Legendary college football analyst Carroll Hoff "Beano Cook" died in his sleep at the age of 81 on October 11. Cook was a longtime staple of the Pittsburgh sports scene and had been an ESPN college football studio commentator since 1986, has died.
A 1954 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, Cook served as Pitt's Sports Information Director from 1956-66. He then was ABC Sports' press director for the NCAA and later worked in as a writer or media representative for the St. Petersburg Times, Miami Dolphins, the Mutual Radio Network, and CBS before joining ESPN.
Below is a tribute to Cook written by ESPN.com's Ivan Maisel and another tribute written by University of Pittsburgh Senior Associate Athletic Director for Media Relations and close friend of Beano Cook, E.J. Borghetti.
Photos below courtesy of Sports Illustrated, ESPN and University of Pittsburgh
Bean Cook was an expert in friendship
by Ivan Maisel, ESPN.com
12 October 2012
Beano and I always ended our podcast with the quip, "Well, we fooled 'em again." And as I sit here, stunned and saddened, I have to say that Beano fooled me. He has been telling me for years that he focused every offseason on living until the start of football season. Once the games began, he knew he would never die, because he would stay alive long enough to find out who would be No. 1.
I suppose God needed to know who won the Northwestern-Minnesota game in 1940.
A few journalistic rules are being broken here. Let me do it the right way: ESPN college football analyst Beano Cook died overnight at age 81. For those of you who don't know, Beano and I have done the ESPNU College Football Podcast together for the last six years. When he and I began podcasting, other people hosted the podcast on other days. But he and I did so well together that I took over as host of all the shows.
That's one of the many things for which I have Beano to thank.
Beano and I spoke twice a week for the last six years: once on the day before every podcast, when we would discuss the topics, and then the podcast itself. Occasionally, what we discussed on the day before made it to the podcast itself. More often, we would digress on one tangent or another that may or may not have something to do with college football.
It might be a story about how he hitchhiked from Providence, where he was a student at Brown, to see Army play Navy in Philadelphia. It might be about why Stanford and Arkansas opened the 1970 season against each other. It might be about my children.
You see, Beano may have been an expert on the history of college football from 1930 to 1990, but he showed his real expertise in friendship. He collected friends like some people collect stamps. He didn't marry -- even though he might have given up college football for Stefanie Powers, the 1980s television star -- and never had children.
But Beano cared about the people around him. He asked questions. I am not the only one at ESPN who had that kind of relationship with him. Mel Kiper Jr. did. Howie Schwab did. I am sure there are others.
He always asked me what other writers had been at the game I covered the previous Saturday. "I don't miss the games," he said. "I miss the hanging out."
There was an old-school quality in the way he related to people. Having grown up an Irish Catholic in Pittsburgh, an ethnic town, he attributed personality traits to ancestry in a way that 21st-century America no longer does. Political correctness may be at play, or the melting pot. But Beano got a kick out of the fact that a Southern Jewish guy like me married an Irish Catholic girl.
Anyway, on our day-before discussions, we would talk for anywhere from 12 to 45 minutes. Yes, I use "we" in the loosest of terms. The podcast served as the perfect vehicle for Beano. It is an open-ended conversation.
But I enjoyed listening to Beano as much as he enjoyed being listened to. Trying to interrupt Beano was like trying to catch the blade of a ceiling fan with your bare hand. You didn't get hurt, but the fan just kept going.
Toward the end of just about every call, he would say, "I've bored you enough. We'll talk tomorrow. Of
all the things I've done at ESPN, this is my favorite."
More and more often, Beano said to me on those preparatory calls, "So you'll call tomorrow and if I'm alive, I'll answer and we'll do the show."
"If I'm alive," I chimed in one day in June, "I will call you."
Beano didn't miss a beat.
"If you have to bet," he said, referring to one of us not being alive, "bet on me."
He wasn't being maudlin. As a man in his early 80s fighting diabetes and its related offshoots, he was just being matter-of-fact. My trying to dismiss his concern had more to say about me. I didn't want to think about losing him.
Beano had a lot of pride. When I covered Baylor at West Virginia two weeks ago, and had to fly to Pittsburgh to get to Morgantown, he wouldn't let me come see him. He remained delighted when I would call, which I didn't do enough.
The last time we spoke, he unnerved me. He said the doctor told him his recovery would be long and laborious.
