19 Howard Cosell Quotes on Sports

Howard Cosell quotes on sports

2. Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Sonny Liston's not coming out! Sonny Liston's not coming out! He's out! The winner and new heavyweight champion of the world is Cassius Clay!

3. Down Goes Ellis! Down Goes Ellis! He is beaten!

4. Down Goes Frazier! Down Goes Frazier! Down Goes Frazier!

5. There it is, ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning.

6. This, we have to say it, remember this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy, confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps, of all The Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead ... on ... arrival.

7. I wonder if that referee is constructing an advertisement for the abolition of the very sport that he is a part of?

8. Look at that little monkey go.

11. [T]hey wanted... another Joe Louis. A white man's black man... Didn't these idiots realize that Cassius Clay was the name of a slave owner? ... Had I been black and my name Cassius Clay, I damned well would have changed it!

14. Boxing is the only sport in the world where the clear intention is for one person to inflict bodily harm upon the other person, mainly to the head where brain damage must ensue... I don't think improvements or controls are the answer. I think the answer is abolition.

17. I see nothing to sanctify any sports event.

20. Joe Schmidt, he couldn't motivate a frog.

23. Sports is human life in microcosm.

24. Sports is the toy department of human life.

25. Nothing is more meaningless or irrelevant than sports writing.

26. The importance that our society attaches to sport is incredible. After all, is football a game or a religion? The people of this country have allowed sports to get completely out of hand.

31. Howard Cosell was a good man and he lived a good life. I have been interviewed by many people, but I enjoyed interviews with Howard the best. We always put on a good show. I hope to meet him one day in the hereafter. I can hear Howard now saying, 'Muhammad, you're not the man you used to be.' I pray that he is in God's hands. I will miss him.

32. He become a giant by the simple act of telling the truth in an industry that was not used to hearing it and considered it revolutionary. Every person working in sports journalism today owes a tremendous debt to Howard Cosell. His greatest contribution was elevating sports reporting out of daily play-by-play and placing it in the larger context of society.

35. History will reflect that Howard Cosell was easily the dominant sportscaster of all time, and certainly the most famous.

36. [A] broadcasting pioneer who changed the way people listen to and watch sports.