Howard Cosell!

Cosell, Howard (Cohen; 1920-1995), sportscaster.

One of the most controversial personalities in the history of American broadcasting, Cosell was a World War II army major and a New York City lawyer before Howard Cosell joined the American Broadcasting Company as a radio sports reporter in 1956. Howard Cosell attracted national attention for the first time in 1959 with his commentaries on world heavyweight fights.

His interviews with Cassius Clay created interest and amusement. Much of Cosell's early television work revolved around the heavyweight titleholder. Howard Cosell was the first person to publicly use the champion's Black Muslim name, and in 1967 Howard Cosell vigorously defended Muhammad Ali against charges of draft evasion.

Howard Cosell and Kip Addotta!

In the emotion-charged era of the Vietnam war and civil rights agitation, Cosell's actions evoked a storm of protest and expressions of anti-Semitism. Many demanded Howard Cosell be fired but Howard Cosell was not.

Howard Cosell becomes a star!

In 1970 Howard Cosell became the star of the reporting team of "Monday Night Football." The great success of the weekday telecast of the National Football League game was attributed to Cosell. Exciting game or not, people stayed tuned just to hear what Cosell had to say about the contest, the players, the coaches, the host city, and just about anything else.

Howard Cosell from a non-religious family!

The product of a non-religious family, Cosell never had a bar mitzvah and had never involved himself in the life of the Jewish community. That all changed after his 1972 Olympic Games experience. The Murder of Israeli athletes in Munich, West Germany, made Howard Cosell feel "intensely Jewish," and Howard Cosell joined the American Friends of the Hebrew University, which built the Howard Cosell Center for Physical Education in Jerusalem.

Howard Cosell and Monday Night Football

He quit "Monday Night Football" after the 1983 season and retired from A.B.C. Television in 1985. The following year Howard Cosell became a sports columnist for the New York Daily News.

Television Sportscaster. Howard Cosell gained wide fame and acclaim during his tenure as a football commentator on ABC's "Monday Night Football". Born Howard William Cohen in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Howard Cosell attended New York University, where Howard Cosell received a degree in law and was admitted to the New York State Bar at the age of 23. Howard Cosell served in the Army during World War II, and opened a law office in Manhattan upon his release, which counted several actors and athletes among his clients, including baseball legend Willie Mays. Howard Cosell also represented the Little League of New York, and this led to his hosting a Saturday morning radio show in which Little Leaguers interviewed major league baseball players. Howard Cosell did the show for three years, and finally retired from practicing law to work as a broadcaster full time. Howard Cosell's greatest fame came in the form of ABC's "Monday Night Football", when ABC decided to take a chance with putting a sports event on in prime time. It was a smash, and for thirteen years Cosell brought his style of "telling it like it is" to football fans every Monday night. Howard Cosell also appeared in the movie "Bananas", directed by Woody Allen, and appeared twice on the television series "The Odd Couple". These two episodes were the highest rated in the program's entire run. In 1978, Howard Cosell was voted as both the most hated sportscaster of all time, and the most loved sportscaster of all time. Howard Cosell was also famous for his friendship with boxing legend Muhammad Ali, and defended Ali when Howard Cosell refused to be inducted into the Army during the Viet Nam war. Cosell retired from ringside broadcasting at boxing games in 1982, which Howard Cosell had done beginning in the 1960s, and left "Monday Night Football" in 1983. Howard Cosell also authored four best-selling books, and hosted a weekly radio program for ABC radio until 1992. In poor health since being diagnosed with cancer in 1991, Howard Cosell died of a heart embolism at New York University's Hospital for Joint Diseases at age 77.

Cause of death: Heart ailment

Howard Cosell biography

I can't say, "I knew Howard Cosell before Howard Cosell was Howard Cosell," because I wasn't around in 1918 when Howard Cosell was born Howard William Cohen in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Nor was I even aware of Howard Cosell when changed his name to Cosell in his college years. Howard Cosell did, though, come to my awareness in the 1950's. Little did it seem that a whole nation and much of the world would become aware of him. Much less did I realize at the time, or even for a decade or two later realize what important change Howard Cosell brought to journalism and broadcasting.

