Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People
Dirt Nap City is the podcast about history's most interesting dead people. In each episode, Alex and Kelly dive into the life of a famous person that you have heard of, but probably don't know much about. Our stories are about actors, entrepreneurs, politicians, musicians, inventors, explorers and more! We also cover things that used to be popular but have fallen out of favor. Things like pet rocks, drive in theaters, Jolt Cola, and many other trends of yesterday make up our "dead ends". But whether we are talking about interesting historical figures or past trends, the show is funny, light-hearted, entertaining, informative and educational. You will definitely learn something new and probably have some laughs along the way. Everyone will eventually move to Dirt Nap City, so why not go ahead and meet the neighbors?
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Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People
Who Was Howard Cosell?
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Howard Cosell was a major figure on television in the middle of the twentieth century, but he was not necessarily well loved by his fans. Many found him arrogant and condescending. In this episode we take a look at the sports legend who "never played the game". From his time as a small time radio broadcaster to becoming the face of the ABC television network's sports programming, we "tell it like it is".
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Dirt Nap City is the podcast about the most interesting dead people in history.
Subscribe and listen to learn about people you've heard of, but don't know much about.
Someday we'll all live in Dirt Nap City, so you should probably go ahead and meet the neighbors!
Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of Dirt Nav City. The show about interesting dead people. I'm Alex. I'm here with my friend Kelly. Hey Kelly, how's it going today? It's going pretty well, Alex. Good to see you, man. I got a good one for you today. This is somebody that I'm sure that you know. I don't even wonder about that. It's the most sports adjacent one I've done since Evil Knievel, but don't worry about it. I think I think it'll be fine. If you're a longtime listener of this program, you know that uh I'm a sports fan. Kelly, not so much. Um, but it's not like you're not a fan. You just aren't as knowledgeable that I that as I am, right? I'm not a fan. Oh, not a fan. Hate sports.
SPEAKER_02I don't hate it. I I I I'm sort of indifferent to it.
SPEAKER_00Bunch of dudes running around trying to get a little ball into a little hole. Is that what basically how you feel about sports?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I guess if it's a ball-based sport, yes. I mean, there's other things besides balls and holes.
SPEAKER_00Bunch of guys running around in skimpy outfits, trying to chase each other and get points on the board. Is that how you Yeah, there you go.
SPEAKER_02Or guys and gals. Let's let's be uh it's 2023 out.
SPEAKER_00So you hate women's sports too.
SPEAKER_02I don't hate it. I'm indifferent to it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But, anyways, I don't think that's gonna matter here. I think the person that I chose is someone you're familiar with and someone you'll get a kick out of. Sports adjacent. Sports adjacent. So um this um man was born in 1918 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Um, not really thought of as a southerner, though, so don't uh let that uh mess you up. Died in 1995 in New York City and raised in Brooklyn, New York. I think the best clue I can give to this person is you know, in the 70s, everybody had or 70s and 80s, everybody had their impressions, like their stock impressions that they did, right? So, like everybody had a John Wayne, right? Did you have a John Wayne impression when you were growing up? I sure did, Pelgram. There you go. And everybody had a Ronald Reagan, like Will, Will, Will, that's all you had to do is say, Will and uh Jack Nicholson, it's the World Series man. You know, everybody had their impressions, and everybody had an impression of this guy, too.
SPEAKER_02Okay, can I do it?
SPEAKER_00Sure, please.
SPEAKER_02This is Howard Cosell coming to you live from the ballpark.
SPEAKER_00That's right, that's right. Howard Cosell, that's right. Wow, sports adjacent. Such a unique delivery that he had that everybody seemed to know who he was and be able to imitate him to. And most I don't know, well, yeah, most people didn't like the guy, right? Most people, when you brought up his name, would either roll their eyes or say, I hate that guy.
SPEAKER_02Um that knew him or most people that didn't know him?
SPEAKER_00Um, most viewers, and especially people that knew him. People that knew him thought he was an ass, and he was pompous, and he was arrogant, and he was dismissive. And viewers on TV love to hate him. He was somebody that was inaccessible. He wasn't, didn't have much in common with the common man uh uh of the 70s who watched sports, and and back in the 70s, I think uh sports viewing was primarily a a male uh pursuit. And he he covered sports like boxing and football that mostly men watched back then, and um most blue-collar guy types uh really didn't like the guy.
SPEAKER_02Um interesting.
SPEAKER_00Yet he was one of the most popular people of the uh definitely of the late 20th century. And if you grew up uh around when we did, so this is what you call my lane, um everybody knew Howard Cosell, and everybody had a take on Howard Cosell, and most people that take was negative about Howard Cosell. Would you say there's an equivalent of him today? And if so, who is it? No, no, there's no equivalent of him today. I mean, you know, Stephen A. Smith, do you know who that is? I don't. Okay, well, so this is so yeah, so there's a guy on ESPN who's kind of a bloviator um that just has an opinion about everything. And I think to this, you we'll talk at the end about uh kind of legacy. I think he spawned these kind of folks that are kind of, you know, everybody's got an opinion now um way of covering uh sports, but there's nobody quite as uh polarizing today, and not only polarizing, but as famous as Howard Cosal. Remember, this is the time when we only had three networks on television, and um, and so everybody knew the guy. Uh Monday Night Football was the number one show on television most of the time, and so everybody knew who this guy was. Um did you remember him, right?
