Delicious, cheese-drenched nachos are now inextricably linked to the sports world, providing a crunchy, salty, gooey snack to people watching games in stadiums and on couches around the country. But the treats, believed to have been invented by Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya in a town on Mexican side of the Texas border in 1943, owe their popularity in part to legendary broadcaster Howard Cosell.

Nachos caught on in Texas in the decades following Anaya’s inspiration and were sold at Texas Rangers games in Arlington Stadium by 1973, according to Smithsonian Magazine. After concessionaire Frank Liberto developed a formula for cheese sauce that made it faster to distribute and easier to store, nachos became available at Cowboys games in 1978.

Then, one fateful Monday night, someone thought to serve nachos to Howard Cosell. The rest is history:

Cosell, a household name for football fans, sat alongside Frank Gifford and Don Meredith giving viewers the play-by-play, when a plate of nachos was brought to the broadcast room. “Cosell was trying to take up some dead air and he says ‘They brought us this new snack—what do they call them? knock-o’s or nachos?’” recalls (Frank’s son Tony) Liberto. “He started using the word ‘nachos’ in the description of plays: ‘Did you see that run? That was a nacho run!’” Cosell and others used the word for weeks after, allowing nachos to branch out from their Texas birthplace.

You don’t become a broadcaster of Cosell’s stature without outstanding powers of observation. So maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that back in 1978, Cosell had the good sense to realize how incredible nachos are before most of the country ever could. And now we all get to eat nachos.