By Jerry Reimenschneider
 
Tom Beckett had only begun unpacking his boxes when the phone rang.

It was the summer of 1994, and Beckett had just moved across the country to become Yale’s new athletic director after 11 years as associate AD at Stanford. It was a heady time. Here he was, running a storied Ivy League department, new overseer of things like The Big Game and The Big Race, suddenly a vital thread in Yale’s tapestry of historic space and architecture.
The New Haven air was so thick with tradition Beckett could almost touch it.

Then that phone rang.

“It was a Yale alum calling to congratulate me,” Beckett said. “It was like a lot of conversations and phone calls at the time, but then he said to me, ‘By the way, are you aware that The Yale Bowl’s 100^th anniversary is in 20 years, and the building is falling apart?’ ”

The headiness evaporated, and the gravity of The Bowl issue descended upon Beckett.

“ ‘Could I be here 20 years from now?’ ” he thought. “ ‘And if so, what am I gonna do? I need to be aware of what this alum has shared with me, and the impact of it, the importance of it.’ ”

So Beckett got to work. He quizzed coaches and alumni, sat with athletic staff, discussed the issue with Yale’s top administrators, fielded all sorts of ideas and suggestions.

“The most powerful was, you need to have a signature event, and you need to fix The Bowl,” he said. “So we embarked on that challenge, and long story short, we made it happen.”

Of all the jewels in Beckett's Yale crown as he readies to retire after 24 remarkable years, The Yale Bowl's restoration and renovation may shine brightest.

Behind Beckett's generalship, Yale raised more than $32 million for the project, transforming The Bowl from a crumbling relic that Beckett said “looked like the Roman Colosseum” to a singular monolith that at once blends its history with contemporary convenience.

“I don't know what it looked like in 1914,” Beckett said, “but in 2014 it was breathtaking.”

To put an exclamation point on the proceedings, Beckett somehow persuaded Army into visiting The Bowl for its ballyhooed centennial game on Sept. 27, 2014.

“I mean, Ivy League teams don't play FBS teams,” said Yale football coach Tony Reno. “To convince them to come and play in our 100^th anniversary game of The Yale Bowl? I mean, no one else can get that done but him. He got that done.”

It was a storybook autumn day in New England. Crisp weather, colorful foliage, with 30-plus thousand packing the newly renovated old gem. Nearly 1,500 Cadets came, too, marching into the Bowl as all stood in salute. Army’s parachute team even delivered the game ball. And Yale won, 49-43 in overtime.

“Norman Rockwell,” Beckett said, “would have had a field day just capturing that scene.”
 
Accomplishment
 
But Rockwell may have had trouble capturing all Beckett has meant to Yale these past 2 ½ decades.

“Tom is Yale athletics,” said women's basketball coach Allison Guth.

“He has been an amazing ambassador for Yale athletics, for Yale University and for the Ivy League,” said league Executive Director Robin Harris. “He's done it with a very strong moral compass, and by doing what's right, and then he communicates that in a way that is powerful.”

“Tom has completely transformed the department in every way,” Yale President Peter Salovey, whom Beckett credits with facilitating his many successes, wrote in a letter to the Yale community.

Athletic directors don't produce the sort of on-field statistics their athletes do. But were Beckett to be measured similarly, the stats would stagger. Some highlights:

• 122 championships
• 70-plus first-place Ivy League finishes
• 43 Olympians
• 339 All-Americans
• 28 national titles

And then there is the colossal endowment cash Beckett has brought. One head-coaching position was endowed upon Beckett's arrival 24 years ago; 23 are now. There were 50 endowed athletics funds in 1994; now there are 215. Yale's athletic endowments totaled $20 million when Beckett moved to New Haven; as of last August, that total was $283 million.

Just as he lauded Salovey for paving him a smooth path, Beckett credited David F. Swensen, Yale's chief investment officer since 1985, for the soaring endowments.

