< Previous28 | point, two-year college sophomores had to compete for AAA accolades with upperclassmen, or even graduate students from four-year schools, making it difficult, if not nearly impossible for them to ever earn the honors. After a successful inaugural year for the College Division awards in 2019, 2020 brought over 300 nominees for the 20 at-large AAA spots with student-athletes from Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College and Monroe College earning AAA Team member of the year awards. 2YSIDA brass hopes to eventually see the award process mirror that of the Divisions I, II and III, and NAIA levels to include Academic All-District awards before ultimately selecting Academic All- America teams in each sport once participation from two-year members warrant it. The future is bright for the 2YSIDA group. In just six years, the organization went from non-existent, to kicking off the 2020 CoSIDA Convention with over 50 members on its Divisional Day Zoom call. Now convening on monthly calls, the group has projects in the works that include its own publications contest, naming a Sports Information Department of the Year, as well as providing a convention grant specifically designed for a two-year member. If you are a two-year SID interested in joining 2YSIDA or would like more information about the group, contact President Kevin Maloney at or Treasurer Candice Kelm For years, CoSIDA veterans like Wayne Block, Fred Baer, and Tyler Cundith walked around convention center halls across the country year after year for the annual CoSIDA Convention without a place to go on the much anticipated ‘Divisional Day.’ They were two-year SIDs, ‘JUCO’ if you will, sometimes overlooked alongside the large Division I staffs from schools that they so often sent their players onto. That all changed in 2014 when a few of those two-year SIDs convened in a back room of the North Tower at the Orlando World Center Marriott, putting their heads together to form 2YSIDA (Two- Year Sports Information Directors of America), a group that has quadrupled in size and more than that in action in its first six years of existence. Today, 2YSIDA is well represented all across CoSIDA. A cabinet made up of members from all three factions of two-year athletics in the United States (NJCAA, CCCAA, and NWAC) was formed this year, representing institutions from California and Oregon on the West Coast, across the heart of the Midwest, and all the way to the deep South in Mississippi and to the East in the Big Apple. Mike Robles, who works as a one-man shop as the director of sports information and communications in the 100-plus school CCCAA, is on the CoSIDA Board of Directors in 2020. 2YSIDA President Kevin Maloney of Jones College in Mississippi continues to serve on a number of CoSIDA committees including Publications, Goodwill and Wellness, and the Mentorship Program. Candice Kelm, a founding member of 2YSIDA from McLennan CC in Texas serves as the National Coordinator for the College Division of the Academic All- America® program and works on the Advocacy and WoSIDA Steering committees. The moral of the story; while their institution’s name may not ring a bell immediately, you likely have a 2YSIDA member working hard next to you on one of your CoSIDA committees. In 2019, after years of hard work and back and forth communication with CoSIDA execs, 2YSIDA had a huge breakthrough when the Academic All-America committee established a College Division for the award. Up until that by Roy Allen | Florida Southwestern State College, Sports Information Director | 2YSIDA Finding Its CoSIDA Footing Where we are and where we are going. 2YSIDA members meeting at the #CoSIDA19 Convention in Orlando.CoSIDA 360 | NOVEMBER 2020 | 29 With little fanfare or membership reaction, CoSIDA recently announced the renewal of its agreement with NACDA that extends the relationship through 2026. The situation was markedly different more than a dozen years ago when leaders were first introduced to the concept of a working agreement that would position CoSIDA within the structure of the country’s largest association of collegiate athletics administrators. Four members of the 2008-09 CoSIDA Board of Directors, Nick Joos (Baylor, president), Justin Doherty (Wisconsin, 1st vice president), Larry Dougherty (Temple, 2nd vice president) and Charles Bloom (SEC, past president) along with then CoSIDA Executive Director John Humenik were the primary catalysts in advocating for the NACDA relationship. “The group of us believed that it was time for CoSIDA to further move in the direction of strategic communications and public relations and felt that a relationship with NACDA would help us get ‘a seat at the table,’” explained Bloom, now executive associate athletics director at South Carolina. “John did a fantastic job in getting the relationship going.” Dougherty remembers the thought process that helped unite the group in pushing hard for a concept that was being met with heavy resistance by several other board members. “The officers, led by John Humenik, had the vision that CoSIDA needed to be aligned with all of college