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By Bob Costas

When it comes to stuff on the air, you’ve got to do your homework and shoot straight. Vin Scully, as usual, put it best. He said that Laurence Olivier always said that great acting was the humility to prepare, but then the confidence to bring it off. But how does somebody who doesn’t know anything about sports sound knowledgeable in casual conversation?

As an icebreaker, try, “I think Gregg Popovich is the most underappreciated coach or manager of our lifetime.”

For football: “You know, Ben Roethlisberger doesn’t have to throw as deep as he once did, because the YAC [yards after the catch] of Le’Veon Bell and Antonio Brown are so high.”

For baseball: “The stolen base and the sacrifice are almost lost arts, because analytics say that small ball is not the way to go.”

All those things are true. If you said them with some degree of confidence, you would sound like somebody who knew what they were talking about.