Cosell Sings Own Praises

HUMILITY IS NOT a word that instantly comes to mind when one talks of Howard Cosell. Pomposity and arrogance are more likely characterizations of the aging sportscaster. Yet one hopes to see a touch of humility in Cosell's retrospective on his 33-year broadcasting career, I Never Played the Game.

No such luck. Instead of delivering an honest reflection on why he was perhaps the most hated man in sports, Cosell lectures about how he was a man more sinned against than sinning. I Never Played the Game is filled with little more than self-praise and name-droppings. Cosell mentions his presence at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and the 21 Club in New York more than he mentions his presence in the booth for Monday Night Football. He also gratuitously tosses in a story about former President Richard Nixon sending him a letter of praise. The Nixon story has nothing to do with anything else Cosell has talked about throughout the book.

Most annoying is Cosell's chapter on Monday Night Football. He constantly describes the telecast as something that transcends sport, a program which had to appeal to more than just the Bud-toting football fan, but also to wives, children, students, and occasional sports fans. Cosell, according to Cosell, was of course the key ingredient to that recipe, and Frank Gifford, O.J. Simpson, and Don Meredith were just a bunch of dumb jocks thrown in the booth as personal favors from Roone Arledge. Cosell even has the gall to say that the only reason Gifford still has a job is because of his close personal friendship with the ABC News president. How ironic, coming from the man about whom fans and sports critics alike have said the very same thing.

Cosell's claim that his own controversial personality made Monday Night Football more interesting than other sports telecasts is unchallengable. There is no doubt that people take more notice when they are infuriated, and Cosell's inanities on Monday Night Football did a lot of infuriating. But by directing backhanded slaps at everybody from Gifford and Meredith to CBS color commentator and football God John Madden, Cosell undermines his own credibility. He is not, as he would have it, the only redeeming person in the entire sports world. And while his Sportsbeat show is critically acclaimed, it is not popularly accepted. Cosell has failed to realize that Americans want their sports on the playing field and their sports journalism on the 7 o'clock news.

THE ONLY TIME I Never Played the Game is at all worth reading is when Cosell is talking about people who have played the game. When he isn't talking about himself, Cosell really does have some interesting things to say. His chapters on boxing and Sugar Ray Leonard are particularly well-done. This is the stuff of good sports books. Howard never gets anecdotal, but in these few chapters, he comes as close as one might expect from the loud-mouthed commentator.

Even so, Cosell tends to overstate all of his points. He spends nearly half the book detailing the intricacies of NFL rules hat allowed franchises to move from Los Angeles to Anaheim or from Oakland to Los Angeles, or from New York to New Jersey. Even Al Davis' eyes would grow bleary at the site of 150 pages about the history of carpetbagging franchises and how Howard Cosell was among the right-thinking people every time the question came up--no matter which side Howie took.

It is unclear what role Peter Bonventre played in helping Cosell write I Never Played the Game. Bonventre, now a producer on Cosell's Sportsbeat has been a writer and editor at the New York Times and Newsweek magazine, but he certainly hasn't managed to tame Cosell's over-exuberant portrayal of himself.

With a stronger editor, I Never Played the Game could have been a good book about the state of sports in America. Instead it is a book about Howard Cosell which is only slightly more than one would expect from Howard Cosell.

It used to be that to enjoy Monday Night Football, one had to put up with the annoying Howard Cosell. Nobody should have to put up with I Never Played the Game.