THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 24, 1995 TAG: 9504240155
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Bob Molinaro
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
It was sometime in the late '70s that TV Guide ran a poll that showed Howard Cosell to be the most popular and unpopular announcer in sports.
To tell it like it is, there has never been anyone quite like Cosell for infuriating and delighting, for captivating in so many ways, an audience tuned in to games.
He had a face for radio and his words spilled out in grating, nasal tones, but what made Cosell a TV original were his opinions.
His opinions, delivered in staccato outbursts, introduced America to a raucous world of sports we take for granted now. Cosell took control away from the jocks and play-by-play men and gave it to the guy sitting at the bar.
He did more than make statements. His opinions were two-by-fours aimed at viewers' comfortably held beliefs and prejudices.
Maybe a former jock, if he was sufficiently famous, could get away with bludgeoning the audience like that. But Cosell? He had never played the game. What right did he have?
At the height of his powers, Cosell was a provocateur and carnival barker who was vilified by fans and newspaper writers. As the TV Guide survey indicates, however, his detractors became as important as his admirers in elevating him to a place of great prominence within our society.
What would the Cosell legend be without the stories of bar patrons throwing bricks through TV sets beaming Howard's image? Or of the night in 1979 when a group of Baltimore rowdies rocked the limousine Cosell was riding in following an Orioles loss in the World Series.
We will never see another like How-wud Ko-ssell. We will never again respond so viscerally to a talking head.
For one thing, television has changed, and we, citizens of TV Nation, have been changed by television. In an age of 57 channels, people become recyclable blurs. No man's comments, no matter how clever or truculent, are any more memorable than anyone else's. We have become, in other words, comfortably numb.
Timing is everything in life, as in sports, and Cosell's bombast was perfect for his era.
``The '60s were just right for me,'' he once said. ``The time of the anti-hero.''
At his peak, Cosell was sports for a lot of people. Before he came along, television sportscasters were background noise, not the reason viewers tuned in. They were voices, not troublemakers.
It is for this that Cosell is eulogized and thanked, for making the man with the mike more important than he should be.
Tom Shales, television critic for The Washington Post, once wrote: ``Howard Cosell is not providing the commentary for the sporting event; the sporting event is providing commentary for Howard Cosell.''
So it is that we cannot think of Muhammad Ali's trials and tribulations without hearing Cosell's voice. Or imagine how the early years of ``Monday Night Football'' could have been such rollicking good fun had Howard not been sitting next to Dandy Don.
When Cosell left the stage, sports broadcasting somehow seemed less free-spirited.
Cosell's vanity compelled him to point out that nobody could ever do what he did. This is certainly true. But, then, no one has even attempted to pick up where he left off.
Today, when the volume on TV sports is turned up higher than ever, it's amazing how little of what is said is worth savoring. Or enough to send a brick through a TV screen. In contrast, Cosell was the enemy of neutrality. People loved him and loved to hate him. In the end, it is one and the same.
For a period that many will remember as the golden age of network sports, much of our preoccupation with TV was a fascination with Howard Cosell.
KEYWORDS: DEATH by CNB