After Bob Costas commented on gun control in the wake of Jovan Belcher’s tragic murder-suicide—which claimed the life of his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins—conservatives lashed out. “You tune in for a football game and end up listening to Bob Costas spewing sanctimonious dreck,” tweeted Herman Caine. But mainstream media’s silence on the tragedy—and the mental health problems suffered by so many NFL players—is the true outrage. Nation sports columnist Dave Zirin joined CurrentTV’s The Young Turks to applaud Costas’s much-needed commentary despite the “apolitical” NFL, and shed light on the mental burden too many athletes bear.

—Christie Thompson

In the immediate aftermath of Perkins’s and Belcher’s deaths, the NFL shouldn’t have played the game at all. Check out Dave Zirin’s take here.