Howard William Cosell (born Howard William Cohen; March 25, 1918 – April 23, 1995) was an American sports journalist.
Easton Press Howard Cosell books
What's Wrong with Sports - signed first edition - 1991
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Howard Cosell biography
Cosell was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on March 25, 1918 to Nellie and Isidore Cohen, who was an accountant. He was raised in Brooklyn, New York. His parents had wanted him to become a lawyer. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in English from New York University, where he was a member of Pi Lambda Phi. He then went to the New York University School of Law where he earned his JD, and was a member of the NYU Law Review.
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 quickly promoted to the rank of major, becoming one of the youngest majors to serve at that time. During his time in the service, he married Mary Abrams in 1944, at Prospect Presbyterian Church in Maplewood, New Jersey.
Career
After the war, Cosell began practicing law in Manhattan, primarily in union law. Some of his clients were actors, and some were athletes, including Willie Mays. Cosell's own hero in athletics was Jackie Robinson, who served as a personal and professional inspiration to him in his career. 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.
Cosell took his "tell-it-like-it-is" approach when he teamed with the ex-Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher "Big Numba Thirteen" Ralph Branca on WABC-77's pre- and post-game radio shows of the New York Mets in their nascent years beginning in 1962. He pulled no punches in taking members of the hapless expansion team to task.
Otherwise on radio, Cosell did his show, Speaking of Sports, as well as sports reports and updates for affiliated radio stations around the country; he continued his radio duties even after he became prominent on television. Cosell then became a sports anchor at WABC-TV in New York, where he served in that role from 1961 to 1974. He expanded his commentary beyond sports to a radio show entitled "Speaking of Everything".
Cosell rose to prominence covering boxer Muhammad Ali, starting when he still fought under his birth name, Cassius Clay. The two seemed to be friends despite their very different personalities, and complimented each other in broadcasts. 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:
"I'm just telling it like it is."
Cosell's style of reporting very much transformed sports broadcasting. Whereas previous sportscasters had mostly been known for color commentary and lively play-by-play, Cosell had an intellectual approach. His use of analysis and context arguably brought television sports reporting very close to the kind of in-depth reporting one expected from "hard" news reporters. At the same time, however, his distinctive staccato voice, accent, syntax, and cadence were a form of color commentary all their own.
Howard Cosell Muhammad Ali
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.
In February 1970, he was calling a world heavyweight title bout involving Joe Frazier and Jimmy Ellis for ABC's Wide World of Sports when he made a call that would sound familiar to another boxer just three years later.
"Down Goes Ellis! Down Goes Ellis! He is beaten!"
This became one of the most famous lines in American sports broadcasting history.
When Liston sat on his stool refusing to answer the bell at the start of the seventh round, Cosell started screaming, "Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Sonny Liston's not coming out! Sonny Liston's not coming out! He's out! The winner and new heavyweight champion of the world is Cassius Clay!"
During Cosell's tenure as a sportscaster, he maintained a feuding stance with legendary New York sports writer and columnist Dick Young, who rarely missed an opportunity to denigrate the broadcaster in print.
Monday Night Football / Later career
In 1970, ABC 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 "Dandy" Don Meredith.
Cosell was openly contemptuous of ex-athletes appointed to prominent sportscasting roles solely on account of their playing fame. He regularly clashed on-air with Meredith, whose laid-back style was in sharp contrast to Cosell's.
The Cosell-Meredith-Gifford dynamic helped make Monday Night Football a success; it frequently was the number one rated program in the Nielsen ratings. Cosell's inimitable style distinguished Monday Night Football from previous sports programming, and ushered in an era of more colorful broadcasters and 24/7 TV sports coverage.
Olympics
Along with Monday Night Football, Cosell worked the Olympics for ABC. He played a key role on ABC's coverage of the Palestinian terror group Black September's mass murder of Israeli athletes in Munich at 1972; providing reportage directly from the Olympic Village (his image can be seen and voice heard in Steven Spielberg's film about the terror attack). In 1976 Summer Games in Montreal, Cosell was the main voice for boxing. He performed the sportscasting duties for Sugar Ray Leonard's victorious gold medal winning bout.
"The Bronx is Burning"
Game 2 of the 1977 World Series took place in blustery Yankee Stadium on October 12, 1977. An hour or so before game time, a fire started in Public School Number 3, an abandoned elementary school a few blocks from the ball park. By the time the game began at 8 p.m., the building was fully involved and the fire had gone to five alarms. 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 abridged the quote and used it as the title for his 2005 book on New York in 1977, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning. ESPN produced a 2007 mini-series based on the book called The Bronx is Burning.
Howard Cosell John Lennon
At 9:30 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:
"This, we have to say it, remember this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy, confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps, of all The Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to the Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival."
Lennon had appeared on Monday Night Football during the December 9, 1974 telecast 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 comedic effect in a sports-themed episode of the ABC TV series The Odd Couple, as well as in the Woody Allen films Bananas and (in a brief cameo) Sleeper. Such was his celebrity 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. The show was similar in many ways to a show NBC had launched, NBC's Saturday Night, which would later become the far more well-known Saturday Night Live. Despite bringing a young comedian, Billy Crystal, to national prominence, the show was canceled after three months. 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. The two-hour specials pitted stars from each of the three broadcast networks against each other in various physical and mental competitions. Cosell hosted all but one of the nineteen specials, including the final one airing in 1988.
Later life and death
Cosell was the 1995 recipient of the Arthur Ashe Courage Award. After his wife of 46 years, Mary Edith Abrams Cosell, known as "Emmy", died in the fall of 1990, he appeared in public less and less until Howard Cosell died 1995 from a heart embolism at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City.
What's Wrong with Sports
The most popular, most controversial, and most imitated sportscaster of all time speaks out about the sorry state of sports today: Pete Rose, the corruption of college athletics, drugs in sports, and much more.
Source and additional information: Howard Cosell