Myron Cope, the man who invented the Terrible Towel, who coined the term “Immaculate Reception“, who is the voice of victory in my childhood head for every 1970’s Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowl win, is dead.
The last line of his obituary pretty much got to me:
“I’ve often thought that when I kick the bucket, there’d be a story that said, ‘Creator of towel, dead,’ ” he remarked upon retiring from his broadcast work for the Steelers. “I would like to be remembered as a pretty decent writer.”
I am trying to find the text of a 1963 article that Cope wrote about Muhammad Ali that was listed by Sports Illustrated as one of the 50 classic sports articles. I know that he knew how to tell stories on the fly, and he wrote the stories that have stuck with me for decades.