SPEAKER_02Sure, sure. I can picture what he looks like. I mean, I knew the I knew the impression, right? And I just I remember it being a big impression that they would do on Saturday Night Live or do on, you know, comedians would do that. But the big the big thing that I think that you're bringing up, and this is an interesting an interesting part of his legacy, I suppose, is before him, maybe most sports commentators were more neutral and just sort of telling it as they saw it versus commentating, right? So, and that's probably what's changed with news anchors as well, is is you know, now now news is a little bit more of an editorial thing than it used to be. Sports became a more editorial thing with CoSell.
SPEAKER_00I think you're exactly right. In fact, you say tell it he his thing was he tells it like it is. That was his kind of his sketch. I remember that. I remember that. Tell it like it is. Um kind of be flipping into those uh bad impressions of him as as we go because it's impossible to kind of quote him without uh kind of doing an impression of him. So let me tell you about about this guy, all right? Um he went to law school and um became a uh a lawyer, and his his parents' name were uh last name was Cohen, um, but the original his grandfather's original name was Kosell, so he changed it back to his grandfather's original name while he was in law school. And uh somehow he had a sports radio show in the early 50s. He was he was on locally in in Brooklyn while he was a lawyer.
SPEAKER_02He was a lawyer full-time and did Side Hustle was a sports radio show on the radio.
SPEAKER_00He just did like, yeah, like a weekend show that that hardly anybody listened to, and this is back when you could just get on the radio, you know. Uh and he uh but he was still a lawyer and the and this is the early 1950s, so he was, you know, in the in his in his 30s already. And then um one of his clients was the Little League of New York, and the president of ABC Radio, because I guess the show that he did was a local show, but ABC Radio's headquarters were also in New York. He um he asked, he's he said, Hey, I think it'd be great if you could host a show about little leaguers because um they wanted a kind of a uh a relationship with Little League baseball. So he would ask him to host a show with Little League's, and that was his beginning of his relationship with ABC. ABC was the only network that he ever worked for. That was Wide World of Sports, right? Uh no, that show was just a radio show about Little League.
SPEAKER_02No, but I mean ABC is is where Wild Wide World of Sports was, I believe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. In 1956, he quit law to become a full-time broadcaster. And he had another radio show called Speak, or he wanted to start a radio show called Speaking of Sports. And he came to ABC and he said, Hey, can I do a show on national radio? And they said, Sure, if you can find a sponsor. So he had one of his family, uh, one of his relatives owned a shirt company, and he he said, Hey, you want to be a sponsor? So the next thing you know, he had a he had a sponsor, and he was on a show called Speaking of Sports, where he kind of gave opinions about uh sports. Uh he worked that into doing um uh the New York Mets uh was an expansion team in 1962, they had just started, and um by then he uh he worked his way into doing pre- and post-game shows for so the New York Mets for the New York Mets. So he was on his way. Well, around that time in the early 60s, he started covering a boxer named Cassius Clay. You know who I'm talking about there, Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali. And so much like FDR is kind of a background character in a lot of our uh our episodes, uh Muhammad Ali, all the Roosevelts, really. Right, yeah, that's true. Um, in this episode, even though Muhammad Ali is a far more consequential character in um 20th century America, um, he's an integral part of the Howard Kosell story, too. Huge part, but he's you know, this isn't a story about Ali. This is a story about Howard Kosell. But Ali was much more, you know, significant.
SPEAKER_02Well, the two of them, the two of them were kind of associated with each other. You know, they came up, came up in the same time.
SPEAKER_00They kind of needed each other to to to to be big. Um they really got along well in kind of uh uh an odd couple sort of way. Uh when Cassius Clay became, when he changed his name, when he when uh um when he uh um found Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Ali, uh a lot of sportscasters back then would not refer to him by his new name. Um and Howard Kosell was one of the first to refer to him by his own name, which shows respect, right?
SPEAKER_06Yep.
SPEAKER_00Um they got along very well, they had completely different personalities. I mean, we've got a a white Jewish older guy uh from Brooklyn, and then you've got uh a young Ali from Louisville, um, which he was a fast talker and uh kind of had a rhyming scheme to his uh to his cadence and completely different guys, but they really played off well. Howard Kosal also supported Ali when he refused to go into the military, uh when he refused to go to Vietnam. Uh Howard Kosell supported him, which um made him endeared him to Ali, but kind of turned him off to a lot of the general uh public as well. That was a very controversial position for a mainstream person to have.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00He was also a supporter of the Olympic protest of Tommy Smith and John Carlos when they put up their fists for black power in 1968 in the Mexico City Olympics, and and so you know he he he came across as a as a liberal um you know broadcaster where a lot of people, like you said earlier, didn't have positions, they didn't take political stances. Right. Um, but already a lot of people kind of didn't stand him anyway, couldn't stand him anyway, so he didn't really lose a lot of of viewers. And like I said, every time somebody would be critical, he would say, I'm just telling it like it is. At that time, most play-by-play was right down the middle, like you said earlier. And the color commentary part was for the ex uh jocks. Um, he was more of an intellectual person. He wasn't he didn't bring a lot of um that locker room talk to it. He was an intellectual, he used words that a lot of people couldn't understand. Um, he used obscure kind of SAT words. There's a great clip. I couldn't find a great um uh clean recording of it, but there's a great clip where he's asking Ali. Ali's about to fight somebody, and and um uh he he said, Are you worried about this fight coming up? And Ali says, uh uh no, I'll take on any time anybody, anywhere, anytime. And Howard Kosell says, You're being rather truculent. And Ali says, Well, whatever truculent is, if it's good, I'm that.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. That's a great word, too. What it I don't even know what that means, truculent.