"I'm struggling," he said. "It's like trying to score on Alabama on fourth down from the 4-yard-line."
Of course, Beano overlooked the fact that very few offenses could get to the 4-yard line against the Alabama defense in the first place.
I had a short bucket list of plans for me and Beano. I did sit down with him in the summer of 2011 with a video crew and interviewed him about his life in college football. I wanted to go to a college football game with him. He refused to fly, of course. My editors and I tried to figure out a way around that, but never did. I wanted to go to Pittsburgh and go to dinner with him, but I put that off, too. There always would be time for that.
Well, no.
Ernie Accorsi, the retired general manager of the New York Giants, may have been Beano's closest friend. He spoke with Beano on a daily basis. Ernie told me Thursday that Beano didn't feel up to watching games last Saturday, but he wanted Ernie to call him with the scores. So Ernie called him regularly.
"Where have you been?" Beano demanded. "It's been three hours, you know."
"I went to Mass, Beano," Accorsi said. "Is that OK?"
Accorsi laughed as he told me. In fact, in each of the conversations I had Thursday with people who knew Beano well, I laughed hard at least once. That is the gift that Beano left us. He made us laugh when he was here. He is still making us laugh.
Beano Cook: An Unforgettable Man and Mentor
by E.J. Borghetti, University of Pittsburgh Senior Associate Athletic Director for Media Relations
On the day of his passing, the name "Beano Cook" was a trending topic on Twitter.
It was a humorous irony that I know he would love.
Beano didn't use Twitter. He likely had no idea what it was. He didn't own a computer or cell phone.
The man formally known as Carroll H. Cook, born in 1931, was a product of a different age - and I say that intending to give him the highest possible compliment.
Beano was far too colorfully complex to be described in a mere 140 characters. His stories - and his wisdom - could never get their just due in a Facebook status update.
In the year 2012 we can communicate with each other at light speed in so many different ways. But do we really know each other? Sadly in my profession, we are often only known by our email address or, yes, our Twitter handle.
There was a reason Beano Cook was the greatest publicity man of all time. If you met Beano, you remembered him. He made an indelible impression that was impossible to forget.
When Beano was spreading the word about Pitt Athletics from 1956-66, he did it with a handshake, a
phone call, a personalized handwritten note - all with his unmistakable original flair.
If Pitt was playing at UCLA, he would fly to Los Angeles days in advance to visit the city's newspapers and television stations.
Legendary New York sports editor Dan Parker called Beano "the greatest publicity man since Barnum -- and, on second thought, Bailey, too." In describing his first meeting with the Pitt press agent, Parker wrote that Beano "barged into my cubbyhole and granted me permission to listen while he interviewed himself."
A larger than life personality? You bet. He will always be remembered for his sharp wit and one-liners. But behind the sound bites was a deeply insightful and intelligent man. Beano could wax eloquent about World War II history just as effectively as he could about The Four Horsemen. He was a man of diverse knowledge and passions.
I consider Beano a dear friend and invaluable mentor. I won't use past tense in saying that because when people are an integral part of your life they will always be part of it, even when they pass on.
I've had the honor to occupy his S.I.D. chair at Pitt for nearly 15 years. And make no mistake, that chair was, is and will always be Beano's.
During that time he imparted numerous pearls of wisdom to me, some that's printable and some best left unsaid. Beano's most important lessons had nothing to do with work. ("Talk to your mom and dad as much as you can. Someday you will want to speak to them and they won't be here anymore.")
He incessantly preached to me the benefits of bachelorhood, so much so that when I got engaged in 2005 my father's first words after "congratulations" were "How are you going to tell Beano?"
(In later years Beano would regularly say, "Lauren really got the short end of the stick by marrying you." In other words, he approved.)
I know the many tributes being written about him say he died having never married and with no children. That didn't mean Beano was without family. Legions of people throughout the sports world considered themselves honorary sons, nephews and grandsons to him. That reflects how deeply people respected and cared about Beano.
Everyone has Beano stories and I'll close with one of my favorites.
Four years ago, Chancellor Mark Nordenberg suffered an arm injury and had to wear a sling for several weeks. Beano got word of the Chancellor's ailment and sent him a note.
Written in his barely legible scrawl were the following words:
"Better you than LeSean McCoy."