There You Have It: THE LIFE, LEGACY, AND LEGEND OF HOWARD COSELL by JOHN BLOOM

Author:JOHN BLOOM [BLOOM, JOHN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55849-837-2
Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
Published: 2010-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

In later years Wright would defend himself and complain that Cosell’s criticisms were unfair, pointing out that the outdated schedules had been given to him a month before the races, not eighteen months before. What is more, three other national teams during these Olympics had missed races under similar circumstances.57

Perhaps Wright should have thanked Cosell, though, because his harsh words ended up deflecting the nation’s anger away from the beleaguered coach and back toward Cosell. Letters and newspaper columns overwhelmingly attacked Cosell for rubbing Wright’s nose in a mistake that he already regretted. Readers of the Chicago Tribune, for example, had harsh words for Cosell. David Edington and Doug Carey, thirteen-year-olds from Northbrook, wrote: “Howard Cosell ‘cut up’ Stan Wright, the U.S. Olympic team sprint coach, far more than was necessary. Mr. Wright made a mistake, which he admitted, and he felt bad enough without Cosell’s rude and uncalled for comments.” Donna Essling from Aurora said: “I was infuriated by the tactless treatment given Coach Stan Wright by the high and mighty Cosell. I do hope that sometime Howard Cosell might descend to the lowly level of a human being, so he too would be capable of making a mistake.” Wendy Pankrac from Berwyn asked: “How much longer do U.S. sports fans have to put up with Howard Cosell? Brash, unfair, insensitive—the poorest excuse for the commentator imaginable.”58 Thomas McCann from West Lafayette, Indiana, told the paper, “Right after I saw Howard Cosell recently take apart the U.S. track coach on TV, I realized I had seen the cheapest piece of sensationalism of my life.”59

John Henry Auran, a senior editor at Skiing Magazine recounting his experiences as a coach at that year’s Winter Games in Sapporo, Japan, also defended Wright in a letter to the New York Times, saying: “Cosell and most of the press covering this affair missed the real story. It’s the United States Olympic Committee which should be put on the griddle.”60 Dave Wimbish, sports editor of the Arizona Daily Sun, wrote, “For Cosell, I thought his Thursday night performance was the most disgusting since he threw up on Don Meredith at halftime one Monday night last year.”61 Norm Unis of the Eureka (California) Times-Standard accused Cosell of goading Robinson and Hart into condemning Wright by asking them leading questions, before “turn[ing] to the suffocation of Stan Wright, coach of the U.S. speedsters, who unknowingly chose to go with outdated schedules of elimination heats, causing tardiness and [the] ouster of Robinson and Hart.”62

None of these people accused Cosell of unfairly attacking an African American coach out of racial prejudice. Yet the change in perceptions since 1968 certainly is dramatic. Four years earlier in Mexico City, Cosell had drawn criticism for defending the medal stand protest of Smith and Carlos. He had, in the eyes of his critics, been too quick to endorse an expression of Black Power. Now he was criticized for being too harsh in his questioning of a black coach. For Jim Spence, who worked with Cosell on the Stan Wright interview, the criticism of Cosell was not justified.

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