It was 40 years ago this month the Vikings lost to the Steelers in Super Bowl IX, and while that memory brings no joy to Doug Kingsriter he does recall with fondness an incident involving two of his Minnesota teammates and legendary broadcaster Howard Cosell.
The 1975 Super Bowl was played in New Orleans and the NFL assigned the Steelers to a posh hotel for their stay in the Crescent City. The Vikings, according to Kingsriter, were sent to a motel located adjacent to the New Orleans airport because they had alienated league authorities at the Super Bowl the year before, criticizing the Houston practice field locker room which had no lockers, nails in the wall for hanging clothes and birds flying around in the showers. Kingsriter said the New Orleans motel was “near the end of runway No. 9,” and in the days leading up to the big game the Vikings found themselves listening to one airplane after another taking off and landing.
To pass the time during Super Bowl week—and perhaps to ignore the roar of jet engines—Kingsriter and other Vikings organized a team cribbage tournament. On the Friday afternoon before Sunday’s game he and a couple of teammates were in one of the motel rooms playing cribbage. At the same time Cosell was interviewing Fran Tarkenton in the motel’s open air courtyard for a segment that was to be seen the next night on ABC TV.
Cosell died in 1995 but he is well remembered by those who knew him and millions who watched him on ABC programming including “Monday Night Football” and “Wide World of Sports.” Cosell was known for “tell it like it is” sports reporting and bragged about his accomplishments. He certainly was among TV’s biggest personalities in the 1970s and 1980s even though his arrogance alienated viewers across the country.
“There have always been mixed emotions about Howard Cosell,” the comedian Buddy Hackett once said. “Some people hate him like poison and other people just hate him regular.”
A former lawyer and highly intelligent, Cosell was also admired by many for his willingness to ask probing questions and deliver information to viewers that went beyond much of the drivel from other TV sports journalists. Presumably on that Friday afternoon about 40 years ago, Cosell conducted an interview of substance with Tarkenton, the Vikings Hall of Fame quarterback.
Problem is, we will never know. The interview never aired because Cosell was so upset with the shenanigans of Vikings linebacker Wally Hilgenberg and All-Pro defensive tackle Alan Page.
How did it all come about? Kingsriter, a tight end with the Vikings from 1973-1975, thinks the incident was pretty much spontaneous and probably the creation of the fun-loving Hilgenberg who likely decided enlisting someone of Page’s stature to play a prank on Cosell was a good idea.
“(While playing cribbage) we kept hearing this snickering outside and pitter-pattering running by the door,” Kingsriter remembered. “I went out to see what was going on. I saw Hilgenberg and Page. They both had waste baskets—full of water.
“They were looking down (from the second floor walkway to the open court yard) and they were pretty much over Cosell who had his back to them. He was interviewing Fran.
“Hilgenberg and Page were counting silently were their mouths, ‘1, 2,’ and kind of swaying the buckets in rhythms. I looked at Fran and he saw it (the water) coming, and he didn’t flinch. You know Fran had great peripheral vision. He just sat there.
“They hit Cosell square. When I say square they knocked his toupee off, not totally off but it was off to the side. He quick grabbed it and put it back on before he turned around. They got him in the back, in the head, and really soaked him.
“Well, Hilgenberg ran away. Page stayed there. He hung over the railing looking down with a huge Cheshire cat grin, just looking down at Cosell. Then Cosell turned around and he points his finger up at Alan. He said, ‘I am gonna get you for this, Page.’ ”
Cosell was angry and in the months ahead maybe he forgave Page for the prank but he certainly didn’t forget. The next season, on October 27, 1975, Cosell and ABC were televising the Vikings-Bears game as part of the Monday Night Football series. Page didn’t play in the game and Cosell knew why.
Multiple times during the broadcast Cosell reported Page was sidelined because of hemorrhoids. “This was true but he wanted to make sure that everybody in the world knew that Alan had hemorrhoids,” Kingsriter said.
Kingsriter believes ABC should have aired the interview including when the water hit Cosell. The film could have been edited to show Cosell getting soaked but not losing his toupee. The man with the hall of fame ego had an opportunity to poke fun at himself. “He missed what I thought was a great opportunity to help his image,” Kingsriter said.
As for the Super Bowl game, it was the Vikings’ image that took a hit on January 12, 1975. The Steelers held the Vikings to 119 yards of total offense in a 16-6 win. It was the Vikings’ second consecutive Super Bowl loss, having lost the year before to the Dolphins, 24-7.
But when it came to Howard Cosell, neither the Steelers nor the Dolphins had anything on the Vikings thanks to the chutzpah of Hilgenberg and Page.
Comments Welcome
