'i've Won. I've Beat Them'

Cosell prides himself on being an exemplar—yea, a captive—of the Protestant work ethic, and he's not tolerant of sloth in others. He never fails to do his homework, including reading his guests' books, before conducting interviews on his weekly radio show, Speaking of Everything. Around ABC Sports he is referred to as Coach, and is heartily admired by camera crews and technicians for his professionalism. Never is Cosell more impressive than when doing one of his several daily five-minute radio broadcasts. He will casually interrupt a conversation; stride down to the studio, perhaps slowing en route to pick up a bit of wire-service copy; and in a moment or two, without any apparent preparation, lay down his cigar and deliver a crisp, even trenchant, extemporaneous report, embellishing it with his own opinions and bringing it home in its allotted time to the split second. He then will pick up his cigar, retrace his steps and resume whatever conversation he had been engaged in when he paused to address America. Cosell's memory is legendary, but it's only a tool; reliability is the measure of this pro.

He was a strict parent and remains, in his sexual mores, "downright old-fashioned," according to his wife. He can be a scold on the subject. In a business in which philandering is hardly uncommon, whatever Cosell has been accused of—all the cheap shots—never has it been suggested that he has ever strayed from Emmy. "He gets plenty of chances, too," says Hilary. "Women find my father very attractive. There's sex in his power and charisma. It's only the men who write about his toupee and his big nose." Years ago at a party in Las Vegas, Emmy caught a rather buxom admirer overdoing a welcoming kiss—"You know, she made it to the mouth," she says—and she has never let Howard forget it.

He constantly alludes to his family. Sometimes, for no reason at all, he will suddenly complain, "Oh, I wish Emmy were here." Or: "I want to be with my family now." He is an unabashed professional grandfather. Amid the scores of photographs of his grandchildren on display in his Manhattan apartment and in his office at ABC, he has only two pictures of athletes. The one in his den is of Ali, with the inscription "You're a big man." The other, in his office, is of Steve Cauthen, who was in a way a surrogate grandchild. When Cosell's own family was younger and the family lived in the suburbs, his favorite pastimes were playing gin rummy with the neighborhood guys, and walking in the woods with his Irish setter and his two daughters while reading to his girls from his favorite poets, Keats, Shelley and Coleridge.

"Well, I think you have my story," Cosell said the first time he was interviewed, in The Sporting News of Aug. 10, 1955. "I have two daughters. I am happily married. I like to help people."

This will answer your question: Has success changed Howard Cosell?

Howard and Emmy moved back into Manhattan in 1970. They live in a handsome, but far from opulent, apartment on the East Side. When not dining out—"If Howard Cosell had lunch, breakfast and dinner with everybody he brags about on Monday Night Football, he'd weigh 723 pounds," Joe Garagiola once said—the Cosells usually have a couple of drinks and supper, watch TV or read and then turn out the lights at 9:30 like an old farm couple. Cosell is usually up by 5:30, and on many mornings the first words out of his mouth, spoken in a loud Paul Harvey voice, are, "Well, dear, I'm awake and I'm getting up, but I won't disturb you." Then, hopelessly awake, Emmy rises to join him.

However, as much as Cosell is devoted to his family, he is just as loyal to another great love: his store—ABC. It's no coincidence that his own parents were never happy together and that he made a full marriage his first priority. But neither should the deep impression the Depression made on him be overlooked: his father often out of work, the electricity sometimes switched off, and—more subtle, but possibly most important—the juxtaposition of his own impoverishment and the relative comfort of school friends and other branches of his family.

The American Dream is usually portrayed as the vision of an abjectly poor kid. More often, though, the kids most determined to move up are those on the fringes of middle-class comfort, those who can see the next rung on the ladder, not merely imagine it. Such was Cosell as a boy. He lived near Eastern Parkway and knew some of the well-off "Eastern Parkway Jews." He could envision himself out of his family's walk-up and right there on Eastern Parkway, too.

All that Cosell's parents, Isadore and Nellie, ever wanted for him was "a profession," which meant, by process of elimination, the law, because, as Emmy says, "Certainly Howard could never have been a doctor." Isadore rolled over 90-day notes to help his son through New York University Law School, and Howard made it. He built a practice and even leapfrogged Eastern Parkway into Manhattan. Then, after 10 years, he made the decision of his life: He junked it all to take a flyer on sports broadcasting.

Until his death in 1957, Isadore kept asking Emmy when Howard would come to his senses and return to "the profession." However, for Howard, leaving the law was never as agonizing as abandoning the safe income it brought him. Cosell was never all that keen on practicing law; he was too impatient for such a meticulous discipline. When he got out of the Army, in which he served as a major, he would have preferred a secure job with a large company, but in big business at that time, many doors were closed to Brooklyn Jews. So: the law. It paid the bills, and then he dared give it up.