athletics and having our convention at the site of NACDA would provide our members an opportunity to network with other organizations, especially the ADs,” Dougherty explained. “I think this has really helped the image of CoSIDA in the long run.” The concept was first introduced to the CoSIDA Board of Directors at the 2006 Convention in Nashville when NACDA Chief Executive Officer Bob Vecchione made a presentation to the group. Initially, the proposal was for NACDA to absorb management of CoSIDA and control operations and finances as it does with all its other affiliate groups. The notion of surrendering total control and giving up the organization’s autonomy was overwhelmingly rejected by the board and the idea was shelved for several years. As the 2008-09 CoSIDA Board of Directors convened and Joos took over as the organization’s president, he huddled with Humenik about revisiting the concept with NACDA. “We believed that for the long-term betterment of our profession, we had to get this done in some fashion,” said Joos, now deputy athletics director/communications at Missouri. “John had an excellent relationship with Joan Cronan (former Tennessee women’s athletics director), who was then president of NACDA. At the time, the CoSIDA Convention was floundering to some degree, I used to tell folks it would be better The Decision that Gave CoSIDA “A Seat at the Table” CoSIDA renews agreement with NACDA through 2026. by Doug Vance | CoSIDA Executive Director | if folks stayed home, because we were losing money on it right and left.” “Our vision back then was to make CoSIDA a 365-day a year organization rather than just a convention, if you will, which really helped set in motion all of the interactions with the membership that continue beyond just the convention,” he added. “I believe all of us would agree that was transpired over the years has exceeded our expectations while making a positive impact on our profession.” Working closely with Cronan, Humenik was able to negotiate a less restrictive approach to the proposal that allowed CoSIDA to have the involvement with NACDA without yielding its independence and management of its convention. Another past president, Doug Dull (Maryland), added his endorsement to the concept that continued to generate lively debate in board meetings. “John and I worked on it relentlessly to get it passed, as there was some very strong opposition,” Joos noted. “It was and remains a unique hybrid relationship. We purposely wanted our involvement in NACDA to be different and reflect our independence. That’s one of the reasons why CoSIDA isn’t always acknowledged with the same consistent branding as NACDA’s other affiliates. We wanted that clear distinction of independence in the relationship.” Doherty vividly remembers the divide in board opinions. “There were definitely pockets of resistance to the NACDA move within CoSIDA,” Doherty explained. “I remember being at the nominating committee meeting the night Nick and I were both added to the officer rotation and listening to a lot of the past presidents express their disagreement with the idea.” The moment of decision came to a head on Dec. 11, 2008 during a 90-minute board meeting that focused entirely on the NACDA question. “Some felt that it should have been a membership decision and wanted to have them vote on it,” Joos explained. The board meeting minutes indicate that a motion was made to table the decision to the 2009 CoSIDA Convention in San Antonio. But the motion failed as Humenik reminded everyone that NACDA had established a deadline for a decision and waiting until the convention would be too late. In reflecting back on that December meeting, those officers in favor of the proposal credit Anne Abicht, a college division representative from St. Cloud State, as being a major factor in the motion passing. “One person who truly deserves credit is Anne Abicht. Without her vote this would not have happened,” Dougherty said. “Changing the mindset of the college division SIDs was Continued on page 3130 | the hit 1960s TV show. Such an unconventional life requires a unconventional storytelling approach, which Cook takes with standalone chapters on subjects special to him such as sports betting and college football. The latter serves as a love letter from the lifelong bachelor to the game. As one of the defining voices in the sport’s history, he lists his all-time greatest teams, plays, players, coaches, fight songs and traditions, and tells hilarious, head-shaking tales about the legendary personalities and contests that make it America’s national passion. There are the games. Cook covered epic contests such as the 1967 USC- UCLA game, the 1973 Sugar Bowl, and the 1993 Florida State-Notre Dame “Game of the Century.” He is credited for convincing his boss, ABC Sports 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.” And then there are the names. Throughout the course of his career, he rubbed shoulders with famous athletes, writers, TV personalities and politicians such as Red Smith, Robert F. Kennedy, Jimmy “The Greek” Snyder, Mary Tyler Moore, Howard Cosell, Muhammad Ali, Dan