SPEAKER_00I think it means like aggressive and kind of um um yeah, just kind of uh aggro. His most famous call. Do you know what his most famous call, like when you hear uh when you think of uh a famous sports call of Howard Coasell, do you know what uh what uh I don't. This would be George Foreman versus uh Joe Frazier, 1973. So boxing was a big thing for him. Boxing was a big thing. You want to hear this clip? You'll you'll recognize it when I play.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, let's hear it.
SPEAKER_00Wow. That was a big deal. Down goes Frasia. That was actually the first time Joe Frazier had ever been knocked down in his career. And George Foreman, um, who uh a lot of our listeners might know just as uh the guy that makes the grills, right? Um, was an upstart uh boxer. This was uh 1973, and it was a big deal to this is George Foreman Sr., not one of his three or four kids named George Foreman. Yeah, but that was a big deal to even knock down Joe Fraser. So you're right, he did he was known for boxing and he was loved boxing, but uh in 1982, there was some things that happened in boxing that were really turned him off. Um there was a guy named Boom Boom Mancini. Do you remember Boom Boom Mancini?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I know the name.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and he fought a Korean fighter named uh Duke Kukim and actually killed him in the ring. The bot the uh ref didn't stop the fight when he should have. There was a lot of controversy over that. And then two weeks later, Larry Holmes fought Randall Tex Cobb. These names uh ring a bell to you back then.
SPEAKER_02Larry Holmes does. I don't remember Randall Tex Cobb.
SPEAKER_00Randall Tex Cobb was kind of a tomato can, as they say in the in the boxing world. And this fight was at the Astrodome, and it was it shouldn't have ever been fought. Tex Cobb was um was not uh qualified to to fight uh the heavyweight champion, but they needed a fight, and they got this guy, and he just got the pulp uh beat out of him. And uh Kosell was doing this fight, he was broadcasting this fight, and at some point during the fight, he just kind of stopped talking even. He was just kind of just mailing it in, basically. And after the fight, he hung it up. He said, I'm I can't I can't be a witness to this this sport anymore. These people are out here killing themselves, nobody's uh killing each other, nobody's stopping these fights, and this is barbaric, and I'm not gonna be a so he walked away in 1982, said I don't want to be a part of this anymore. And like I say, he was kind of the guy known for boxing, but that's the kind of clout he had, the kind of power he had that he just walked away. When you say tomato can, what what do you mean by that? Just a guy that's that's not very uh good.
SPEAKER_02Uh just kind of uh Is that is that a common term like in boxing?
SPEAKER_00I've always heard that growing up uh about uh somebody being a tomato can.
SPEAKER_02No, I've never heard I mean I do like it, but I've never heard it. I I guess I'm thinking back at all the times I've been called a tomato can now and didn't really realize it was an insult.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah. No, I think a tomato can is somebody an easy opponent. Okay. So he didn't just do boxing though, he was, you know, ABC's lead guy. Uh he did um Monday night baseball. Um, but he but he was the thing he was most known for besides boxing was Monday night football. So in 1970, the NFL decided they were gonna put on uh games at night, and that was a big deal. Um the to even think that people would want to watch football in the evening against primetime shows, and that was a big risk. Um, and so he paired Howard Cousell with uh ex uh football player Don Meredith, who's kind of a homespun uh good old boy. Um and Frank Gifford, who was an ex-player, kind of like Terry Bradshaw, a little bit of a southern accent.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, Don Meredith, Damn, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. But also kind of a partier, and uh yeah, just kind of a uh wouldn't run in the same circles as Howard Cosell at all. Uh and then Frank Gifford, who was an ex-player but with very good voice and kind of down the middle uh traditional commentator. Um, and the thing is the three of them clashed, like you wouldn't believe. They fought on the air, um, they uh they disagreed all the time. Uh Don Meredith would kind of represent the every man that was watching the show and telling Howard to shut up, or they didn't understand what he was saying. And and then, you know, Kosell would kind of put on his uh airs of the everything everything, and everyone was kind of beneath him, you know. And uh Frank Grifford was just like, well, back to the game, you know, trying to trying to keep the peace. And this show was TV magic, it was frequently the number one show in the country. I think people would didn't care much about the matchups, but they cared about what these guys were gonna say next. Uh it was just always um good TV. Um, they clearly didn't get along uh with each other, but it just made for for TV magic. It was very kind of um uncomfortable to watch at times, but also like you couldn't look away, right? So sort of like Dirt Nap City. Yeah, exactly. Because that's what they say about our our chemistry. Um and he stayed on Monday Night Football until 1983. In 1983, he made some comments that some people um took to be racist. Um I think I think when you look back, it's at um uh it's it's it's it probably wasn't, um, but it's still this was kind of um a changing, a sea change of of culture in 1983. Um people were starting to become more um um careful about the kind of things they said on the air. He was let go in uh 1983. He also broadcast the Battle of the Sexes. Do you know what the Battle of the Sexes was? I don't. I've heard the term, but I don't know. It was a tennis match between uh Billie Gene King, who was the best female tennis player, and Bobby Riggs, who was an older um like has been male tennis player, and also real like uh uh arrogant and sexist, and he was, you know, one of these guys in 