There You Have It
The Life, Legacy, and Legend of Howard Cosell
Publication Year: 2010
Published by: University of Massachusetts Press
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
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pp. vii-
List of Illustrations
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pp. ix-
Preface
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pp. xi-xv
What is the significance of a man like Howard Cosell: a sportscaster, a media figure, a celebrity? In an unpublished oral history interview, Cosell once said that only a few years after his death, nobody would remember who he was, that celebrity is fleeting. In some ways he was right. Many reading this book might have no, or very little, idea who Howard Cosell was...
Acknowledgments
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pp. xvii-xviii
Like all authors, I have a lot of people to thank for helping me write this book. I began the process of preparing this project in 2004 and early 2005. Jeff Pearlman and Farley Chase were two of my earliest contacts and provided valuable suggestions and encouragement. Each steered me in the right direction for interviews. I also owe the title of the book to a suggestion from Farley...
Introduction
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pp. 1-9
In 1976 Yale University refused to allow radical historian Herbert Aptheker to teach a seminar on his friend and colleague W. E. B. Du Bois as part of a one- semester student- organized program for undergraduates. The course would have paid Aptheker very little. It was a class that offered lecturers from outside the university an opportunity to teach...
1. Poor, Jewish, and from Brooklyn
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pp. 10-29
It should be no surprise to anybody who remembers Howard Cosell that even the date of his birth is a matter of controversy. In his first autobiography, Cosell, he writes that he was born on March 25, 1920.1 Other biographical references...
2. From the Law Office to the Broadcast Booth
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pp. 30-46
Reflecting on the era in which he became a sportscaster, Cosell wrote: “Great changes in technology were coming; an increase of leisure time; the exodus to the suburbs to escape from the great cities. The whole pattern of society was changing, and sports would become even more important.” In these changes he saw an opportunity...
3. On the Network “Blacklist”
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pp. 47-61
In Cosell, the best- selling autobiography written by Howard Cosell, with editorial assistance from Mickey Herskowitz, during his rapid ascent to mega-fame in the early 1970s, Cosell refers to his failure to land a job on network television as being “blacklisted.” In his choice...
4. Telling It Like It Was in the Civil Rights Era
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pp. 62-88
In his dual biography of Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell, sportswriter Dave Kindred tells the story of a meeting that took place in 1967, the day that the New York State Athletic Commission took away the boxer’s license to fight and stripped him of his heavyweight title...
5. Bigger than the Game
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pp. 89-120
In June 1966 Roone Arledge wrote to congratulate National Football League commissioner Pete Rozelle for negotiating a merger with his league’s rival, the American Football League. Part of that merger was an agreement to hold an interleague championship game, an event that would someday come to be known as the Super Bowl...
6. Essential Contradictions
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pp. 121-152
Most of Howard Cosell’s associates describe him as someone who, in person, was much like he was on television. A 1972 Washington Post profile called him a “most vulnerable man” who can “quote, endlessly, the shafts and needles hurled at him in print.” The article’s author, Lawrence Laurent, concludes...
7. Balancing Accounts
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pp. 153-174
In the late summer of 1981, ABC presented an entirely new sports program called SportsBeat. It was created by and starred Howard Cosell as a concession to him from the executives at ABC, who knew that he was getting tired of his role and his position within ABC Sports. In fact the hard feelings between Cosell and his employers...
8. Public Trust
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pp. 175-188
In March 1985 a little- known company called Capital Cities— a media conglomerate that owned thirty- six weekly newspapers, ten daily newspapers, ninety radio stations, two hundred network-affiliated television stations, and several magazines— announced that it was purchasing the ABC broadcasting network...
Notes
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pp. 189-208
Index
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pp. 209-220
Back Cover
E-ISBN-13: 9781613760130
E-ISBN-10: 1613760132
Print-ISBN-13: 9781558498365
Print-ISBN-10: 1558498362
Page Count: 224
Illustrations: 5 illus.
Publication Year: 2010
