College Sports Information Directors of America

Beano Cook – University of Pittsburgh/ABC/ESPN (posthumous) 

CSC Hall of Fame Class of 2024 

by  John D. Lukas

Carroll H. “Beano” Cook was a sports media icon, an original character known for his wit and his one-liners, his eccentric personality, his encyclopedic knowledge of sports history, his enduring love of college football (as well as his everlasting hatred of baseball) and, of course, his distinctive voice. It sounded, the writer Tom Callahan famously said, “like a plumbing fixture gargling Drano.”  

Cook passed away at the age of 81 in 2012, but that voice still echoes across the American sports landscape due to his role as a cantankerous college football commentator on ABC and ESPN from the early 1980s through the 2000s.

Those who knew Cook best, however, know that professionally he considered himself first and foremost a “PR man.” Cook’s career started at his alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as the school’s maverick sports information director from 1956 to 1966.  He joined CSC when it was formed as CoSIDA in 1957. 

Cook is one of two retired sports information directors to be inducted in this year’s CSC Hall of Fame class of 2024, joining long-time award-winning SID Tim Tolokan, formerly at the University of Connecticut. Cook and Tolokan were nominated by the CSC Special Awards Committee veteran's sub-committee from a plethora of nominations. Veterans committee Hall of Fame inductees represent former sports information professionals of distinction from the past whose professional and personal deeds and accomplishments helped make possible the stature of the athletics communications profession today.

Before television was the dominant medium and before the existence of the Internet and social media, an SID’s job largely consisted of putting out press releases, lobbying and entertaining print writers, the relentless pursuit of newspaper column space, and the antiquated mission of advancing road games to secure publicity, much like a modern carnival barker, in order to sell game tickets.

Beano, with his cluttered clipboard, work ethic and outside-the-box thinking, excelled at the job. Why that nickname? Cook was born in Boston (one nickname of the city is “Beantown”) and at age seven, his family moved to Pittsburgh. Because of his Boston roots, people in his neighborhood gave him the nickname "Beano."

For his tremendous work in college athletics, Cook also was known as the “Pope of College Football.”
 

Cook working with the assembled media during a Pitt football game. Later in his career, his passion for football and his extensive knowledge earned Cook the nickname “The Pope of College Football.”

While Cook included the prices of produce and the locations of police speed traps in his releases and posed Pitt athletes with attractive coeds in promo shoots, he also acquired a reputation inside the business as a top-flight school spokesman for his tireless work on behalf of Pitt’s athletes and for his imaginative publicity campaigns.  

Perhaps the most notable was his unsuccessful attempt in the late 1950s to pair Pitt virologist Dr. Jonas Salk, the creator of the Polio vaccine, in a photograph with the Panthers’ All-American hoops sharpshooter Don Hennon. According to Cook’s posthumously published memoirs, the unassuming Salk declined to participate in Cook’s photoshoot because Hennon was not a student in one of his classes. Ironically, Hennon became a medical doctor after his playing days.  

“I had the headline all written out: ‘Pitt’s Two Greatest Shot-Makers,’” lamented Cook. “That photo wouldn’t have just been on the front page of every paper in the country, it would have made every paper in the world.”

Thanks in part to his zany antics, plus his zeal in promoting Pitt athletics, veteran New York sportswriter Dan Parker anointed Cook “the greatest publicity man since Barnum – and, on second thought, Bailey, too.” 

In 1960, the colorful Cook was the subject of a feature story in Sports Illustrated. It was the first, and perhaps only, time a college SID was profiled in the pages of that revered magazine.

Following his time at Pitt, Cook worked as NCAA press director for ABC Sports from 1966-74. He held the same position at CBS Sports from 1977 to 1982. In between, Cook served stints as a sportswriter for the St. Petersburg Times, as a publicist for the Miami Dolphins, and spent one full year with the domestic Peace Corps, Volunteers in Service to America.

Cook’s transition to television star in 1982 was an unlikely one. He wasn’t a former player, coach or traditionally-trained journalist. Not only did he have an unusual voice and an unconventional background, the rumpled curmudgeon looked, his Hall of Fame broadcasting friend Howard Cosell said, like an “unmade bed.”