1973 could kind of go around saying that women's place is in the kitchen and um and uh you know they don't belong on the tennis court, and uh so he was like in his 50s then, and he was he was playing the number one player in the world, and he said this was gonna be easy, and they so they had they set it up at the Astrodome, they set up a tennis court, and it was this whole battle of the sexes, and he was called a male chauvinist pig. I think that was a a term that was used a lot in this in the 70s, calling somebody a male chauvinist uh pig, and he just ate it up this guy. And then and to give it kind of the gravitas that uh you know a serious event would have, they had Howard Cosell broadcasted, even though he wasn't a tennis guy. Who won the match? Oh, Billy Jean King won the won the match. Like by a lot? Yeah, she beat him in straight sets, 6'4, 6'3, 6'3, and it was uh um the winner got um a hundred thousand dollars of this match. Wow. And it kinda, if I remember correctly, it kind of pitted men against women in the in the culture in America. Like all the guys seem to be rooting for him, and all the girls seem to be all the women seemed to be rooting for um for Billie Gene King. And I don't think that would happen today. If some you know uh asshole guy was um playing um you know Serena Williams, I don't think it would be split between men and women on who they people wanted to win. But this was the early 70s, you know? Yeah. We were trying to figure out, you know, things like um women's place in the work or women's roles in the workplace and at home and and um as as a culture, we were the we were in a a sea change, you know.
SPEAKER_02Did Cosell commentate? You know, did he sort of uh have commentary to throw at it? Regarding the cultural part of it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think just the fact that he announced it gave legitimacy. You know, I think a lot of people at the time were saying it won't even be a contest. Women can't come close to to men. And it was kind of a deal. And then even if they did, well, he's an old man and she's a you know, she's the best in the world or whatever. And um, it was almost a no win situation. Um, but I think just the fact that he announced it gave it the kind of legitimacy that that Billie Jean King needed for this. To you know, be a real event. And they took it very seriously. Uh, like I said though, he was criticized by a lot of people, people that he worked with, they called him an ass. Uh that was probably the most uh uh thing that you'd hear, that he was just an ass. He was a jackass. Yeah, he was a shill, pompous is another thing um that you'd hear a lot. So uh uh the uh the sportscaster Bob Costas uh gave an interview interview, and here's his story about uh his his uh meeting with Howard Cosell.
SPEAKER_01I met him for the first time uh at the World Series in Baltimore, the Phillies and the Orioles at the Old Memorial Stadium in 1983. He's wearing that hideous mustard yellow ABC blazer. He's brandishing a cigar about the size of a Louisville slugger. And I say, Mr. Cosell, my name is Bob Costas. It's a pleasure to meet you. And he goes, I know who you are. You're the child who rhapsodizes about the infield fly rule. I'm sure you'll have a fine career. And he flicked a cigar ash and walked back into the booth. And my first thought is this is the biggest schmuck I have ever encountered. But then in the next instant, I'm thinking, no, no, no, this is great. I got the full Howard Cosell treatment. And here we are. I got a story I'm telling some 40 years later. Um and and I was I was always amused by Howard because he was simultaneously a cartoon character, the character of Howard Cosell, but he was also a very consequential figure. He resented Al Michaels, he resented me and others that he couldn't easily dismiss as lightweig because he wanted pre-eminence. And in a way, he had preeminence. He had a broad, broad fame. Famously, when TV Guide really mattered, there was a TV guide poll, and he won both favorite and least favorite sports broadcaster in the same poll. Isn't it crazy?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Favorite. I mean that he cover he covered it all.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. He he was he was a very polarizing figure, and it's it's really interesting that he was people's favorite and least favorite, and he could be even be your favorite and least favorite within the same person. Like I remember like you you didn't like listening to him, but you almost were upset when he wasn't doing a game. You know, you wanted to see hear what Howard had to say about this.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Now the thing that I remember the most about Howard Cousell was on December 8th, 1980. December 8th, 1980 was the night that John Lennon was killed outside his apartment. Yeah, in New York, yeah. And Monday Night Football was, you know, Monday Night Football was on, and a large portion of the country found out from Howard Cosell. It was a kind of a meaningless Patriots Dolphins game, and here's um here's what it sounded like.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. What how do you respond to that? You know? Well, that it looks like they're gonna run a quarterback sneak here. