Bob Brooks, the first sports information director at Middle Tennessee State, died in his sleep Tuesday at his Tulsa, Okla., home. He was 79.
Below are two articles on Brooks. The first, from Murfreesboro, Tennessee recounting his time as Middle Tennessee State's first SID from 1959-69 and then as Austin Peay's Director of Athletics. The second article is from
Tulsa World where reporter Tim Stanley writes about Brooks and his time at Oral Roberts as Athletics Director. Under his leadership as athletic director in the 1970s, Oral Roberts' basketball, golf, baseball and tennis programs all flourished and earned national attention. Brooks also was instrumental in the start of the Midwestern Cities Conference and was the league's first president
see article online
photo below courtesy of Austin Peay athletics
MURFREESBORO, TN- Bob Brooks, MTSU's first-ever sports information director, died in his sleep Tuesday at his Tulsa, Okla., home. He was 79.
Brooks, a Chattanooga native, was MTSU's sports information director from 1959-69. He also served as athletic director at Austin Peay and Oral Roberts University.
After graduating from MTSU (then MTSC) in 1957, Brooks was hired by Gene Sloan, the university's head of public relations, as the school's first SID. To that point, there had never been a public relations employee dedicated only to athletics.
Brooks was a close friend and former classmate of MTSU basketball player and coach Ken Trickey. Brooks worked as SID at MTSU for more than a decade until he followed Trickey to Oral Roberts in 1969. Brooks and Trickey were both inducted into the Oral Roberts Athletic Hall of Fame in 2009.
Brooks worked in intercollegiate athletics for 30 years. He served as Oral Roberts athletic director from 1976-83. In 1979, he was instrumental in creating the Midwestern Cities Conference, the forerunner of the Horizon League, and served as the conference's first president.
Brooks served as Austin Peay athletic director for six years before returning to Oral Roberts in 1991 as associate athletic director under Trickey. After another 18-month stint as athletic director, Brooks served on the committee that brought Bill Self to Oral Roberts in 1993.
He is survived by his wife of 56 years, two sons, two daughters and four grandchildren.
Former ORU Athletic Director Bob Brooks dies at 79
Read more from this article: by Tim Stanley, Tulsa World staff writer
By the time former Oral Roberts University Athletic Director Bob Brooks agreed to return to the office in 1991, the school had gone through four athletic directors and two basketball coaches since his departure eight years earlier.
ORU had withdrawn from its conference, becoming an independent, and had fallen from NCAA Division I to the small college NAIA classification.
And after once peaking at 5,000 season ticket holders for basketball, sales had plummeted to about 100.
To turn the program's flagging fortunes around, officials had tapped the right man. After all, it was Brooks who had helped put ORU athletics on the map.
Realizing that sports could serve as a stage for advancing his university's broader ministerial mission, Oral Roberts had chosen Brooks as athletic director in 1976 and given him the job of building a powerhouse program.
"Oral believed not everyone read the Bible every day," Brooks told the Tulsa World in 2009. "However, he felt like everybody read the sports section every day. So sports was a way to reach a lot of folks.
"It was just a perfect time for us to do some things. And it worked."
Robert T. "Bob" Brooks, a 30-year collegiate athletics administrator who in 2009 was named to ORU's Sports Hall of Fame, died Tuesday. He was 79.
A memorial service was held Friday at Trinity United Methodist Church under the direction of Fitzgerald Southwood Colonial Funeral Home.
Originally hired as ORU's sports information director, Brooks had helped publicize Coach Ken Trickey's hugely successful basketball teams of the early 1970s.
Under Brooks' leadership as athletic director, the school's basketball, golf, baseball and tennis programs all flourished, each earning national attention.
During that time, Brooks also was instrumental in the start of the Midwestern Cities Conference and served as its first president.
The 1980s, however, were a turbulent era for ORU athletics. Brooks was replaced in 1983 and became athletic director at Austin Peay University in Tennessee.
But in 1991, after he had moved on to a real estate business, Trickey, who with him had been the driving force behind ORU's emergence as a big-time program, approached him about returning as associate athletic director.
"He felt terrible about how things had gone after he left, and he relished the opportunity to help rebuild," his son, Rhett Brooks, said. "They didn't have to ask him twice."
Brooks was able to restore stability to the program, and in leading a successful drive to regain the school's Division I membership, helped get it back on course.
He retired in 1994. Including both stints, he put in 17 years with ORU.
"Dad was a true administrator. He ran the program like a business," Rhett Brooks said.
He added that unlike many other athletic directors of the era, his father was not a former coach - an advantage, in a way, because he was never tempted to tell his coaches how to do their jobs.
A Chattanooga, Tenn., native, Brooks came to ORU after serving as athletic director for Middle Tennessee State University.
Rhett Brooks, a former executive director of the Golden Eagle Club who once kept basketball stats as a student, said his father had attended recent sporting events at ORU and was proud of how the program had recovered.
Bob Brooks is survived by his wife of 56 years, Mary Brooks; four children, Virginia "Ginger" Howard, Carolyn Schwartz, Rhett Brooks and Robert "Matt" Brooks; a brother, Morris Brooks; and four grandchildren.