neuharth

If individual media medals were awarded for Olympic coverage, NBC's Bob Costas would be the runaway gold winner.

Costas was at his best in Beijing with interviews of everyone from champion gold medalist Michael Phelps and his mother, Debbie, to President Bush.

His great depth of experiences in more than 30 years of radio and TV sports broadcasting has won him 19 Emmy awards. He's only 56, so what's next?

My hunch is he'll be tapped to moderate NBC's Sunday morning Meet the Press after the election, when Tom Brokaw finishes his interim fill-in for the late Tim Russert.

On the day of the memorial service for Russert last June, a large number of his friends lunched at the NEWSEUM in Washington. Russert had been on the board of that popular...