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Remembering Howard Cosell

Larrylambert
3 min readFeb 12, 2023

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Did he really “tell it like it is?”

Creative Commons: Marianne O’Leary

One of the most successful franchises in TV history began on September 21, 1970. That was when “Monday Night Football” kicked off. One of the guys providing the impetus for the success of MNF was Howard Cosell. Howard was somewhat of an irritant to many people, but he undoubtably was a contributor to the success of MNF.

While Cosell is probably best known for his work in the MNF booth, he has a lot of meat on his resume. Here are some other things you might not have known about him.

1: Howard briefly had a show called “Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell.”

Ironically, Howards “Saturday Night Live” was pretty well dead on arrival.

2: The Woody Allen movie, “Sleeper” made a reference to Howard Cosell.

In the movie, Allen’s character, Miles Monroe, is shown some footage of Cosell by an historian who says, “At first we didn’t know exactly what this was, but we’ve developed a theory. We feel that when citizens in your society were guilty of a crime against the state, they were forced to watch this.” Allen then says, “Yes. That’s exactly what that was.” I knew it. I just knew Woody Allen used to be funny.

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Larrylambert
Larrylambert

Written by Larrylambert

You probably don't know my name, but have likely seen my work. I've written for numerous syndicated cartoon strips and my gags have appeared in national pubs.

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