Beano Cook, who turned 80 yesterday, is one of college football’s greatest treasures. As Tony Kornheiser said on PTI Thursday, nobody knows more about college football than Beano Cook. Cook has faded from prominence in recent years due to his declining health – last Christmas he had breathing issues and spent 12 days in the hospital – but he’ll occasionally pop up in one of the Pittsburgh papers to offer a history lesson on the sport he has followed for six decades.

Why is he in the tank for Notre Dame? I’m not sure. Cook went to Pittsburgh, but loves to bring up the glory years of Notre Dame football – like the 40s – and he’s probably most famous for proclaiming that Ron Powlus, a high school legend in Pennsylvania, would win two Heisman Trophies at Notre Dame. Powlus was successful at Notre Dame, but obviously never lived up to the hype. Rick Reilly, back when he was the best in the business, wrote this terrific story on Powlus in 1996:

This is how many people were in the stands the day Powlus played his first varsity high school football game for Berwick (Pa.) High: 40,000.

This is what ESPN’s Beano Cook said the weekend Powlus played his first game for Notre Dame: “Ron Powlus will win the Heisman two times and be the greatest quarterback in the history of Notre Dame.”

These are a few of the guys who have played quarterback at Notre Dame: George Gipp, Johnny Lujack, Paul Hornung, Daryle Lamonica, John Huarte, Terry Hanratty, Joe Theismann and Joe Montana.

This is what Notre Dame quarterbacks before Powlus won: 13 bowl games, 13 All-America awards, 11 national championships and 4 Heismans.

This is how many bowl games Powlus has won, national championships he has won, Heismans he has won, Heismans he has been in the running for and weeks Notre Dame has been ranked No. 1 since he started playing (combined): 0.

This is what NBC’s John Dockery said as part of a violin-accompanied, soft-filtered five-minute tribute before Powlus’s first snap at Notre Dame Stadium, in September 1994: “We’re unveiling a very special painting today, like a Mona Lisa.”

Please go read that. Now. If you’d like to, check out Cook’s blog. While writing this post, I ended up stumbling into google newspaper archives, and Cook is all over the place. Back in the 80s and early 90s, his predictions were the ones that mattered. In 1993, this ran in the Toledo Blade prior to Notre Dame-Florida State: “Florida State is going to feel like the Germans at Stalingrad. You don’t want to fight the Russians in the middle of winter and you don’t want to play an undefeated Notre Dame team in South Bend in the second week of November.”

Happy belated birthday, Beano.

* Note: If you didn’t read that first link, Cook showed up to an interview wearing Seattle Seahawks sweat pants. Why? “Turns out in the wake of Super Bowl XL, Beano publicly proclaimed that Seattle got ripped off — although he was rooting for the Steelers (and owns four seat licenses at Heinz Field). A Seattle radio station was so impressed it sent him the clothing. He wears it all the time because, well, it`s comfortable.”