Insults permeate 'Monday Night Football' booth in TNT movie

LOS ANGELES -- Roone Arledge is trying to persuade his boss to bring prime-time football to ABC. He believes having three announcers in the booth is the key to ratings success.

Arledge wants someone who's going to stir things up, someone "that's going to smash the toadyism that these (CBS and NBC) announcers have been ruining the great game of football with."

Enter Howard Cosell.

He is the last person hired as host of "Monday Night Football" beginning in 1970. Arledge adds Don Meredith as color commentator and Keith Jackson as announcer. Jackson would later be dropped for Arledge's buddy Frank Gifford.

A pop-culture franchise was born.

What happened behind the scenes -- infighting, inflated egos, gambling and goofs -- is told in TNT's "Monday Night Mayhem," airing Monday at 8 p.m.

"What our movie is going to do is show we used to have some good times," executive producer Leslie Grief said. "We can show the youngsters who weren't born yet what it was really like, and the people who remember can say, 'We're taking ourselves too seriously."'

Rocky relationships

Football is merely the backdrop as the movie focuses on the sometimes rocky relationships among Cosell (John Turturro), Arledge (John Heard), Gifford (Kevin Anderson) and Meredith (Brad Beyer).

"They had a magic that you couldn't recreate," Grief said of the announcing trio. "These were three personalities who were able to speak their mind and were enthusiastic about the sport. Today, everyone is so cognizant of being politically correct. The opinion has been stifled."

To get Cosell's distinct speech pattern down, Turturro watched old footage of one of the most imitated voices in sports.

Cosell and Meredith spent the first season talking over each other; critics panned the show and advertiser Ford Motor Co. wanted Cosell dropped.

"MNF" was an immediate hit with viewers, even those who were enraged enough by Cosell's theatrics to throw bricks through TV screens when he was on.

"You see in Howard a person with a big ego and a person who was vulnerable. That's what makes him interesting," said Turturro, known more for his movie work in "Quiz Show" and "Barton Fink."

Cosell became a star announcer in the 1960s and '70s, when there were only three major networks and the idea of airing sports in prime time was still new.

Today, with the explosion of cable and the Internet, viewers can watch events, call into sports talk radio shows or get scores around the clock. Every important game is on television somewhere.

Cosell soon tired of sharing a booth with a succession of ex-jocks that included Fred "The Hammer" Williamson, Alex Karras and O.J. Simpson, whom Cosell labled an "incorrigible womanizer."

He sought out Arledge about making a more serious contribution in another arena, but Arledge turned on Cosell for his constant nitpicking. Cosell turned to wife for comfort.

Cosell did his last "MNF" game in 1983, Meredith left in '84 and Gifford was gone a few years later. Cosell died in New York in 1995 at age 77.

The show remains popular, although it finished last season with its lowest-ever ratings.