Former Pitt sports information director Beano Cook elected to College Sports Communicators Hall of Fame
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Born in Boston, but a Pitt man until the day he died, Carroll H. “Beano” Cook has been posthumously elected to the College Sports Communicators Hall of Fame Class of 2024, the organization announced Wednesday.
Known as the Pope of College Football because of his love for and knowledge of that game, Cook was Pitt’s sports information director from 1956-66.
Cook’s family moved from Boston to Pittsburgh when he was 7 years old, and he made his new city a lifetime residence. With his Boston roots, people in his neighborhood gave him the nickname “Beano.”
He graduated from Pitt in 1954 with a bachelor of arts degree and returned to campus as SID, promoting the university’s athletes in various ways for a decade.
Famously, but unsuccessfully, he attempted to pose Pitt All-American basketball player Don Hennon with Dr. Jonas Salk, who discovered the vaccine that cured polio while he was at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Cook wanted to entitle the photograph “The World’s Two Greatest Shot Makers.”
“My two favorite Pitt athletes are Mike Ditka and Don Hennon,” Cook once said. “If the bad guys are coming over the hill and I have to be in a foxhole with anybody, I’d want to be with Mike. He might not feel the same way about me. I really liked Don and he was the best basketball player we had at Pitt during my 10 years there and is definitely one of the best ever.
“Getting to know the athletes really provided me with my fondest memories. That was the most fun. Sports information directors live in a world of reflected glory. If someone makes an All-America team you feel like you had something to do with it. Maybe you did and maybe you didn’t. The player who got the honor probably was 99% responsible, but it was still gratifying being part of the process.”
Cook said he received two pieces of advice from former Pitt sports information director Frank Carver.
“He told me, ‘(the media) always have the last word. It’s like what Lyndon Johnson told Spiro Agnew, who was going after the press at the time. Johnson said, ‘Spiro, you’re crazy. Those newspapers come out every day. You don’t come out at all.’ That advice still holds true.”
The second piece: “No matter how bad you screw up, Beano, they are still going to kick off at 1 p.m.”
“That put it in perspective.”
After leaving Pitt, Cook served as the NCAA press director for ABC Sports until 1974. He also worked as a sportswriter for the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times and public relations director for the Miami Dolphins and Mutual Radio Network. Cook worked at CBS sports in a public relations capacity from 1977-82.
Perhaps in his most famous role, he joined ESPN in 1985 as a college football studio commentator.
Cook said he preferred college football over the professional version because of the passion associated with the game.
“When people study this civilization 10,000 years from now, historians are going to be baffled about why more people followed pro football than college,” Cook said. “They are going to decide that it was a weakness of this civilization that more people wanted to watch pro football on Sundays rather than college on Saturdays. Many things have changed about the (the college) game during my lifetime, but the one thing that hasn’t changed is the passion.”
Cook’s life is chronicled by author John D. Lukacs in the 2021 biography “Haven’t They Suffered Enough?: An Unbelievable Career in Sports, PR and Television.”
“For 10 years, Beano worked tirelessly to secure publicity and recognition for Pitt’s student-athletes as one of the country’s most well-known college sports information directors,” Lukacs said. “During his on-air career with ABC and ESPN, he became ‘America’s SID,’ the nation’s most insightful, enthusiastic and entertaining advocate for college athletics. If he were still with us, he’d be honored — and for the first time in his life — probably rendered speechless with this recognition given to him by CSC in return.”
In a lasting tribute, the media suite at Pitt’s Petersen Events Center and practice fields at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex are named in Cook’s honor.
Cook, who passed away in 2012 at the age of 81, was selected to the CSC Hall of Fame as part of the Veteran’s Committee nominations. He is part of a six-member class that will receive induction June 10 during the 2024 College Sports Communicators #CSCUnite24 annual convention at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas.