Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth, and the Transformation of American Sports [NOOK Book]

From Barnes & Noble

"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!" We loved him, we loved to hate him, but stentorian sportscaster Howard Cosell (1918-1995) could not be ignored. In fact, at times, he became the story and famous athletes his accomplices. As Mark Ribowsky's biography vividly notes, Cosell helped change the face of televised sports with his Monday Night Football press-box dynamics and his ongoing dialogue with Muhammad Ali (a.k.a. Cassius Clay). For any old sports fan, this well-researched book will enhance your memories; for younger sports fans, it will give you a new sense of televised sports as we now see them.

Richard Sandomir

Steven V. Roberts

New York Post

Jewish Journal

Sports Illustrated

New York Times Book Review

James Campion - Huffington Post

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.”

Sherryl Connelly - New York Daily News

Steve Kettman - San Francisco Chronicle

Huffington Post

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.— James Campion

New York Daily News

San Francisco Chronicle

Don Ohlmeyer

...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.”

Kirkus Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review

For Americans of a certain generation, just the name Howard Cosell instantly summons into memory's ear a brash, nasal yammer of the voice, one that blared from American TVs and radios for three decades, demanding to be recognized, whether it was spinning verbiage around some of sport's heaviest moments — such as when Palestinian terrorists kidnapped and eventually murdered eleven Israeli Olympians in 1972 — or its lightest (Battle of the Network Stars, anyone?).

Cosell was the King of Sports, for a time at least, because he asked questions that other people wouldn't and wasn't worried about ruffling feathers. What did concern him, though, was what everybody thought of this tough-talking lawyer out of Brooklyn.

Mark Ribowsky's Howard Cosell: The Man, the Myth, and the Transformation of American Sports chronicles how the man's massive ego and equally outsized insecurity worked in tandem to push him into nearly every American's living room, first as the host of a radio show, Speaking of Sports, and then breaking into television as a sports anchor for WABC in New York — and really makes you glad you never worked with the guy. Cosell never forgot — or forgave — anyone who said or wrote something unpleasant about him. And pretty much everybody in the sporting and broadcast worlds fell into that category at some time or another before the sportscaster's death in 1995 of a heart embolism. "Arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, verbose, a showoff. I have been called all of these," Cosell once said. "Of course, I am." Such moments of self-awareness are refreshing, since Cosell generally felt free when off the air to let loose on security guards, underlings, and bosses alike with the tired "Do you know who I am?" tirade. And you can be sure American TV viewers of the late 1960s and '70s knew who his public persona was. That was partially due to the relationship Cosell struck up with Muhammad Ali when the boxer was still called by his birth name, Cassius Clay. The pair had a special chemistry, and each used the other to enhance his own fame. When Ali was stripped of his heavyweight title in 1967 after refusing, on religious grounds, to be drafted into the U.S. Army for the Vietnam War, Cosell, who had been a major in the Army during World War II, emerged as one of the few public voices backing him. The building up of Ali, a true culture changer, may be Cosell's greatest legacy (along with his part in creating Monday Night Football as a program and an institution).

Ribowsky's book is not a glorification of Cosell. In fact, it is often unrelenting in showing just how egotistical, bombastic, highly unpleasant, and extremely insecure he could be. Although the personality on display here is definitely unpalatable, Ribowsky is not only concerned with likability. He constructs a good case for thinking that the tough journalism of Cosell's earlier years shifted the future of sports coverage (and it certainly appears that Cosell was a lonely pioneer). But the culture also completely changed around Cosell, especially with the introduction of 24/7 broadcast news. The sports journalists who now seek out the tough stories may owe Cosell something, but mostly just a tip of the hat.

And it's not as if Cosell finished out his own run without practicing lazy or soft journalism. He ultimately gained too many friends in the higher echelons of the sporting world — and enmeshed himself in too many petty squabbles — to allow anyone to accept him as an unbiased reporter. What we're left with is primarily the memory of that voice. Loud though it still rings, the diminution is little short of tragic.

Mark J. Miller writes a daily sports column for Yahoo! His writing has also appeared in ESPN, Men's Journal, Glamour, The Washington Post, Runner's World, and Salon, among others.

Reviewer: Mark J. Miller