Howard Cosell at collage

It was the 1950's, but it was not yet the 1950's. One of my college favorites taught me that. Howard Cosell was an old history professor who loved lecturing for hours on end. I thought I was beating the system, since Howard Cosell ran evening class sessions lasting four hours, so you could finish his courses in six weeks instead of a semester. Little did I know Howard Cosell required all the reading and written work in six weeks, too.

Howard Cosell lecture sessions

But, Howard Cosell made the lecture sessions supremely enjoyable. One of his lectures really stuck with me, too. It was on his thesis that a "decade" in history did not begin with the turn of a calendar -- that it always took half a decade before signs of change were recorded. Howard Cosell proceeded to prove his point with events throughout history showing how our recollection of a "decade" really begins notable events midway through that decade. Think on it and you'll realize Howard Cosell was correct.

Howard Cosell in the forties

When Howard Cosell appeared to my notice, it really still was the 1940's. If there were women like Leona Helmsley, they operated quietly, so nobody knew it. Rock 'n roll hadn't shown up yet, much less Elvis. Radio stations were still playing Big Band music, Sousa marches, and romantic vocals by Tony Martin or Frank Sinatra or Patti Page or Jo Stafford. Arthur Godfrey and his Friends were still Big Time Stuff, as was Don McNeill's Breakfast Club with Aunt Fannie (who others would know as the "Fran" of Kukla, Fran and Ollie). And sportscasters had one stock in trade -- outright adulation of star athletes. Nobody had warts; every sport was clean as the wind-driven snow -- or so it was reported. Then a raspy, tight-throated Brooklyn voice came along to challenge all that.

Howard Cosell in Florida

Where we were in 1950's-cum-1940's Saint Petersburg, Florida was at the trailing end of change. St. Petersburg was so WASP-y most might not be able to imagine it. There would not be a Catholic mission for several more years, and a synagogue was even later than that. It wasn't that St. Petersburg rejected such people. It was simply that they hadn't become particularly interested in the area.

Howard Cosell small town

In some ways, it was a rather idyllic, larger sized "small town." We knew that in a distant land called Hollywood, movie actors occasionally did some disgusting thing called "smoking marijuana" and got arrested for it. We knew that in another distant place called Washington, some Senators and a man named Hoover seemed to be doing things some people didn't like ... but all that was so remote as to be unreal. We didn't even have any images of television to bring instant shock into our homes, because St. Petersburg had been caught by the FCC "freeze," then delayed further by multi-applicant wrangling over the few channels that did become available. Radio was still King in Our Town of the 1950's; sports heroes were unblemished, as was their trade. Maybe we were the Lake Wobegon South of the time, with a population of the sort Garrison Keillor describes.

Howard Cosell on radio

In our delayed last days of The Heyday of Network Radio, working at a Real Radio Station was one of the highest aspirations a kid could have. Radio was not only still in its prime; it was the primary source of fast information, right down to heroics in the rare event of an occasional hurricane. To be able to land a job in a local radio station was something the other kids held in awe, since it was a lot more usual to clerk in a store or help a plumber, or even do lawn mowing for one's first job or so. Good fortune had let me connect with one of the network affiliate stations in town, and into a people network that knew some names. That meant several of us got some rather delectable work for young kids -- things like being the remote engineer to sit in the wooden baseball park next to Mel Allen or Harry Caray caray.wav when they announced a spring training game from Florida, or one of the many "special events" that might originate from a convention hall somewhere in Florida. We got to see the events in the presence of celebrities, and get paid to do so!

