Cook’s exit may loom larger than expected
COLLEGE STATION — Jason Cook knows way too much about the bevel in the official Texas A&M symbol — the fancy extra line in the “T” of the “ATM” that gives the emblem an added dimension.
“Sometimes, things get stuck on you,” Cook said Thursday night, while cleaning out his office in the A&M athletic department.
Allow us to (try to) explain: Older Aggies hate the bevel, or at least the ones who are vocal about it. They prefer the oldfashioned, solid maroon “T” surrounded by the “A” and the “M”. How did Cook, A&M’s exiting senior associate athletic director, get stuck with bevel babble? He’s too good at what he does to ignore bevel discourse, and has engaged fans about it over the years.
“I’ve been at Texas A&M since 2003, in various capacities,” Cook said. “The infamous bevel dates back to 1999, before I even got to College Station. But (bevel chat) grew, and grew and grew and grew, until somehow it became ‘my’ bevel. I’ve had a lot of fun with that.”
That’s why a “#BevelUp” T-shirt awarded to Cook from the goodhumored website Good Bull Hunting is among the belongings he’s packing for a move up Highway 6. This week, Cook, 43, accepted a job as Baylor’s vice president for marketing and communications.
Baylor, swamped in scandal the past year, dearly needs someone of Cook’s deft persona to help give the university a fresh approach moving forward. At the same time, A&M is going to dearly miss him, as officials will find out in coming years.
Connecting to the fans
Some of the higher-ups might not even be aware, but Cook spent a chunk of his time in the athletics department answering perplexing and sometimes angry questions from fans that never reached farther into the ivory towers. He did so by engaging Aggies on fan websites such as TexAgs.com — where he (gasp) posted under his real name — and by being the No. 1 guy around A&M to help clear up any athletic department questions from media.
He always did so in a professional and timely manner, with a sharp grasp of deadlines atypical for someone who’s never worked for a newspaper. A colleague compared the never-harried Cook’s approach in crisis to that of a funeral director: cool, calm, comforting and smooth. And 100 percent in charge.
TexAgs posters dubbed him “Jason Cool” for nimbly providing insight an old-school administrator might never fathom. As to why he engaged anonymous fans — and always courteously regardless of their disposition — on TexAgs and other sites?
“There had been a very negative tone related to what we were doing from a marketing and media standpoint,” Cook said of his early intent. “It reached a point where, if we didn’t tell people what we were doing, they would think we were doing nothing. Some people thought I was crazy for posting, but it was important to post under my name to start a dialogue.
“It started as a way to spotlight some of the things we were doing in marketing, but over time I established relationships with people, and met a lot of friends that way.”
Time to move on
Cook, in an age where many authorities still don’t, gets “it” in dealing with media and the public, and he leaves behind a large smart phone to fill for athletic director Scott Woodward. So why leave College Station for Waco? He kidded it’s because of the longtime saying around A&M that “Highway 6 runs both ways.” In reality … “You reach transition points at places,” Cook said. “I’ve been at A&M for 13-plus years, worked with two presidents, two athletic directors and three chancellors. I had an opportunity to be a part of some amazing things here. Throughout my career I’ve been a builder, and you reach that point where there’s an urge to build something again.”
Cook played a key role in A&M’s exit of the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference in 2012. His wife, Leann, is a former SEC assistant commissioner to Mike Slive, so those connections were huge in the monumental shift.
“Historians will look back at this period beginning in 2011, when we first started the move to the SEC, and see it as a golden age,” Cook said. “It’s been a blessing to be a part of.”