25/03/2023
Click Link https://amzn.to/3tHRzyE to View Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth, and the Transformation of American Sports
March 25, 1918, Howard Cosell was born Howard William Cohen in Winston-Salem, NC (Forysth County). He was one of the most prominent Sports Journalist of his era covering Boxing and doing color on Monday Night Football. Cosell was widely known for his blustery, confident personality. Cosell said of himself, "I've been called arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, verbose, a showoff. And, of course, I am." Cosell was sardonically nicknamed "Humble Howard" by fans and media critics. In 1993, TV Guide named Howard Cosell The All-Time Best Sportscaster in its issue celebrating 40 years of television. (March 25, 1918 – April 23, 1995)
Before Cosell turned three, his family moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., where he later changed his surname from Cohen to Cossell to reflect his Polish roots. Cosell studied law at New York University, passed the state bar in 1941 and served in the U.S. Army in World War II.
After the war, Cosell practiced law in Manhattan and hosted a Saturday-morning ABC radio show featuring Little Leaguers interviewing major leaguers. He became a full-time ABC sportscaster in 1956, first gaining fame as a boxing announcer. He went on to co-anchor Monday Night Football, for which he is now best known.
With his staccato style of speech and trademark “tell-it-like-it-is” approach, Cosell transformed sports broadcasting, winning fans and detractors alike. He wrote four best-selling books, made several movie cameos, and was inducted into the American Sportscasters Association Hall of Fame in 1993.
Cosell rose to prominence in the early 1960s, covering boxer Muhammad Ali, beginning from the time he fought under his birth name, Cassius Clay. The two seemed to have an affinity despite their different personalities, and complemented each other in broadcasts.
Cosell was one of the first sportscasters to refer to the boxer as Muhammad Ali after he changed his name, and supported him when he refused to be inducted into the military. Cosell was also an outspoken supporter of Olympic sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith, after they raised their fists in a "black power" salute during their 1968 medal ceremony in Mexico City.
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 transformed sports broadcasting in the United States. 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 brought television sports reporting closer to "hard" news reporting. However, his distinctive staccato voice, accent, syntax, and cadence were a form of color commentary all their own.
Cosell earned his greatest interest 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 able to inform Ali that the United States Supreme Court had unanimously ruled in favor of Ali in Clay v. United States.
Cosell called most of Ali's fights immediately before and after the boxer returned from his three-year exile in October 1970. Those fights were broadcast on taped delay usually a week after they were transmitted on closed circuit. However, Cosell did not call two of Ali's biggest fights, the Rumble in the Jungle in October 1974 and the first Ali–Joe Frazier bout in March 1971.
Promoter Jerry Perenchio selected actor Burt Lancaster, who had never provided color commentary for a fight, to work the bout with longtime announcer Don Dunphy and former light-heavyweight champion Archie Moore. Cosell attended that fight as a spectator only. He would do a voiceover of that bout, when it was shown on ABC a few days before the second Ali-Frazier bout in January 1974.
Perhaps his most famous call took place in the fight between Joe Frazier and George Foreman for the World Heavyweight Championship in Kingston, Jamaica in 1973.
When Foreman knocked Frazier to the mat the first of six times, roughly two minutes into the first round, Cosell yelled out:
Down Goes Frazier! Down Goes Frazier! Down Goes Frazier!
His call of Frazier's first trip to the mat became one of the most quoted phrases in American sports broadcasting history. Foreman beat Frazier by a TKO in the second round to win the World Heavyweight Championship.
Cosell provided blow-by-blow commentary for ABC of some of boxing's biggest matches during the 1970s and the early 1980s, including Ken Norton's upset win over Ali in 1973 and Ali's defeat of Leon Spinks in 1978 recapturing the Heavyweight title for the third time.
His signature toupee was unceremoniously knocked off in front of live ABC cameras when a scuffle broke out after a broadcast match between Scott LeDoux and Johnny Boudreaux.
Cosell quickly retrieved his hairpiece and replaced it. During interviews in studio with Ali, the champion would tease and threaten to remove the hairpiece with Cosell playing along but never allowing it to be touched. On one of these occasions, Ali quipped, "Cosell, you're a phony, and that thing on your head comes from the tail of a pony."
With typical headline generating drama, Cosell abruptly ended his broadcast association with the sport of boxing while providing coverage for ABC for the heavyweight championship bout between Larry Holmes and Randall "Tex" Cobb on November 26, 1982.
Halfway through the bout and with Cobb absorbing a beating, Cosell stopped providing anything more than rudimentary comments about round number and the participants punctuated with occasional declarations of disgust during the 15 rounds. He declared shortly after the fight to a national television audience that he had broadcast his last professional boxing match.
Cosell also was an ABC commentator for the television broadcast of the second of the two famous 1973 "Battles of the Sexes" tennis matches, this one between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King.
Diagnosed with cancer in 1991, Cosell died of a heart embolism on April 23, 1995 at the age of 77.
The next year, he was posthumously awarded an Emmy for lifetime achievement in sports.
In its obituary for Cosell, The New York Times described Cosell's effect on American sports coverage:
He entered sports broadcasting in the mid-1950s, when the predominant style was unabashed adulation, [and] offered a brassy counterpoint that was first ridiculed, then copied until it became the dominant note of sports broadcasting.
His style contrasted greatly with Ray Scott, who is understated, and often used very few words. He also brought an antagonistic, almost heel-like commentary, notably his giving criticism of Terry Bradshaw by suggesting that he did not have the intelligence to win in the league.
Click Link https://amzn.to/33Jpkkk to Order or Review Sound and Fury: Two Powerful Lives, One Fateful Friendship
