Why hasn Howard Cosell been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame?
More accurately: why hasn’t he won the Pete Rozelle Radio/Television Award, given annually to a recipient of the electronic media that has made long and lasting contributions to professional football? I had just assumed he’d won the award until reading this story last week, which left me floored. Yes, this is a basketball column. But I would not be in sports journalism if not for Howard Cosell. For it was Cosell, who died in 1995, who was one of my biggest media heroes growing up, and who has only become larger since his passing. Lots of people shape your life and don’t know it; the Great One influenced me, though we never met. It is not a stretch to say that the NFL, and sports in the United States as we know it, would not be where they are today if not for Cosell, whose star turn on Monday Night Football from 1970-83, was a seminal transferal point for the sport. The success of MNF was crucial to the league’s ability to command multi-billion dollar rights fees from its broadcast netw