“He's maybe the most spectacular endowment director in the history of finance” and “an absolute genius,” Beckett said without a hint of hyperbole.

But Beckett played no small part. His deliberate message delivery, powerful persuasion, straightforward approach and straight-ahead, steady work ethic created a snowball effect for both donors and Yale's teams.

“When success started, when we had that moment where people said, 'Well, hey, maybe we should go take a look at what's happening at Yale,' there was tremendous support on the campus,” Beckett said, “and people started to pay attention. And then they got very interested, and it became to the place to be. It just has this way of stimulating a community and gaining momentum, and thus gaining support.”

He continued: “And then they hear that Yale's endowment is managed in a way that has no peer, and they start to see the return in terms of what their gift is doing for a particular program; it really works. And for two and a half decades people have continued to believe in this.

“The start of it was a little bit sporadic, and then it gained momentum, and the snowball started to go downhill, and it got bigger and stronger and more powerful, and it picked up more and more support. So it's something that has helped the athletic department, has helped each of our programs, and in perpetuity will do so for all of our teams and all of our students.”

Pretty heady stuff.
 
Authenticity
 
Guth, the women's basketball coach, and Harris, the Ivy League head, say Beckett's success recipe is really no secret.

“Tom is just really authentic,” Guth said.

“He just has this ability to have incredible relationships with people and to communicate with them in a very meaningful and authentic way,” Harris said. “I think what's led to all those amazing changes, right? Because whether it's getting the approval on campus to implement something different, or to connect with alumni to help with the fundraising, that's what's key.”
Beckett also has a guiding mantra, one he shares with his coaches: Young men and women don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

“That line really epitomizes Tom Beckett,” said Reno, the football coach. “Every player that I've coached at Yale knows him on a first-name basis. He knows them on a first-name basis. That's pretty astounding when you think of how many athletes have gone through, and all feel like he is there for them.

“I mean, I can't imagine another director of athletics who goes to more practices, more competitions, than he does. It's amazing.”

Guth went further.

“He doesn't just know every kid who's already here,” she said. “He meets with almost every potential student-athlete who may come here. He wants to make sure they are a right fit for what Yale is trying to accomplish, so he is also securing the future.”

Harris pointed to Beckett's booming voice, endless patience and powers of observation. She recalled a critical NCAA meeting during which the Yale AD listened to long speeches for more than an hour before finally punctuating the discussion with a brief but pithy summary.

Reno called Beckett “one of those guys who, when he comes in, he commands the room.”

Beckett walks the walk. He shows he cares. He lives what he preaches. He leads the way he wants his coaches to lead.

“A lot of people can deliver a message, but very few can be the message,” Reno said, “and he's always been the message. He's always lived what he's said. I mean, he's never, ever once said something that he couldn't do. He's helped me every day.”
 
Accessibility
 
The retiring Beckett will soon be unable to help every day, as he's done so deftly for two dozen years. But you get the distinct feeling his retirement won't be a full one.

“He said he's only going to be a phone call away,” Guth said. “I'm going to take him up on that.”

“He may retire in June,” Reno said, “but I know that in October or January or next July or five years from now I can pick up the phone and call him, and it'll be like he has never left. He'll still be there to listen to the situations that we have and offer advice. That's just who he is.”

Those calls won't bother Beckett.

“I will sit by the phone hoping it rings every minute,” he said. “That works for me.”

Summing up his stunning run at Yale, Beckett did what he's always done: Kept it simple, kept it straight and kept it understated.

“I know I've been blessed,” he said. “I know that.”

He's not the only one.
 

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Jerry Reimenschneider has won more than 25 national, regional and state journalism awards for his editorials, as well as his sports and business features and columns. A longtime former sportswriter, he is currently an award-winning copy editor and opinion writer for the Reading (Pa.) Eagle. To contact Jerry for writing or editing projects, email jrwrite@yahoo.com
 
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