Former WFAN host Mike Francesa said he has immense respect for Howard Cosell and what he did as a broadcaster, but it was interesting to him that Howard initially wasn’t a big fan.
Asked by a listener of his BetRivers podcast The Mike Francesa Podcast via email if he ever knew Cosell, Francesa said he and Howard were never close. He recalled Cosell not liking how a younger Francesa’s broadcast approach at the time.
“He did not like my early presentation,” Francesa said. “He went after me a couple times where he thought I had too strong of opinions, and it’s funny because he made his whole life on opinions. And I was just getting started, but he came after me a couple times and that was fine. Getting recognized from Howard Cosell, it didn’t matter if it was good or bad.”
Francesa talked about how Cosell had a certain level of arrogance about him. He didn’t find fault in that, especially considering how successful Cosell was. But Francesa felt like Cosell’s bread and butter was in calling football games and being a commentator.
“What Cosell thought was that he was bigger than life. And he was a big personality, nobody’s saying he is not. But it worked for him inside the role where sports was the vehicle,” Francesa said. “The vehicle wasn’t Howard. The vehicle was Howard as a sports commentator. That worked. Howard as the entertainer or Howard as the personality it didn’t work. Not to the nation they couldn’t stand him, and his TV show bombed.”
Mike went on to say that reading highlights on Monday nights on ABC for Monday Night Football was classic Cosell. There was nothing that even came comparably close to what Howard was able to do in that space.
“Cosell would give you unscripted 60 seconds of the most dramatic sports commentary,” he said. “And it would have a setup. It would have a beginning, it would have a middle and it would have an end, and it would be perfectly crafted inside. And he’d go, ‘Back in 30 seconds’ and it was so good. So good. As good as anything I’ve ever heard. That was Howard Cosell.”
