Cambridge Encyclopedia :: Cambridge Encyclopedia Vol. 35

Howard Cosell

Sports broadcaster, born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA. After a brief career as a lawyer, he became a sportscaster for ABC (1956) and was the boxing announcer throughout Muhammad Ali's career. Famous for his signature remark, ‘Telling it like it is’, his opinionated broadcasts for Monday Night Football won him fans and detractors alike.

Howard Cosell
Born March 25, 1918
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, U.S.A.

Early life

Cosell was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and raised in Brooklyn, New York. During this period, at the request of a father who had wanted restored the original Cosell family name that had been changed after they immigrated, he legally altered his surname to Cosell as of 1940.

Army

Cosell was admitted to the New York state bar in 1941, but when the U.S. entered World War II, Cosell entered the United States Army Transportation Corps, where he was eventually promoted to the rank of major.

Early career

After the war, Cosell began practicing law in Manhattan, primarily in union law.

Cosell also represented the Little League of New York, when in 1953 an ABC Radio manager asked him to host a show on New York flagship WABC featuring Little League participants. Cosell hosted the show for three years without pay, and then decided to leave the law field to become a full-time broadcaster. The show marked the beginning of a relationship with WABC and ABC Radio that would last Cosell his entire broadcasting career.

On radio, Cosell did his show, Speaking of Sports, as well as sports reports and updates for affiliated radio stations around the country; Cosell then became a sports anchor at WABC-TV in New York, where he served in that role from 1961 to 1974.

Cosell rose to prominence covering boxer Muhammad Ali, starting when he still fought under his birth name, Cassius Clay. In a time when many sports broadcasters avoided touching social, racial, or other controversial issues, and kept a certain level of collegiality towards the sports figures they commented on, Cosell did not, and indeed built a reputation around his catchphrase:

 

Cosell's style of reporting very much transformed sports broadcasting.

Cosell earned his greatest enmity from the public when he backed Ali after the boxer's championship title was stripped from him for refusing military service during the Vietnam War. Cosell found vindication several years later when he was the one able to inform Ali that the United States Supreme Court had unanimously ruled in favor of Ali. When Foreman knocked Frazier to the mat, Cosell yelled out

 

Monday Night Football/Later career

In 1970, American Broadcasting Company executive producer for sports Roone Arledge hired Cosell to be a commentator for Monday Night Football, the first time that American football was broadcast weekly in prime time. Cosell was accompanied most of the time by ex-football players Frank Gifford and Don Meredith.

Cosell was openly contemptuous of ex-athletes appointed to prominent sportscasting roles solely on account of their playing fame. Cosell's inimitable style distinguished Monday Night Football from previous sport programming, and ushered in era of more colorful broadcasters and 24/7 TV sports coverage.

Olympics

Along with Monday Night Football, Cosell worked the Olympics for ABC. A helicopter-mounted camera lingered on the scene for a few seconds and Cosell, who was calling the series for ABC, intoned in a weary voice, "There it is, ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning."

Cosell misidentified the building as a tenement, many of which had indeed burned down in recent years as landlords fled the borough and burned their buildings for the insurance money. Cosell's comment seemed to capture the widespread sensibility that New York was on the skids and in a permanent state of decline. Author Jonathan Mahler truncated the quote and used it as the title for his 2005 book on New York in 1977, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning.

University of Phoenix

Lennon's death

At 11:30 p.m. on December 8, 1980, during a game between the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots, Cosell stunned millions by announcing the murder of John Lennon live while performing his regular commentating duties on Monday Night Football. Lennon had appeared on Monday Night Football during the 1974 season, and was interviewed for a short breakaway segment by Cosell.

Non-sports related appearances

Cosell's colorful personality and distinctive nasal voice were featured to fine comic effect in a sports-themed episode of the ABC TV series The Odd Couple, as well as in the Woody Allen film Bananas. Such was his renown that while he never appeared on the show, Cosell's name was frequently used as an all-purpose answer on the popular 1970s game show Match Game.

Cosell's national fame was further boosted in the fall of 1975 when Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell aired late Saturday nights on ABC. Cosell later hosted the 1984-1985 season finale of Saturday Night Live.

Beginning in 1976, Cosell hosted the series of specials known as Battle of the Network Stars.

Controversy

On November 23, 1970, Cosell was broadcasting live when he became seriously ill due to a severe case of food poisoning, resulting in symptoms mimicking a stroke; The TNT feature film Monday Night Mayhem implied that Cosell was drunk at the time.

Denouncing boxing

Cosell denounced professional boxing in 1982 after a brutal, one-sided fight between Larry Holmes and Randall "Tex" Cobb. Late in the fight, Cosell famously asked the rhetorical question, "I wonder if that referee is constructing an advertisment for the abolition of the very sport that he is a part of?".

The "little monkey" incident

Cosell drew criticism during one Monday Night Football telecast in September 1983, for calling a wide receiver for the Washington Redskins, Alvin Garrett, a "little monkey." Among the evidence to support this claim is video footage of a 1972 preseason game, between the New York Giants and the Kansas City Chiefs, that features Cosell referring to Mike Adamle, a 5-foot-9-inch, 197-pound Caucasian, as a "little monkey."

Perhaps due to the strain of this controversy, Cosell left Monday Night Football shortly before the start of the 1984 NFL season, claiming that the NFL had "become a stagnant bore." By the time ABC finally got into the Super Bowl rotation with Super Bowl XIX, Cosell was already gone from Monday Night Football.

I Never Played the Game

After writing the book I Never Played the Game, which chronicled his disenchantment with fellow commentators on Monday Night Football, among other things, he was taken off scheduled announcing duties for the 1985 World Series (Tim McCarver subsequently took his spot) and was released by ABC television shortly thereafter. In I Never Played the Game Cosell coined the word "jockocracy" to describe how athletes were given announcing jobs that they had not earned.

In his later years, Cosell briefly hosted his own television talk show, Speaking of Everything, authored his last book What's Wrong With Sports, and continued to appear on radio and television, becoming more outspoken about his criticisms of sports in general.

Later life

After his wife of 46 years, Mary Edith Abrams Cosell, known as "Emmy", died in the fall of 1990, Cosell appeared in public less and less until his passing away in 1995 from a heart embolism, at the age of 77 at Beth Israel in New York City.

Cultural references

The Muppets and the cartoon Codename: Kids Next Door each featured people who were an imitation of Cosell. In the 1985 movie Better Off Dead, protagonist Lane Meyer played by John Cusack often races against two Asian brothers, one of whom speaks in the style of Cosell, having learned English from watching the sportscaster on television. 		Which is better, Meyer asks, speaking no English at all, or speaking Howard Cosell?

Cosell's voice was provided by legendary impressionist Rich Little. Little would later appear on a 2000 episode of the animated series Futurama as a wrestling announcer, modeling his speaking style on Cosell's. The feature film Ali features Jon Voight as Howard Cosell to a very close degree. The TNT feature film Monday Night Mayhem is about Cosell and the genesis of Monday Night Football on ABC in 1970.

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