Howard Cosell

Howard William Cosell, born Howard William Cohen (25 March 1918 – 23 April 1995), was an American sports journalist and broadcaster whose nasal cadence, blunt opinions and outsized presence on Monday Night Football made him one of the most familiar voices of late twentieth-century television.

He was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and raised in Brooklyn. He earned a law degree from New York University in 1941 and served as a major in the United States Army Transportation Corps during the Second World War. He practised law in New York before drifting into broadcasting in the 1950s, hosting a Little League radio programme for ABC.

His coverage of boxing made his reputation. He stood by Muhammad Ali through the fighter's refusal of induction during the Vietnam War and called many of Ali's bouts, including the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle in Kinshasa. From 1970 to 1983 he served in the booth on Monday Night Football alongside Don Meredith and Frank Gifford, drawing audiences who tuned in as much for him as for the game.

Cosell coined the slogan I'm just telling it like it is, and his memoirs, Cosell in 1973 and I Never Played the Game in 1985, attacked the commercialisation of sport. He retired from boxing commentary after the 1982 Larry Holmes–Tex Cobb fight and from football the following year. He died of cardiac arrest in Manhattan at the age of 77.

The given name Howard comes from the Norman French Huard, itself from the Old Germanic Hugihard, combining hugu meaning heart or mind with hard meaning brave or hardy. It became established as an English surname before turning into a first name in the nineteenth century. Howard Cosell carried it through a brash and influential broadcasting life, and he is remembered as a giant of American sports television.