Legendary Pitt man Beano Cook has finally been selected for a prestigious honor.
Cook, who served as the sports information director at Pitt from 1956-66, has been posthumously elected to the College Sports Communicators (CSC) Hall of Fame — class of 2024.
Cook passed away in 2021 at the age of 81, but he was selected as part of the Veteran’s Committee nomination. Those inductions 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.”
Cook was raised in the Pittsburgh area in the 1940s and eventually attended Pitt, graduating in 1954 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He spent 21 months in the U.S. Army before returning to Pittsburgh as the Pitt SID.
“Tom Hamilton was the athletic director who hired me at Pitt,” Cook recalled in a 2006 Pitt interview. “Frank Carver was the number two man in the athletic department. Frank used to be the sports information director years before and he gave me two pieces of advice that I still remember to this day. He told me, ‘They always have the last word.’ ‘They’ was referring to the media. 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 of advice he gave me was, ‘No matter how bad you screw up, Beano, they are still going to kick off at 1 p.m.’ That put it in perspective.”
Following his tenure as the Pitt SID, Cook went on to spend time as the NCAA press director for ABC Sports, wrote for the St. Petersburg Times and served as the public relations director for the Miami Dolphins and Mutual Radio Network. He also worked in public relations for CBS Sports.
He also worked as a studio commentator for ABC Sports college football telecasts in the early 1980s and eventually worked for ESPN as a studio commentator. Cook remained a guest on ESPN Radio and hosted his own weekly podcast up until he passed away in 2012.
Cook is remembered in the athletics program by having the media suite in the Petersen Event Center and the practice field at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex named after him. And he’s a beloved figure in the city of Pittsburgh.
The 2024 class will be inducted at a June 10 ceremony during the 2024 College Sports Communicators #CSCUnited24 convention at Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas.