Jenkins, Dr. Jonas Salk, Richard Nixon, Bill Russell, Pete Rozelle, Phyllis George, Don Shula, Joe Paterno, Jack Whitaker, James Michener and many others. To Cook, however, the most important memories were the ones created during his decade as a college SID. He recalls the rhyming poetry of Carroll “Beano” Cook was an American sports media icon, an original character known for his wit and his one-liners, his eccentric, polarizing 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.” Though he is also probably best known for his role as a curmudgeonly college football commentator on ABC and ESPN from the early 1980s through the 2000s, Cook, who joined CoSIDA as a charter member in 1957, considered himself first and foremost a “PR man.” Cook passed away in 2012 at the age of 81, but members will soon have a unique opportunity to hear the unforgettable voice of one of the organization’s founders again; it narrates Cook’s posthumously published autobiography, “Haven’t They Suffered Enough?” The title is arguably Cook’s most famous and oft-repeated line, which he uttered in 1981 in response to the announcement that commissioner Bowie Kuhn would be presenting the returning Iran hostages with lifetime MLB passes. The highly entertaining memoir is equal parts weekly release, op-ed piece, history lesson and comedy routine, an all-access pass to an incredible life well-lived. Employing the same colorful style as a storyteller he exhibited on the air, Cook regales readers with recollections from his childhood in the 1930s and 1940s and countless other stories collected over the course of his extraordinary, sixty year professional career in sports, publicity and network television. That career started at Cook’s alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as the school’s maverick sports publicist from 1956 to 1966. Cook, at the time the second youngest sports information director in the country, was a pioneer in the field of athletic public relations who devised imaginative publicity stunts, ran gambling pools in the football pressbox, arranged entertainment for sportswriters and published the prices of produce and the location of police speed traps in his releases. Thanks in part to his zany antics, as well as his zeal in promoting Pitt’s athletes and teams, he became a national media favorite while simultaneously antagonizing not just NCAA administrators, referees and opponents, but often times his own athletic directors, too. In 1960, the colorful Cook was the subject of a feature story in Sports Illustrated. Veteran New York sportswriter Dan Parker anointed Cook “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. He held the same position at CBS Sports from 1977 to 1982. Sandwiched 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. “I moved around more often and had more jobs than the Fugitive did,” Cook recalled, referencing Beano Cook An original CoSIDA member to be featured in a memoir released this November. by John D. Lukacs Author | Ph ot o p ro vi de d b y P itt sb ur gh A th le tic s.CoSIDA 360 | NOVEMBER 2020 | 31 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 and the ACC’s Director of Officials, Footsie Knight, that kept Cook from being arrested for disorderly conduct after heckling an official during the 1959 Pitt- Duke basketball game. Cook provides a nostaglic look back at a bygone era before the Internet and social media existed, when an SID’s job was largely devoted to lobbying writers, padding expense accounts, the relentless pursuit of “space” and the antiquated mission of advancing road games to secure publicity, like a carnival barker, in order to sell game tickets. It was the highlight of the job for Cook. “Between all the expensed eating and drinking, I did quite a bit of sightseeing, everything from touring historic sites to taking in Broadway shows. I used the trips to advance my love life, too,” Cook explained. “I have no idea who conceived the idea of a publicity director advancing a game for an entire week, but I think our professional organization, CoSIDA, should have built a monument in his honor.” The real celebrities in his life were the fellow media relations professionals he called friends. The pages of the book are littered with familiar names like Donn Bernstein, Don Bryant, Charlie Callahan, Norm Carlson, Val Pinchbeck, Jim Tarman, Budd Thalman, Roger Valdiserri, Nick Vista and many other members of CoSIDA’s Hall of Fame. “When I left Pitt I missed the conventions, the cameraderie, and commiserating about the coaches and the hacks,” Cook writes. “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.” NOTE: “Haven’t They Suffered Enough? Uncensored, Unfiltered Memories of an Unbelievable Career in Sports, PR and Television” by Beano Cook and John D. Lukacs will be available exclusively from Amazon.com on November 28. the hardest thing to do, as they felt that aligning with NACDA would prevent them from attending CoSIDA. I believe Anne was the only college division board member to support the initiative.” The motion, which was made during the meeting by Doherty and seconded by at-large representative Will