Cosell, Howard

Howard Cosell, original name Howard William Cohen, (born March 25, 1918, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, U.S.—died April 23, 1995, New York, New York, U.S.), American sportscaster who reached the pinnacle of his career as an audacious commentator on television’s Monday Night Football (1970–83) and was simultaneously crowned the nation’s most loved and most hated sports broadcaster. He was known for his twangy Brooklyn monotone and his brash outspokenness throughout his 30-year career in sports broadcasting.

Cosell grew up in Brooklyn. He earned a law degree from New York University, passing the bar in 1941. He represented entertainment and sports figures in his law practice, and in 1953 he became the host of a radio show that featured Little League players questioning Major League Baseball stars. Three years later, he abandoned his law practice to become a full-time sports broadcaster.

Cosell’s determination to "tell it like it is" often created controversy or criticism, but he reveled in the attention his trenchant observations drew. Cosell, who sported a trademark toupee and, by his own admission, had been variously described as "arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, verbose, and a show-off," willingly embraced those characterizations as a form of homage. He was remembered as the first to defend Muhammad Ali when the boxer was stripped of his heavyweight title after refusing to be drafted into the army because of religious reasons, and he voiced his approval of the Black-power salutes made by sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith at the 1968 summer Olympic Games. Such was Cosell’s fame as the commentator for Monday Night Football that it was said that possibly most Americans first learned that former Beatle John Lennon had been shot and killed in 1980 when Cosell revealed the news on a Monday Night Football broadcast.

In 1982 Cosell refused to cover any more boxing matches after reporting a particularly brutal bout between Larry Holmes and Tex Cobb. The following year he ignited controversy when he referred during a football broadcast to wide receiver Alvin Garrett as a “little monkey,” and despite support from Garrett himself, among others, the incident contributed to his decision to leave Monday Night Football at the end of 1983, complaining that pro football had become "a stagnant bore." After the publication of his 1985 book, I Never Played the Game, which featured uncomplimentary portraits of some of his former colleagues at ABC, the network dropped his Sportsbeat program, ending his presence on television. He returned to radio until he retired from broadcasting in 1992, six months after surgery to remove a cancerous chest tumour. Cosell was posthumously awarded a Sports Emmy for lifetime achievement.