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's it's pretty crazy, but that's how a lot of America, because it was the number one show on TV, um, it um, you know, that was it it was before the news. But here's the thing is that um they the only reason they found out about that was because an ABC employee happened to be at the same emergency room that night where John Lennon was brought. And so they had to scoop before the hospital had relayed the information. And Yoko Ono had actually asked the hospital to delay reporting it until she could tell Sean, her son, who was five years old at the time, and he was asleep. So she was gonna tell him like in the morning, I guess. And she had asked the hospital not to release the information. But actually, NBC broke the news a few minutes before Howard Cocell did by breaking into the tonight show and uh and announcing it. So, you know, most of America was either watching the tonight show or watching Monday Night Football, and they found out um that way. But that's the you know, when I think of my memories of Howard Cosell, that's the one I think that I remember the most was learning about uh John Lennon that way. And he was a big um fan too. I mean, a few years earlier, he had actually interviewed John Lennon during a Monday night football game, um, who came on and um and they got along great. He he really liked all the kind of youth, the youthful figures, even though he was across the old man himself. Uh, he kind of liked youth culture in the in the 70s. Um, you know, he himself, Howard Cosell, was a celebrity. There's no getting around that. And he thought he was as big as any other of the people that he covered. And he was on episodes of you know, the odd couple. You'd see him, you know, show up, or he's he was actually in three Woody Allen movies. Uh if you remember those. But um, yeah, there's a scene, uh, there's a particularly good scene in the movie Bananas that uh involves uh Howard Cousell doing play-by-play for uh love m for a lovemaking session. Of course, of course. Um you know, but he considered himself a journalist, also. He uh had a show called Sports Beat that not a lot of people watched, but it did some of the hard-hitting journalism that um that a lot of people weren't doing back then. He was covering things like drugs and sports. Drugs were really common in sports, uh, recreational drugs. The NBA had a big cocaine problem. Um, nobody was really talking about that. He kind of put that at front and center. He talked about apartheid um when nobody was talking about it. Um it the show, Sports Beat, had low ratings, but it was critically acclaimed. It won a lot of Emmys, and um, it was the kind of thing that some people like to talk about. Some people, though, even now, um, have the I idea just shut up and dribble, shut up and play. We don't want politics involved in sports. And I don't think personally you can take politics out of sports. I mean, politics, our sports takes place as part of our cultural landscape, and you can't just isolate it.
SPEAKER_02Um and just so everybody knows, because we we started this episode by calling me out for not being a big sports fan, you are, right? You've you've always followed sports, you've always followed Texas sports, Houston, you know, the University of Texas. Um, you you you come to a lot of football games, you make an effort to do that. What is it that you get out of sports?
SPEAKER_00Like, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I like it for because you don't know what's gonna happen. I mean, it's it's it's the it's unscripted. Um, and uh anything can happen. Upsets happen all the time, which are you know, it's I find that inspiring. I find people working for a common goal to be really inspiring. I'm obsessed with kind of coaching uh successes and failures, and and uh try to apply that to things like leadership and teamwork. And so I I think it's a metaphor for a lot of things that go on in regular life, and at the end it's really inconsequential in terms of like it's just a game. That's what I like about it the best. Is the stakes relative to everything else are low, but in that moment, it's the most important thing going on. I love the when my heart gets racing and to to see what the outcome is, and yeah, I just I I'm I'm I I like I like sports.
SPEAKER_02No, that makes a lot of sense, and I I I want to go back just real quick to say it's not that I don't enjoy watching sports, I do exactly for those reasons that you stated. It can be really exciting, it's unpredictable, people make amazing, you know, sort of that amazing physicality of what some people can do and the and the determination. For me, it's more just the um, I think what you said about it being inconsequential, that's where I see it. And so for me, it's if if it's convenient for me to watch it, I've and I've got nothing else going on at that moment, I'll do it, but I don't prioritize it.
SPEAKER_00Right. I think the tough part about following sports is in order to really appreciate it, you kind of have to follow it. And it's it's time consuming to follow it, you know. I mean, yeah, it's an effort because in order to really appreciate it, you have to have context and you have to know so it's more fun if somebody wins and they haven't won in 12 years, it's fun to know that and it's fun to understand the history. No rivalries. Right. So I like um soccer, but I don't I but I've only, you know, in the last 10 years liked soccer, so I don't have any context. So when I'm watching a match between two, you know, European teams, I don't have any of that history. I'm only watching it in real time as it as it pertains to now. And that's what I feel it must be like to be a not somebody who doesn't follow sports but watches sports from time. You're only your your interest is only for that period of time that you're watching it. And it really there's something missing for me from that. Like I I I love this, but I'm jealous of the people that really love it. You know what I mean? Like, and I can never have that. Like if when I watch soccer, I could never be schooled on you know what it's like to live in this town that never wins, you know, and Leicester City, for example, you know, won uh Premier League a few years ago. It's just like this small place that never wins, and I like was happy for him, but I didn't really get it because I don't I don't have that history context.
SPEAKER_02You could just watch Ted Lasso, that would explain it all. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Did you watch the did you watch the uh season three of Ted Lasso? I did. And and uh did you like how it ended?
SPEAKER_00No, I wasn't really a fan of of of uh uh I think I'm I'm like a lot of people where Ted Lasso was good uh at the beginning and kind of during COVID um it was a nice you know during isolation it was a nice little you know happiness bubble. Yeah. And then I think uh I didn't enjoy it after that. Then I felt like I was just watching it to fill out the checklist, but it really grated on me. I really didn't like the show after in in the last season at all.
