Yes, Bob Costas’ eyes still will be red tonight. Deal with it, America.

During a conference call earlier today, an upbeat Costas addressed the worst eye ailment in Olympics history.

From the call:

Welcome back, Bob. I guess one of the things people must have thought is that you stayed entirely in a very dark room for six or seven days trying to heal. But what else did you do during that time?

Bob Costas:  Well the worst three days of it I was primarily in a darkened room. There were other times when just to kind of break the monotony I would go downstairs for a little while to the restaurant of the hotel or – at night walk out on the terrace attached to the room just to get a little fresh air.

And then the second day that I was out Mark Lazarus arranged to have the NBC feed hooked up to my room so I was able to follow NBCSN, NBC, Channel 4 out of New York, KNBC out of Los Angeles. I’ll confess that at one point I caught the last minute of Syracuse vs. North Carolina State and turned away from Olympic coverage for a second to see my alma mater pull another miracle. But then I quickly went back. So I had a little ESPN so I got my CNN too. I got what I need.

And as the days went by it got progressively better. At its worst it was the light sensitivity and the blurred vision. The redness and swelling were pretty bad but they were pretty bad the last night that I was on the air too. But the light sensitivity and the blurriness is what made it impossible for me to go back on the air. As people will see tonight there’s still some redness there.

I’m better than I was but not as good as I’d like to be. In terms of being able to function I can function pretty well now, and the redness and swelling while still there are less than what they used to be.

Are you still pretty uncomfortable?

Bob Costas:  No, no, you know, I would say I’d rather not feel this way for the rest of my life but I would say on the injury list of 1-10 this is now at about a 2.

Hey, Bob. Welcome back. Was there ever a time when you were concerned that you might not get back at all during these Olympics?

Bob Costas:  I think there was probably a point three or four days ago where I thought there was maybe a 10% chance that might happen because there was one day where it kind of stalled and even seemed to go backwards for a little while. But I’ve had excellent medical care and they’ve changed the care up along the way as circumstances dictated. And so they adjusted to that.

I always thought it was likely that I would be back. I was hoping to be back on the weekend. I always thought it was likely, not certain, but likely that I’d be back today which makes sense, start of a week at least of a work week. So I thought that possibility was remote.

I know how much time and effort and research you’ve put into this. Were you feeling like I’m did all this work for nothing?

Bob Costas: My honest feeling is this: I have been lucky enough to do a lot of these dating back to ’88 in Seoul when Frank Gumble was the primetime host and I was the late night host and then all of NBC’s Olympics since ’92 in Barcelona. So my thought really wasn’t ‘oh my gosh I’m personally missing these nights on the air.’ My thought was, all the people, all my colleagues and friends who work so hard, many of them harder than I work, putting in 18-20 hour days and I just want to hold up my end of it.

You know, it’s like your team takes the field for a big game you want to be able to do your part of it. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the most important part, it is the most visible part; but you want to uphold your end. And that was my frustration. I knew that Matt and Meredith would and did handle it capably.

If I had to be out Jim Bell and Mark Lazarus and I agreed that I wasn’t going to come back until I was able to do it. If that meant that I couldn’t come back until Wednesday, I wouldn’t come back until Wednesday. And if it got to the point where I couldn’t do any of the remainder of the Olympics we would have accepted that too.

I wasn’t going to come back just for the sake of coming back. But my main feeling of frustration was just that, you know, my friends and colleagues were working hard and I wasn’t a part of it.

Bob, what do you think the level of scrutiny, including how you look, is going to be tonight? Will it be more intense you think?

Bob Costas:  I have no idea but it won’t have any affect on what I do. It won’t look as bad as it did the last night I was on the air and probably it’ll look better 10 days from now but the Olympics will be over so you just go with it.

What did you think of the way your story was covered?

Bob Costas:  I only have kind of a fraction of a sense of the way it was covered. I’m just not aware of it. I don’t follow social media. And I didn’t see the vast majority of what might have been said or written. I’m aware generally and I’m aware from friends that this was viral both literally and figuratively. And, you know, I think it would have been water cooler talk no matter who the host of the Olympics was at any time because it’s such a front and center position.

If the same thing had happened to Jim McKay in 1984 people would have talked about it, it’s just that the internet didn’t exist then and there weren’t as many cable television outlets. Plus he would have been saved somewhat by an absence of high-definition TV. So you have kind of a perfect or imperfect storm of circumstance that made this a bigger deal than it was.

I really have felt uncomfortable about that. You know, I just don’t feel comfortable having anything other than the work itself be what people are talking about. But sometimes it’s just unavoidable and this was one of those very rare situations where it was unavoidable.

I’ve often said that if someone were to go on the air and recite the Gettysburg Address from memory but they wore a bowtie when they usually don’t more people would say, “Hey, what’s with the bowtie?” Or wore glasses and they usually don’t. “Hey, what about the glasses?” even though you recited the Gettysburg Address from memory backwards. You know, that’s the world we live in.