At the end of his legendary tenure as the mouthpiece for ABC’s Monday Night Football, Howard Cosell identified a pestilent trend in the world of sports broadcasting.
Cosell’s complaint, documented in his 1985 book I Never Played The Game, was that too many athletes were being handed unearned announcing jobs on a silver platter.
To describe a sports broadcasting world ruled increasingly by jocks, Cosell labelled this trend “jockocracy.”
“Tell It Like It Is”
Throughout the 60s, 70s and into the 80s, Cosell’s charisma won love and hate across America for his self-proclaimed ability to “tell it like it is.” As entertainer, provocateur and social critic, Cosell was the voice behind Muhammad Ali’s rise to superstardom.
But Cosell’s voice stretched beyond the often insular world of sports.
In 1966, when Ali cited his constitutional right to refuse the military draft as a conscientious objector, Cosell, himself a World War II veteran, publicly defended Ali’s decision to avoid Vietnam.
In short, Howard Cosell brought a global perspective to t ...
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Article written by Geoffrey Lansdell
Jockocracy: Hockey’s Broadcasting Epidemic
August 6th, 2011 by Geoffrey Lansdell Leave a reply »
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