SPEAKER_02Well, I'll give you one more example um of what you were just talking about that's interesting. We're on a bit of a tangent, but uh my wife and I watched the um it's called Drive to Win. It was a Formula One documentary on Netflix, and totally sparked an interest in Formula One for me. And I have had friends who are into it, really into it, who have told me how great it is, but they know who all the drivers are, they know the history of the teams, they know the sort of shenanigans that have gone on in the background and the cheating that's gone on and you know, all this stuff. And I was like, why would I want to invest in all that? After watching that show, though, it's so much more interesting now when I when I see a Formula One, I know who the driver is, and I appreciate it so much more than just guys I don't really care about going around a track.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think and yeah, there's a lot to be said, and I love sports documentaries for that very reason. They fill in some of those blanks and give you context. And my favorite thing is to watch a documentary about somebody that I don't really like, and then at the end I end up being like, Man, that guy's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Or even if they're not cool, you you at least understand their motivation better.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, or respect them. Or you go, Wow, I understand why they won, but I'm that guy would be a terrible friend or a husband or you know, whatever.
SPEAKER_02Podcast partner.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So did you know that in 1975, Howard Kosell, like everybody in 1975, had a variety show?
SPEAKER_02No, I did not know that.
SPEAKER_00If you're younger than 35, you probably don't know about variety shows. But variety shows were these one-hour TV shows back in the day where some famous person, maybe a singer, maybe an actor, or a couple, Sunny, or a couple would have a bunch of music, comedy skits, um, general, just just really cheesy, bad. Um, I watch lots of them on YouTube now, um, from a safe distance. Uh like hee-haw.
SPEAKER_02Great example.
SPEAKER_00I just can't get enough of them now, but back in the day I hated variety shows. Um, but he had a variety show, and you know what it was called?
SPEAKER_02Uh Carson's or not Carson's Cosell's shenanigans.
SPEAKER_00No, it was actually called Saturday Night Live. Really? Show, and in fact, the NBC show was had to be called Saturday Night, because it was already a show called Saturday Night Live, hosted by Howard Cosell. And he had like Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest. The Bay City Rollers made their debut on Saturday. They because they have the song called Saturday Night. Yeah, it was written to you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It was like this written for this Saturday Night Live Howard Cosell show. Wow. Well, this show was canceled after three months. Uh nobody was really uh uh there was no demand for a Howard Cousell variety show.
SPEAKER_02And what year was that?
SPEAKER_001975.
SPEAKER_02And then what year did the real Saturday Night Live start?
SPEAKER_00Same year, 1975.
SPEAKER_02How confusing that must have been.
SPEAKER_00I mean, like I said, they they didn't call themselves Saturday Night Live until the second season.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00The one that we know now. So nobody knew it that it should be called Saturday Night Live. But then uh in 1985, Howard Cosell actually hosted SNL. Um, and um here's a little clip. Uh I've uh edited together a little bit of his monologue for you.
SPEAKER_03Ladies and gentlemen, the applause, of course, is well taken.
SPEAKER_04An extraordinary moment for all of you. Maybe in its own way, a felicitous, and even rewarding moment for me. But I must tell you not a fortuitous one. Yes. This is a seven and a night live with how it goes down. I would trust there are some among you who recall the primetime weekly television variety program that premiered on ABCT. Back in 1975, it was called Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell. It was a decade ahead of its time. It was a presentation wrought by superb craftsmen, conceived by knowing geniuses, performed by gifted artists, and reviewed by licensed idiots.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. So so that way, he was the host on SNL in 85?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he was the yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Decade ahead of his time.
SPEAKER_00But you see, if you're if you're not familiar with Howard Kosa, you can just see from that clip alone how kind of annoying he can be with his words and his just arrogance, and he just isn't at all um the the kind of characteristics that we that we find in likability, he doesn't have. He doesn't possess. And apparently he was that way um in private life, too. And so people that worked with him just called him an ass. Uh now, my favorite Howard Cousel uh endeavor was on a little show called Battle of the Network Stars.
SPEAKER_02I remember this show. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, now what a great show that was. Now, to paint a picture for those of you who don't maybe know or remember what Battle of the Network Stars was, this took all of the stars from ABC, NBC, and CBS television shows at the time and put them in uh little games and sporting events, pitted them against each other to have kind of a network that would win. It was uh some would say uh a way to uh get the female stars of the day in bathing suits, wet t-shirts. Um, but um, you know, as a as a as a youngster, um I of course wasn't interested in that. Um maybe a little interested in that. Uh but they would have things like obstacle course and the dunk tank and tug of war, even things like Simon says, uh swimming. It was just great TV. I I can't explain, you know, and there was only three channels at the time, and you just watched what was on. You didn't there was no like prestige TV.
SPEAKER_02What year was this?
SPEAKER_00Well, it was on from 76 to 88.
SPEAKER_02So really, uh it kind of got into the land of VCRs because 76 there weren't VCRs.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Maybe 82, 83 is when that started getting popular.
SPEAKER_00Although you can see some of this stuff out there on on YouTube, and and I may or may not have gone down a rabbit hole of Battle of the Network stars in the last few days. Um, there was 19, they did 19 of these uh Battle of the Network stars. Wow. They would usually have them like either in uh like Cancun or uh the first few were over at Pepperdine and Malibu. Uh and uh and so there'd be all these TV stars at the time, and Howard said, I'm the biggest star out here. They all want to be around me. That's what he thought the reason they all wanted to be on them. But you would have like the very first one for ABC. You would have like Gabe Kaplan from Welcome Back Cotter, yeah, Linda Carter from Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman, Sarah Fawcett, Ron Howard, and Penny Marshall. That was the AB's, that's a strong team right there.
