More than a pretty face

Published May 18, 2020

You want to dismiss Phyllis George as mere eye candy who was put on football pregame shows because of her looks? Fine. You want to say that she didn’t add anything of substance to the telecasts? Go right ahead.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion—even if it’s wrong.

No matter what you think of George, the former beauty queen who passed away over the weekend at the ripe young age of 70, there’s one thing that you can’t take away from her: She was first. And, more importantly, she wasn’t the last. Far from it.

To dismiss George because she was a supposed fish out of water is to dismiss one Howard Cosell, whose background as a lawyer and print journalist was hardly the conventional prep for being tossed into the broadcast booth for Monday Night Football in 1970.

Yet both George and Cosell spawned copycat…