Tag: beano cook

For those of you who are regular followers of this blog (i.e. probably nobody) you may notice a new addition to the all time rankings on the Hall of Champions page.  With the recent passing of Beano Cook, I decided to bring him into the rankings as a tribute to the man.  For those of you who don’t know, Beano Cook was one of the original hosts of College Gameday when they launched their studio show in 1987.  This was definitely before I was aware of college football, and I know him more from his work on ESPNU podcasts with Ivan Maisel and showing up to do a weekly segment on the Herd.  I was always amused by this grumpy old man and thought it was funny how out of touch with pop culture he was on some subjects and how up to date he was on others.  From everything I’ve read about his time on Gameday, he was sort of the celebrated clownish ringleader figure in those early years that Lee Corso has become today (which we all love).  When Beano passed away, I started a top secret project to bring Beano Cook to my rankings since I run a College Gameday blog and he was one of the originals on the show.  I went dug through the darkest corners of ESPN.com’s podcast center and listened to every ESPNU and Herd podcast I could featuring Beano Cook to get his picks from years past.  This took us all the way back to 2005 and brought us all the way up to the early 2012 season wtih his Penn State predictions for this year.  Along with that, we also got plenty of picks from his co-host Ivan Maisel so we have also welcomed him to the rankings.  I wish I could find more picks from Beano Cook, especially going back to his days on College Gameday, but for the time being this will be his all time record.