SPEAKER_02That is a strong team, and and Ron Howard went on to be so much more, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. And Penny Marshall as well. She was a director, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then the CBS team would have like Telly Savalas and and uh Who Loves You Baby? And uh Loretta Swit and Jimmy Walker from uh from Good Times, you know?
SPEAKER_02Loretta Loretta Switch who was what was she on?
SPEAKER_00Mesh.
SPEAKER_02Mash hot hot lips hooligan, right? Hulahan, right?
SPEAKER_00And then the NBC, NBC nobody watched back then, and they would have like uh do you remember Robert Conrad?
SPEAKER_02Robert Conrad was the guy who put the battery on his shoulder. I dare you to knock this off. Yeah, he was in Baba Black Sheep, right?
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes. They would have Robert Conrad, Melissa Sue Anderson from Little House on the Prairie, yeah, and then uh Damon Wilson from Sanford and Sun.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yes.
SPEAKER_00Scott Bayo was an obstacle course legend. He was like one of the all-time Battle of the Network star greats, uh Chachi from uh Half. Yeah, sure. Um, future Battle of the Network stars uh would would include uh Mr. T. Um, so uh there's a great YouTube clip out there of uh tug of war where Mr. T is really uh giving it us all. It's it's great. Uh David Letterman uh participated in some of these, Heather Locklear and uh Robin Williams.
SPEAKER_02So so these are more physical uh activity, like almost like a field day Olympics kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00Field day is a good one. Okay, but then they would have things like the yeah, the dunk tank too, where they would just be like, Yeah, let's see Wonder Woman in a you know bathing suit. And and uh but they would have things like uh swimming. They had the uh aforementioned Larry Holmes or no, it was Joe Frazier, was in and he didn't know how to swim, and he was in a swimming race and he almost drowned in um Battle of the Network Stars. Yeah. But they would do the obstacle course is the main thing that everybody tuned in to see.
SPEAKER_02Wait, so did did Cosell uh participate or announce this?
SPEAKER_00No, he would announce it, and he was very uh, you know, he would announce it in just the way he announced it everything else. So you it'd be like the seventh game of the World Series, and he would, you know, it'd be Scott Bayo versus you know Jimmy Walker in the obstacle course.
SPEAKER_02Dino Bite.
SPEAKER_00Now here's something about uh Howard Cosell that you may not know that might blow your mind. He is credited for popularizing nachos. No.
SPEAKER_02So what happened was even though Nachos, the snack Well, hold on, let's go back to the the history of the tortilla chip, right? Uh Doritos. That started at Disney. Right?
SPEAKER_00Sure, sure. Does this tie into that? Call call back. No, not at all. Call back to the Disney episode. Sure. Uh no, nachos were actually invented by a guy um named Ignacio Anaya, uh, nicknamed Nacho in 1943. So they had been around in Mexico for a while. The Mexico-Texas border. It was kind of a Tex-Mex thing.
SPEAKER_02Really? So so nachos weren't invented until the 40s. I I thought that was like old school Latin American food, you know, from way back in the day.
SPEAKER_00Well, they weren't called nachos if they were.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00And then um in 1973, they started serving them at Texas Rangers Games um in uh Arlington in the Dallas area. And then uh they figured out how to store the cheese sauce, which isn't really cheese, uh, according to the FDA. Um, and they they really figured out how to kind of um store it and keep it. And so they started selling those at Dallas Cowboy Games.
SPEAKER_02We're talking about the pump here. The yep, yep, the pump. You just pump it up and down and it, yeah. And it comes out like the perfect consistency. It's it's kind of like Elmer's glue. But it's not at all like melted cheese. No, no, because melted cheese will harden after a few a minute or two. Like if you leave it just you melt cheese in the microwave on top of chips, and then you leave it out, that cheese will turn back to solid.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we're talking about ballpark nachos here. We're not talking about you know, a nice uh plate of nachos in a Mexican restaurant, we're talking about ballpark nachos with cheap cheese and cheap chips. And so the Dallas Cowboys started selling in 1978 as a snack in the stands. And they during a Cowboys Colts game in 1978, the beginning of the season, they brought some of this exotic snack up to the booth. And um, Howard said, uh, they brought us this new snack. What do they call them? Nacos? Nachos. And they just got a kick out of that word, and then they started using that word. Like, hey, did you see that run? That was a nacho run. They just thought that word nacho was so funny. And then for the rest of the season, they kept using that word like, hey, that was a nacho pass. That was a nacho run. They just thought it was so funny. Well, by the next season, lots of ballparks and baseball and football started selling nachos because America wanted to see, you know, they had been watching this on number one show on TV. They wanted some too, and that's how nachos, he just got a kick out of the name. He thought it was so funny. Um, once he got a hang of once he learned that it wasn't called Nacos.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. And you know, it goes back to the the old joke uh when when somebody's running away with your cheese, stole it from you, and you yell out, that's nacho cheese.