How outrageous!

On hot summer 1970s afternoons in New Jersey, I listened to Howard Cosell, "Speaking of Sports," on WABC, the radio network's New York flagship station. For five minutes, Cosell's voice interrupted the pop-candy rotation and too-loud commercials. And this is what I remember: Amid the din of all that nonsense, Howard was an oasis of passionate -- but restrained and thoughtful -- commentary on important issues. Usually he did "speak of sports." But even as a young teenager, it was clear to me he was speaking of much, much more.

Cosell was controversial. But outrageous? The term suggests a personality, or behavior, or words, that are not quite fit for decent society. A strange label for a man who, above all else, was trying to make ours a more decent society.

Legendary sportscaster Howard Cosell, in the booth before a game.

Outrageous? Go ahead. Vote for him. He's been nominated as one of the most outrageous sports characters of the past 25 years.

Cosell was naturally irritating to many. He made no attempts to smooth his staccato, nasal Brooklyn accent and fit the demands of radio and television. He spoke New York-style, and delivered opinions with bombast, sprinkled with sarcasm.

He was being himself -- a well-educated, well-spoken lawyer who was an unabashed New Yorker.

That's outrageous?

People hated Howard. He supported unpopular athletes and their causes, and received a number of death threats as a result. Even though suffered the wrath of many sports traditionalists, especially in the print press, who thought that issues like Vietnam and Black Power and women's rights and free agency and Olympic politics belonged anywhere but the sports page.

Outrageous.

But Cosell spoke up. When Cassius Clay said his name would now be Muhammad Ali, most sportswriters and broadcasters ignored him and continued to call him Clay. Cosell called him Muhammad Ali.

Outrageous?

When Ali got banned from boxing for refusing to serve in the military during the Vietnam War, Cosell was an unwavering supporter. "What the government did to this man was inhuman and illegal under the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments," Cosell said when Ali was stripped of his title by the New York State Boxing Commission. "Nobody says a damned word about the professional football players who dodged the draft. But Muhammad was different; he was black and he was boastful."

As it turned out, the Supreme Court sided with Ali, just as Cosell thought it should, and would.

Outrageous.

Shortly after John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised their fists in a black power salute on the medal stand, Cosell interviewed Smith. He asked why. He wanted to understand. He asked, "Are you proud to be an American?" And he got a classic answer: "I am proud to be a black American."

Outrageous?

When women's participation in sports, and sportswriting, and sportscasting, started to gain, Cosell made his position -- one that was unpopular with both his colleagues and with many male athletes -- quite clear. "God did not draw a diagram of the world," he said in 1974, "and carefully mark off broadcast booths and press boxes with the sacred words, 'For men only.'"

Outrageous?

As the ESPN era was beginning, Cosell's era was coming to an end. He gradually faded from Monday Night Football, eventually refused to call pro boxing matches, and, decades after he started sportscasting in his mid-30s, uttered his last "Speaking of Sports" words on January 31, 1992.

We've been worse off for it. There are dozens of skilled, highly compensated, entertaining, well-coifed sportscasters, but how many ask the truly tough questions, or provide provoking commentary on sports-related issues? Only one comes immediately to mind -- Charles Barkley. He's willing to go against the grain, sometimes unpredictably, willing to jar us out of our infotainment stupor. But still, Barkley's no journalist.

Cosell and Muhammad Ali had a very unique relationship.

Cosell was a showman. He had an ego the size of Manhattan. He often allowed himself to be miscast. (If you ever catch an ESPN Classic replay of a late 1970s World Series Game, you'll hear Howard totally out of his element, observing only the obvious and uttering only the platitudes.) He was a many of many faults. But you never got the idea he was far away from what he really cared about: truth and justice.

Cosell was a crusader, a man who, even as he got older, always questioned the status quo. He never let the sports authorities (the leagues, the owners, the networks) relax in the warm bath of their increasing wealth and power.

What's outrageous about that?

When Curt Flood challenged baseball's reserve clause in 1970, Cosell didn't just report on it, he told it, as he would put it, "like it is" -- that baseball owners were in the wrong. That Flood and other players could not be bound, indefinitely and without recourse, to a single team.

He made people squirm. Not a whole lot of sports reporters did that back then. Certainly none with anything resembling Cosell's clout and audience.

Nobody's taken the torch from Howard. Cosell asked the big questions, and took some awfully big personal risks. Who has the means, and willingness, to do that today? Nobody I hear.

And that's outrageous.

Jeff Merron is a staff writer for ESPN.com.