“Cosell, (Jimmy) The Greek, and myself are unique,” Cook stated. “None of us had television good looks or baritone voices. None of us fetched coffee at some station in Iowa and worked our way up through the ranks. We weren’t jocks. We remain the only television personalities who somehow went around the system.” 

Cook connected with viewers thanks to his unique perspective and unparalleled knowledge of the sport’s history. 

And because at the end of the day, he was one of them.

“I would be talking…as a fan, perhaps the biggest, most passionate, and most opinionated college football fan in the country,” Cook noted.

What many fans remember him for was his fearlessness in speaking his mind: his infamous prediction that Notre Dame quarterback Ron Powlus would win not one, but two Heisman Trophies is part of his known legacy – as well as his trademark sense of humor. Cook’s most celebrated line was uttered in 1981 in response to the announcement that then-commissioner Bowie Kuhn would be presenting the returning Iran hostages with lifetime MLB passes: “haven’t they suffered enough?”

Cook’s behind-the-scenes contributions to the sports television landscape are both many and momentous. While at ABC, he is credited for helping revolutionize that network’s coverage of college football and for convincing his boss, executive Roone Arledge, to move the 1969 Texas-Arkansas game, scheduled for October, to December, resulting in the ratings extravaganza known as the “Big Shootout.”  

At CBS, he developed the map system that is used today by all of the major networks in airing NFL games. A cast member for ESPN College GameDay’s inaugural season in 1987, Cook was singlehandedly responsible for the decision to take the show on the road for the 1993 Florida State-Notre Dame showdown, in effect creating the cultural phenomenon that the show has become.  

After serving as a studio commentator for ABC Sports' College Football Association telecasts from 1982-85, Cook joined ESPN in 1985 and went on to serve as a college football studio commentator for the network. He remained a frequent guest on ESPN Radio and also had a popular weekly podcast on ESPN.com (co-hosted by Ivan Maisel) until his passing in 2012.

By his own account, Cook attended more games over the course of his nearly sixty-year career “than the Goodyear Blimp.” But he wasn’t much for scores. To him, the stories were what made it all worthwhile. Cook loved holding court, telling tales of encounters with names such as Red Grange, Robert F. Kennedy, Muhammad Ali, Mary Tyler Moore, Richard Nixon, Phyllis George, Don Shula and an amazing assortment of coaches, broadcasters, sportswriters, TV executives, mobsters, bookies and bettors, yet the stories that meant the most to him were those involving his friends in the PR business.  

While his “second” career as an-air commentator made “Beano” a household name, ultimately, Cook’s most cherished memories were the ones created during his decade as a college SID.  

In his final days, he vividly recalled the rhyming poetry of Fred Casotti’s releases at Colorado, the brilliant prose Harold Keith composed at Oklahoma, the outstanding food and the five-star amenities in the pressbox at Michigan State - nicknamed the “Stabley Hilton” in honor of Fred Stabley, Sr. - and the time Duke’s Ted Mann brokered a peace treaty with law enforcement that kept Cook from being arrested for disorderly conduct after heckling an official during the 1959 Pitt-Duke basketball game.  

Now, one of the CSC’s charter members is finally enshrined alongside the likes of the above-mentioned friends as well as fellow CSC Hall of Famers Donn Bernstein, Don Bryant, Charlie Callahan, Norm Carlson, Val Pinchbeck, Jim Tarman, Budd Thalman, Roger Valdiserri, and Nick Vista, among others. 

Back to University of Pittsburgh tributes to Cook. The media suite in Pitt's basketball arena, the Petersen Events Center, is named in Cook's honor as are the Panthers' practice fields at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex. 

If he were alive today, he’d undoubtedly consider this CSC Hall of Fame honor as one of greatest honors of his life.

“When I left Pitt, I missed the conventions, the camaraderie, and commiserating about the coaches and the hacks,” Cook said. “That’s why I maintained many of my friendships with SIDs from my era, as well as got to know those of later generations. You leave the publicity profession, but it doesn’t leave you.”  



In 1999, Beano Cook asked Lukacs to help write his biography. Lukacs fulfilled his promise and published “Haven’t They Suffered Enough?: An Unbelievable Career in Sports, PR and Television” in 2021.  The book is available exclusively on Amazon.com.