Howard Cosell

"This is Howard Cosell telling it like it is."

"Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Sonny Liston's not coming out! Sonny Liston's not coming out! He's out! The winner and new heavyweight champion of the world is Cassius Clay!"

"The Rooneys are the finest people, the people I most respect in American sports ownership. I've always felt that way. And there's no reason to change. They are people of integrity and character... I have a whole transcendental feeling for the Steelers and the Rooneys and Pittsburgh."

"Crowd screaming chanting ALI! ALI! Legends die hard and Ali is learning that even he can not be forever young."

"He is working Duran effectively....and Duran must resolve from pulling in...and he does...WHAT?! DURAN HAS QUIT?! ROBERTO DURAN HAS QUIT!!! There can be no other explanation. Pandemonium in the ring, and Roberto Duran has quit!"

"This, we have to say it, remember this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy, confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps, of all of The Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead … on … arrival. Hard to go back to the game after that newsflash, which in duty bound, we had to take."

"That little monkey. The theorem was that he was too small to play in the NFL."

"Look at that little monkey run!"

"That little monkey gets loose, doesn't he?"

"I was infected with my desire, my resolve, to make it in broadcasting. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and how."

"[T]hey wanted... another Joe Louis. A white man's black man... Didn't these idiots realize that Cassius Clay was the name of a slave owner? … Had I been black and my name Cassius Clay, I damned well would have changed it!"

"I'm one helluva communicator."

"He's going to go all-the-way. (often quoted by Cosell during the "Halftime Highlights" segment of ABC's Monday Night Football games to announce touchdowns scored in games on Sunday a day earlier. Adopted as a tribute, and modified to include a hesitating voice cadence by Chris Berman of ESPN as He could... go... all... the … way!)"

"Arrogant, pompous, obnoxious, vain, cruel, persecuting, distasteful, verbose, a show off. There's no question that I'm all of those things."

"There it is, ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning."

"History will reflect that Howard Cosell was easily the dominant sportscaster of all time, and certainly the most famous."

"Historian (showing Miles a tape of Howard Cosell): At first we didn't know exactly what this was, but we've developed a theory. We feel that when citizens in your society were guilty of a crime against the state, they were forced to watch this. Miles Monroe (Woody Allen): Yes. That's exactly what that was."

"50% of the people hated him, 50% of the people liked him, 100% of them tuned in to hear him."