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Is that an old joke? I don't know. Is that your joke? No. I I heard that as a kid. So in 1985, I mentioned he was kind of dis or 83 he was dismissed from the uh from Monday Night uh football. He wrote a book called I Never Played the Game. And I never played the game has kind of a double meaning. It means he didn't he wasn't a professional athlete, but also means he never played the political game that a lot of people need to to get ahead in in the world of broadcasting. And this book was a book where he blasted a lot of his coworkers, just really unnecessarily, probably. Um, it was some describe it as a bitter hate rant. It was like the end of his career. He had been let go a couple years earlier, and he was gonna let it all off his chest. Well, that book, um he was still doing baseball at the time. He the book came out, they took him off the World Series, and not far after that, they they fired him kind of unceremoniously. Um five years later in 1990, his his wife died. They'd been married for 46 years, and then he just kind of faded away from the public eye, and then his health failed. He developed lung cancer in 1991, but also Parkinson's and heart disease and kidney disease, and finally he died in 1995 at the um not too old age of uh 77. Wow, having uh said all he had to say basically about sports. Now the legacy of this guy um I think is pretty felt today. I mean, you have now you have uh two networks, ESPN and um and FS1, the Fox equivalent of ESPN. And the if you watch these shows during the day, it's all uh what they call a debate format. But it's basically uh two or more people just shouting at each other, disagreeing um about any um meaningless uh sports take. Um I think the legacy of Howard Cosell is that you know to have a take, to have an opinion about something, and it doesn't matter if you're obnoxious about it, it's your take, so it's valid. Unfortunately, like you mentioned earlier, I think a lot of the producers of these shows have gotten jobs in news organizations, and this stuff has spilled over now into our uh our our TV news, which didn't really exist when Howard Cosell was there. There was the evening news, but we didn't have like cable news channels. So now pretty much you could turn your TV on to anything. Uh, and if it's not a game or a show, it's people yelling about something, right? Yeah, yeah. It's people having an opinion that everybody has an opinion, and everybody's opinion is considered equally valid, and um, and people calling each other idiots and um being I think that might be kind of the legacy that he is unwittingly. I don't think he would approve of this. I don't think he would like any of these shows, but I think this is kind of his legacy, anyways, is that it's okay to be unpleasant on TV as long as you say something that's provocative, people will listen. It's not really his legacy, it's the legacy of him though, that makes sense. He didn't he didn't want to be this way, he didn't, he didn't invent this as a shtick, it was him. But I think a lot of these people that do this stuff now are kind of trying to emulate who he was, and the idea of having an unlikable person on TV was probably pretty foreign before Howard Cosell came out, and now it's kind of commonplace.
SPEAKER_02There's one thing I wanted to say, uh, going back to the name of his book. I love the name of that book.
SPEAKER_00I never played the game.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's a great, it's a great name for a book by I'd never heard of it, but um, but yeah, what a great uh name for a book with the double meaning.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, that's Howard Cosell. When you picture him, do you picture him in his yellow blazer?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. No, I can see him in my head, uh, definitely with the with the headset on, you know, and the little microphone and kind of a cheesy smile on his face.
SPEAKER_00And his toupee, bad toupee.
SPEAKER_02His bad toupee, yeah.
SPEAKER_00There's a great YouTube clip of him. Um, there was a boxing match that he did where it kind of there was a melee and it spilled out into the crowd, and his toupee comes off at one point. And in the video, it's like the Zapruder film where they slow it down and then they circle it, and you could so you can see his toupee coming off, and he grabs it.
SPEAKER_02He grabs it left.
SPEAKER_00And he grab he grabs uh you can see kind of his bald head, but he never went on TV with a bald head, that's for sure. He always had uh he always had that toupee working for him. He wore that toupee.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's pretty awesome. No, I I have one other quick story. When I was uh probably around 1980, um so Billy Martin was the owner of the New York Yankees, right?
SPEAKER_00Uh Steinbrenner was the owner of the yeah, you're right.
SPEAKER_02Steinbrenner was Billy Martin the uh manager, okay. Yep. And he was fired like several times, right? And and uh my I was with my grandmother and my sister in Kansas City, and I guess it was the day that Billy Martin got fired, and Reggie Jackson got on an elevator with us. And my grandmother is a huge uh Royals fan, so she didn't like the Yankees, but she knew who Reggie Jackson was, and uh she she told Reggie Jackson the way to get out of the Crown Center, which is where we were, the mall, the you know, the fancy shopping mall in Kansas City, how to get out of there without being seen by the press. So nice. She she always likes to tell that story.
SPEAKER_00Was she frequently hounded by the press?
SPEAKER_02Yes, she she knew the way out. Because, you know, she they they all knew they all knew that her grandson was destined for greatness. Yeah, that's great. 25 years ahead of his time.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's a great story. The Bill and Martin uh uh Reggie Jackson uh sagas were were great too.
SPEAKER_02Because wasn't uh Kosell was kind of a what was his big team, by the way? What was Kosell's favorite? Was he a Cubs fan?
SPEAKER_00I don't think he really was a fan. I mean, I think he was if he was a fan of anybody, it would have been the Brooklyn Dodgers growing up in Brooklyn. Um, but he didn't really, you know, show uh favoritism of of teams uh or anything.
SPEAKER_02Am I thinking of uh Harry Carey? Oh, yeah, you're thinking of Cubs fan? Okay, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Cubs fan and a Budman. Cubs fan, a big Budman.
SPEAKER_02Wow. Well, no, that's that was great. Uh name very much in line with the theme of this show, someone I'd heard of, but really didn't know too much about.
SPEAKER_00All right, man. Well, that's that's all for uh today's episode. Thanks for uh listening, Kelly. Uh, and I'll see you everybody next time on Dirt Knapp City. Take care.
SPEAKER_02This has been a great show, and we really appreciate it. Take care.
