Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth, and the Transformation of American Sports

by Mark Ribowsky

Overview

A deeply misunderstood sports legend, once the most hated and loved man in America, gets his due in this absorbing, revelatory biography.

Howard Cosell was one of the most recognizable and controversial figures in American sports history. His colorful bombast, fearless reporting, and courageous stance on civil rights soon captured the attention of listeners everywhere. No mere jock turned "pretty-boy" broadcaster, the Brooklyn-born Cosell began as a lawyer before becoming a radio commentator. "Telling it like it is," he covered nearly every major sports story for three decades, from the travails of Muhammad Ali to the tragedy at Munich. Featuring a sprawling cast of athletes such as Jackie Robinson, Sonny Liston, Don Meredith, and Joe Namath, Howard Cosell also re-creates the behind-the-scenes story of that American institution, Monday Night Football. With more than forty interviews, Mark Ribowsky presents Cosell's life as part of an American panorama, examining racism, anti-Semitism, and alcoholism, among other sensitive themes. Cosell's endless complexities are brilliantly explored in this haunting work that reveals as much about the explosive commercialization of sports as it does about a much-neglected media giant.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393080179
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/14/2011
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	6.48(w) x 9.54(h) x 1.58(d)

About the Author

Mark Ribowsky is a New York Times acclaimed, best-selling author of fifteen books, including biographies of Tom Landry, Al Davis, Hank Williams, and most recently, In the Name of the Father: Family, Football, and the Manning Dynasty. He lives in Florida.lorida.

Table of Contents

Introduction: A Gifted One 3

Part 1 Black and White (1918-1964)

1 "Insecurities in You That Live Forever" 23

2 An Obvious Maverick 45

3 Being There 66

4 Momentary Moments of Chagrin 87

5 "Let Go of the Mike, Cassius" 109

6 "Bedlam, Chaos, Confusion" 130

Part 2 Living Color (1964-1976)

7 An Electronic First 153

8 A Moral Imperative 178

9 A Stygian Burden 197

10 "That Son of a Bitch Is Drunk!" 222

11 Listing Toward Babylon 240

12 Munich 256

13 A Big Property 281

14 "Down Goes Fray-Zhuh! Down Goes Fray-Zhuh! Down Goes Fray-Zhuh!" 301

15 "Things Began to Turn Sour" 322

Part 3 Turn Out the Lights (1976-1995)

16 An Unholy Mess 351

17 "A Sad Way to End" 373

18 Ebb Tide 396

19 Requiem for a Heavyweight 416

Acknowledgments 437

Notes 439

Selected Bibliography 463

Index 467

Editorial Reviews

"...[T]he first thoroughly researched and effectively framed biography of Cosell and his times...

Beyond its poignant depiction of a flawed, paranoid and narcissistic character with the uncanny talent to immerse himself entirely, almost supernaturally, into emerging events, Ribowsky's Howard Cosell makes crystal clear the entwined path of Cosell's epic career within the world of Big Time sports and its broadcasting partners, as they quite literally created the monstrosities they are today."

Huffington Post - James Campion

"A powerful biography… well researched and well written."

Jewish Journal

"Ribowsky, who previously wrote a fine book on Satchel Paige, gives Cosell the treatment this controversial giant in sports journalism deserves."

New York Post

You could make a case that Howard Cosell (1918–1995) was the single most important sports broadcaster ever. You would be right. In a 1978 poll designed to identify TV's most and least popular personality, Cosell won both categories, a perfect measure of his ubiquity and the controversy he aroused. Today, with more sports competing for attention in a fractured media environment, it's difficult to imagine a commentator dominating the landscape as Cosell did during the '60s and '70s. Though he'd made tentative forays into radio, Cosell was 38 before he abandoned his law practice to attempt a career in sports. This ferociously ambitious reporter, analyst, interviewer and play-by-play man, with his near photographic memory, nasal voice, staccato delivery and large and frequently preposterous vocabulary, prided himself on "telling it like it is." At his peak, Cosell was everywhere on radio and TV, covering baseball, boxing and the Olympics, producing documentaries, penetrating deeper into the popular culture with sitcom appearances and movie roles. He announced to the world the assassination of John Lennon, presided over signal '70s events like the tennis "Battle of the Sexes," briefly hosted a prime-time variety show and even flirted with running for the Senate. From two platforms, especially, his ringside and reportorial coverage--and courageous defense--of the career of Muhammad Ali and his perch in the tumultuous Monday Night Football booth, Cosell colorfully demonstrated his capacity to hype and eventually overpower the events he covered. Contemptuous of sportswriters (they returned the hate), dismissive of colleagues and bosses--mediocrities, he called them--he attributed every slight to anti-Semitism or jealousy and ended up alienating even his stoutest friends and defenders, with the exception of his devoted and long-suffering wife. Ribowsky (Ain't Too Proud to Beg: The Troubled Lives and Enduring Soul of the Temptations, 2010, etc.) attributes Cosell's arrogance to a deep insecurity and an insatiable desire for acclaim. As he aged, "Humble Howard" descended into drink, cruelty and caricature, bitter at having wasted his talents in the "intellectual thimble" of sports. The definitive word on a loved, loathed, maddeningly complex broadcasting legend.

Kirkus Reviews

…at his best, [Ribowsky] captures the arc of a gritty, even glorious, American life.
—The Washington Post

Steven V. Roberts

Ribowsky, who seems to have read just about everything on Cosell, is a deft narrator of the life of Humble Howard, taking his readers from the skinny kid in Brooklyn who yearned to spend more time with an absent father to the sportscaster who helped make an event out of "Monday Night Football" by being so very different from anyone else who had ever called a game…All this Ribowsky describes vividly, with a critical eye and an awareness of his subject's hypocrisies.
—The New York Times Book Review

Richard Sandomir

"In Howard Cosell, author Mark Ribowsky reveals the obnoxious broadcaster who transformed sports reporting."

New York Daily News - Sherryl Connelly

"Ribowsky, who seems to have read just about everything on Cosell, is a deft narrator of the life of Humble Howard, taking his readers from the skinny kid in Brooklyn who yearned to spend more time with an absent father to the sportscaster who helped make an event out of “Monday Night Football” by being so very different from anyone else who had ever called a game."

New York Times Book Review

"Ribowsky has deftly captured this complicated figure, and anyone who cares about sports and how we talk about sports will find this book well worth the time, no matter how off-putting its subject was to many."

San Francisco Chronicle - Steve Kettman

"Mr. Ribowsky's book is an entertaining read and a thought-provoking portrayal of the multi-faceted Howard Cosell in all his glory and enmity. It is based on voluminous, well-sourced research into print and electronic material, coupled with numerous interviews with Cosell's contemporaries.

...the book vividly depicts Cosell as a brilliant meteor that soared through the electronic sky before ultimately fading, dimmed by controversy, age, exhaustion and perhaps his own obstreperous personality. Warts and all, there has never been, and may never be again, anyone quite like Howard Cosell."

Wall Street Journal "Bookshelf" - Don Ohlmeyer

"A sportscasting giant is interpreted for a generation that never knew him…Mark Ribowsky's clear-eyed take on the broadcaster who built his career on "telling it like it is" reveals the insecurities that fueled Cosell's bravado, charting his ascension from growing up in a middle-class home in Brooklyn to a short-lived career as a lawyer before elbowing his way into radio and TV and becoming the most influential—and controversial—sports commentator in America."

Sports Illustrated