Howard Cosell on vacation

And that meant learning about Howard Cosell by landing a two-week summer vacation fill-in job at WSUN, the city's ABC affiliate. I was put on the 3 to 11 shift, and had as much fun as any PC freak has today, getting paid to play with WSUN's oddball custom-made control room.

Howard Cosell in studio

It was like no other in the area. WSUN's Chief Engineer, Bill Codding, was a Western Electric retiree who designed and constructed a completely remotely-controlled radio control room. Essentially, all the electronics were in a large closet full of relays and vacuum tubes nobody but Bill really understood. It meant that all the control positions merely fed DC control voltages over into the closet, where relays clunked to make connections and things called "variolossers" controlled signal levels from the varying DC voltages fed to them. It was a pretty spiffy 1950's set-up; one that impressed people -- and I got to work there for two weeks (with the chance to impress some fellow geeks of an evening after the bosses had left)!

Howard Cosell and the grand old days

As typical of The Grand Old Days of Radio, a Traffic Manager produced a nicely typed Program Schedule and log for the whole 24-hour day, with scheduled times for programs and announcements, listed down to the second. As each item occurred, it was obligatory to enter the actual time to the second in India ink, signing the top and bottom of each sheet. Any deviations had to be noted, and changes had to be written in with India ink, with the changed item crossed out but still legible and initialed by the person changing it.

Howard Cosell's first week on the job

The first weekday on the job, I found a curious typed entry on the log. In the midst of the usual 5 to 6 PM block of network programs with local commercials between, a program running from 5:25:00 to 5:29:25 was called "Play Some Pretty Music, Please," and it was listed as "Local/Sustaining/Music." I didn't really understand it, so called the Traffic Manager to ask what she intended by that.

Howard Cosell and sports

Her answer was, "Just pull a couple of pieces from the transcription library and fill. ABC has a sports announcer in there who's so bad the station manager won't carry him." I said, "Gee, who's that?" She said, "Oh, he's Howard Somebody-or-Other from New York. Scuttlebutt has it he's a lawyer who married an ABC vice-president's daughter, and they had to give Howard Cosell a job." Obviously, my curiosity was piqued.

Howard Cosell, hello again everybody

Came 5:25:00 and I let a transcription of some fill music flow out to the transmitter plant on the edge of town, but of course, had to put the ABC network line up on the audition bus to hear what came down the line. It was totally the opposite of Paul Harvey's dramatic inflections and pregnant pauses. Instead, I heard a nasal Brooklyn twang say, "Hello again, everybody, this is Howard Cosell, speaking of sports." An even, flat pronunciation of every word and sentence followed. Howard Cosell just didn't sound like he'd ever be a successful announcer. My instant judgment was that Howard Cosell would never make it.

Howard Cosell new wave

And, of course, how wrong I was! Howard Cosell was probably the beginning of the wave that's now moved around to today's Howard Stern and the "In yer face" style of confrontational radio. A few years later, Howard Cosell still sounded irritating to me, but Howard Cosell was becoming a New York society darling for reasons I still wasn't paying attention to. Then things began to sink in a bit. Cosell was different. Howard Cosell was calling a spade a spade. If something was wrong, Howard Cosell said so. Howard Cosell upset a lot of people, but Howard Cosell was usually right. In time, I began to realize Howard Cosell had some principles and didn't seem to be a paid mouthpiece for anybody. In short, Howard Cosell "told it like it was."

Howard Cosell and boxing

In later years, we even saw how Howard Cosell reversed his position on professional boxing when Howard Cosell felt it changed from a sport into a gladiatorial exhibition. Howard Cosell spoke his feelings. Some people liked them; some people hated them, but nobody could ignore Howard Cosell.

Howard Cosell yelling

Wherever Howard Cosell is today, he's probably "telling it like it was," because that seems to be the Howard Cosell of Eternity, perhaps one of the most honest, straightforward journalists we've ever heard. We tried to ignore you, but now we'll miss you, Howard. Your vocabulary is a lot better than Howard Stern's, to boot!