This Week In Cigar History March 24-30

Living life by his catchphrase, “I’m just telling it like it is” sports casting legend and Macanudo lover Howard William Cosell (Cohen) was born this week on March 25th, 1918.

Blessed with an expansive vocabulary and a quick wit, Cosell launched his broadcasting career after leaving a successful legal practice- turning a three-year, non-paying stint hosting a show featuring clients from the Little League-into opportunities on ABC Radio’s flagship WABC.

The naturally verbose Cosell was revered and feared by sports figures because he broke the mold of “jockocracy” with his distinctive New Yawk nasal delivery, game analysis and hard- hitting questions. Cosell himself both celebrated and criticized the professional and collegiate athletic worlds he covered. Many consider his outspoken defense of Muhammad Ali against the New York State Boxing Commission’s decision to strip the boxer of his title- Cosell’s finest broadcast moment:

“What the government did to this man was inhuman and illegal under the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments…Nobody says a damned word about the professional football players who dodged the draft…but he was Black and he was boastful.”

Cosell’s adamantly tough personality encompassed his cigar smoking habits. Reportedly he insisted on puffing a cigar in an elevator, despite a woman’s verbal scolding because “…I’m Howard Cosell, and you are nobody.” -J. Ecochard-

news@doubledownmedia.com

3/24/08

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