Roleson, passed by a slim 11-8 vote and it was officially announced to the membership on Feb. 10, 2009. In Abicht’s recollection, her decision to support the NACDA relationship was about seeing a potential opportunity to benefit the profession. “There was a great deal of discussion at the time and I tried to reach out and talk to my colleagues to seek other opinions,” Abicht said. “It was a real iffy thing at the time and people were concerned that we were giving up something in doing it.” “I was in a little different situation that the other CD reps on the board. We had Division I men’s and women’s hockey. Plus, I served as the university licensing director and had attended the NCLA portion of NACDA. I just saw it has a great opportunity to help athletic directors and other administrators have a better understanding of our profession.” It was clearly a controversial decision for the organization as it brought an abrupt change to the tradition of CoSIDA staging its own independent convention and being in control of the location. Without question, the decision has been one of the most debated in the organization’s long history. Although the agreement was announced in 2009, CoSIDA was not involved as a participant in NACDA Convention Week until 2013 due to existing hotel agreements held by both parties at that time. CoSIDA members have responded in positive fashion to the convention approach change. During the seven years of in-person conventions, CoSIDA has averaged just over 933 attendees compared to an average of 688 attendees the previous four years before the NACDA relationship began. The agreement was renewed in 2014 through 2022 after a survey indicated the majority of the members were in favor of continuing the relationship. “It was an intense time, but a fun time, and I think for all of us, we were grateful to be part of the process,” Joos added. “I’m grateful that today’s leaders continue to support the vision we cast 12 years ago.” NACDA: Continued from page 2932 | The SID Life How would you spend a week without internet? Plus, lessons learned during COVID-19, early New Year’s resolutions, and most and least valuable skills. “The SID Life” is a series surveying CoSIDA members for their thoughts on topics and issues in the athletic communications industry, plus personal insights into not-so-serious issues, too. • Barry Beal – The College of New Jersey, Assistant Director of Athletics for Communications and Game Operations • Ray Fink – Northwest University (Washington), Sports Information Director • Hillary Fisher – Anne Arundel Community College, Assistant Athletic Director, Communications • Phylicia Short – Queens University of Charlotte, Assistant Athletic Director for Communications/ADID • John Vu – University of Utah, Associate Director of Communications BEALFINKFISHERSHORTVU Biggest lesson learned during COVID-19? Taking face-to- face contact with coaches and student-athletes for granted. To be grateful for employment when so many have lost jobs. To do whatever it takes to get teams back in action safely. We are perhaps the most adaptable employees at our institutions. Always be ready and able to adapt to change. Adaptability to unfamiliar and unique situations has been pretty critical. Early 2021 New Year’s Resolution: To be more present and engaged in social situations. Reduce my personal social media use. Practice more consistent self-care. To get back in shape. I just had a baby in June. Be more organized and less “there’s a method to my madness.” How would you spend a week without internet? Read a lot of books and fire up the old DVD player. Buy a map and hit the National Parks! Bake, craft, read, swim and call student-athletes to check in with them. My 4-year old daughter and 4-month old son would keep me so busy I wouldn’t even notice. Explore more National Parks and State Parks in Utah and surrounding states. Most interesting thing about the current state of athletic communications? It’s a fun challenge to create new content ideas to fill months of dead space. The empathy. I hear little whining about what spring is going to be like for SIDs – and mostly sharing ideas about how to make it work. Right now we are able to focus more on our student- athletes’ amazing personal stories. No two days are the same. You get to interact with different people and do different types of work each day. Every day is different and unique. It’s never the same thing over and over again. What is your most valuable skill? Writing. And hiding takeout containers from my fiancée. Organization. Actively listening with empathy. I am a quick learner and able to adapt to change. Working under pressure without getting flustered. Your most useless skill? Seinfeld quotes, not that there’s anything wrong with that! Catching quarters off my elbow. PageMaker Can fold my thumb behind my hand! Not sure - hopefully I’m not using it too often at work! Burgers or tacos? Hard choice… burgers. Burgers, hot off the grill. Tacos Tacos-there are so many options. Tacos all day without question.College Sports Information Directors of America UNA Box 5038 Florence, AL 35632-0001Next >