Chris Fowler

Beano Cook was an American sports media icon, an original character known for his wit and his one-liners, his eccentric personality, his encyclopedic knowledge of college football history, and his distinctive voice, which the writer Tom Callahan said sounded like “a plumbing fixture gargling Drano.” That voice, which captivated countless college football fans for decades, narrates Cook’s posthumously published biography, “Haven’t They Suffered Enough?” Written with friend and author John D. Lukacs, the book is equal parts op-ed piece, history lesson and stand-up comedy routine. Employing the same colorful style as a storyteller he exhibited on the air as a college football commentator for ABC Sports and ESPN, Cook holds court, regaling readers with stories and recollections from his childhood through his extraordinary sixty-year professional career in sports, public relations and network television. That career started at Cook’s alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as the school’s maverick athletics publicist from 1956 to 1966. It was at Pitt that Cook was anointed, by New York sportswriter Dan Parker, “the greatest publicity man since Barnum – and, on second thought, Bailey, too.” From 1966 to 1974, Cook worked as NCAA press director for ABC Sports and held a similar position at CBS Sports from 1977 to 1982. Cook also served stints as a sportswriter for the St. Petersburg Times, as a publicist for the Mutual Broadcasting System, and spent one year out of sports as a social worker with the domestic Peace Corps, Volunteers in Service to America, aka. VISTA. The book serves as an all-access pass to the world of college athletics and the golden era of network television sports, with Cook taking the reader into broadcast booths, production trucks, pressboxes, and long-gone watering holes. Such an unconventional life requires a unconventional storytelling approach, which Cook takes with special, standalone chapters on subjects such as sports betting, plus one moving section that serves as a love letter from the lifelong bachelor to the true love of his life, the game of college football. As one of the defining voices in the history of the sport, he ranks his all-time greatest teams, plays, players, coaches, fight songs and traditions, and recounts never-before-told stories about the personalities and contests that made college football America’s national passion. A first-hand witness to some of the most memorable events in sports history, Cook relives epic contests such as the 1960 World Series, the 1969 Texas-Arkansas “Big Shootout," countless college football bowl games and classic “Games of the Century.” Cook tells it like it is, like it was and even how it will be, with several special predictions regarding the future of the sports and media. He recounts in remarkable detail his unique perspective of the 1974 NFL season, which he spent doing PR for the Miami Dolphins, his pivotal role in the rise of ESPN in the mid-1980s, and recalls special relationships with television executive Roone Arledge, broadcaster Howard Cosell and Pittsburgh sports personality Bob Prince. The book features an ensemble cast of famous athletes, actors, coaches, writers, broadcasters, team owners, television executives, media personalities and politicians such as Red Smith, Robert F. Kennedy, Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder, Mary Tyler Moore, Muhammad Ali, Myron Cope, Dan Jenkins, Dr. Jonas Salk, Richard Nixon, Bill Russell, Pete Rozelle, Paul Hornung, Keith Jackson, Lindsey Nelson, Colonel Harlan Sanders, Phyllis George, Don Shula, Joe Paterno, Joe Robbie, Jack Whitaker, James Michener and many others. “Haven’t They Suffered Enough?” is an educational, entertaining read full of laughs, history and nostalgia, an uncensored, unconventional and unbelievable memoir from one of the most unforgettable names in sports and media history.

You Are Looking Live! is about the genesis, success and magic of a live television show that in 1975 captured the excitement of the country, and launched four magnetic personalities to stardom: Brent Musburger, Phyllis George, Irv Cross and Jimmy The Greek Snyder. It was truly a piece of Americana. It was the first NFL studio show to go live and the first to have both a Black and female co-host. Those four personalities battled each other and the competition, and America loved them for it. This is the story of how Brent, Phyllis, Irv and Jimmy got there, their drama and front-page headlines, and what happened to them after the magic ended. Those headlines included Brent and The Greek’s famous fight at Peartrees, Phyllis first marrying the man who produced The Godfather, then dropping him after two months for the next governor of Kentucky, and the shocking firing of Musburger on April Fool’s Day, 1990. America had never seen a show like this before. On the East Coast and the Midwest, people would literally rush home from church to hear what they had to say, and on the West Coast fans loved waking up to it. The NFL Today became so popular that it not only dominated the ratings, but also won its timeslot 18 straight years, from 1975 to 1993, until CBS lost its NFL package to Fox. And today, looking back, these four personalities, like any family, had their own battles, and became even more famous for them.