Dirk Nowitzki doesn’t head to Dallas without ESPN. Fenway Park sits decaying without NESN. Scott Boras isn’t a household name without the Fox Sports Network.
The business of sports relies on the media.
It’s a simple truth many sports professionals often forget. Athletes and coaches receive training for dealing with pesky journalists when they reach any high level of play — from prep schools all the way up to pay-for-play leagues. Slick marketing directors and sports information directors roadblock reporters, often preferring silence over truth. Many of these next generation public relations specialists know nothing but spin, and spin they do, until they lose their balance.
Ed Carpenter doesn’t wear hair gel, and in 29 years at Boston University as sports information director, he never lost his balance.
His physique more closely resembles Charlie Brown than the BU athletes he worked tirelessly for during his nearly 30 years of service in the Athletic Department, but his stature among those in the know remains peerless. His bald head reflects a certain luminosity under an especially strong sun, appropriate considering all the light he’s shed over the years. A graduate of Brookline High School and Penn State University, Carpenter has accomplished as much as any single person could aspire to in his career. He’s worked the Olympics, FIFA World Cup, World Series, won national awards for excellence in his profession and had job offers with professional teams.
BU’s sports information director from 1977 to 2006, Carpenter managed to escape his demanding post with little red ink on his final exam and perfect attendance.
“The only day he took off was Yom Kippur,” said former co-worker Jack Falla, a BU journalism professor and renowned sportswriter. “You could always reach him. You weren’t gonna get run around by secretaries and blockers.”
“I can’t remember the last time I had a secretary,” Carpenter said. “If someone’s gonna take the time to call me, I’m gonna call back. They called for a reason.”
In a world where journalists are seen as more foe than friend, Carpenter ignored this foolish concept.
“Ed is a guy where the media came first,” said Kevin Scheitrum, a former sports editor for the Daily Free Press. “Journalists are kind of seen as the enemy. [Once Ed retired], it was clear that we were not going to have the access we once had. What Ed did was cultivate trust. He set up interviews whenever you wanted to, and he was a guy who worked so damn hard.”
No single night better exemplifies Carpenter’s tireless class than Friday, Oct. 20, 1995, when men’s hockey freshman Travis Roy crashed into the boards at Walter Brown Arena 11 seconds into his first shift as a Terrier.
“[Ed] did everything by the book and did it naturally,” Falla said.
After finishing his duties at the arena, Carpenter headed to the hospital to check on Roy, where he lay motionless. Speaking with Travis’s father, Lee, Carpenter set up what would be a memorable press conference the next afternoon.
“Mr. Roy finally says to me, ‘You’re the pro, you tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do that,'” Carpenter said.
He then arranged for Lee Roy, head coach Jack Parker, Tony Schepsis, the team doctor at the time, captain Jay Pandolfo, and Roy’s freshman roommate and teammate Dan Ronan to address the media the following day. All other players were designated off limits.
After Mr. Roy relayed his son’s famous words while lying motionless on the ice, “At least I made it,” the media reacted in an unusual fashion.
“I’m looking around at the room and the place is packed,” Carpenter said. “And these are hardened reporters who had seen murders and stabbings, and there was not a dry eye in the room.”
In classic Carpenter style, he made the best of a dreadful situation, and later befriended the only Terrier to have his number retired.
“My wife and I see [Travis] as a son,” Carpenter said. “We’ll see him probably five or six times per year.”
Carpenter’s wife Suzy played a crucial role both in supporting her husband under the strain of unfathomable hours and keeping frequenters of the press box content.
“Suzy, she’s the real saint in this whole relationship,” Carpenter said. “She’s put up with my terrible jokes, my absolutely ugly neckties and my really bear of a schedule. She’s incredible. I couldn’t have done this without her support. The good thing is she’s always been a sports fan and enjoyed coming to the games.”
Her presence in the press box not only saved her marriage and her husband’s career, it nearly changed the course of history – saving BU football.
“In 1993, she made this coffee cake, sour cream chocolate chip coffee cake,” Carpenter said. “She made it for the first game of the ’93 season and we killed U-Maine. Not much was expected of us in ’93. Then she made it again for the second game and we won again.”
Dan Allen, the head football coach at the time, ate a piece of Suzy’s coffee cake before each of the first two games and decided a correlation existed between his satisfied stomach and winning. Suzy then dutifully prepared a special coffee cake for every game the next two seasons, during which the team compiled a 21-4 record.
Eventually the magic of coffee cake wore off, and in 1997 BU dropped football as a varsity program. Once again Ed rose to the occasion.
“By and large no one cared,” Carpenter said. “It was apathy. We had 2,200 people Opening Day 1997. If people cared, if people gave money, if there was attendance, if there was an emotional involvement with football, [then-BU President John Silber] would have kept it.”
Despite the original negative response from the media, Carpenter’s concise reasoning, along with some simple show and tell, helped weather the storm.
“We announced the dropping of football on a Saturday, and on Monday a photographer from The New York Times came into my office and said, ‘I want to take pictures of the protests about dropping football.’ I said, ‘There aren’t any.'”
The photographer, understandably hesitant to accept such an answer from a member of the very department responsible for the demise of football, wanted to verify the absence of student response for himself.
“I told him to go up Babcock Street and turn left, and go about a mile to Kenmore, and then come back,” Carpenter said. “It took him less than an hour, and he said there were no demonstrations. I said, ‘That’s what I told you and that’s the problem.’
Carpenter’s straightforward style was nothing new, and it helped him earn the trust of the media, his co-workers, and students alike.
“His office was always a mess,” Falla said. “He was Mr. Uncorporate, which made you trust him and like him more. He’ll help you when there is nothing in it for him.”
Falla recalled an early morning years ago when the telecopier he used to send stories to his Sports Illustrated editors broke.
“Ed was in at 7 a.m. on a Sunday and he let me use his telecopier,” Falla said. “He didn’t have to do that, but he did. He built up trust and loyalty.”
“If you ever needed someone to make you feel good, [Ed] was the guy,” said Alan Weinberger, BU’s assistant athletic director and facilities manager. “He didn’t mind being poked fun at or being the subject of people’s jokes because everyone had such respect for him.”
“He was very much a mentor,” Scheitrum said. “I would think, ‘Would Ed Carpenter like this?’ When I would do stuff that was kind of controversial, I would think is it done in an honest manner? I think those are the characteristics he imbued in what he did.”
Carpenter has used his absurd tie collection as a main disarmament maneuver for more than 30 years. After being forced to wear a uniform during his four years in the Air Force, during which he rose to the rank of captain, he hoped to never again have to sport a tie. However, after a stint as an open-collared sportswriter for The New Haven Register, Carpenter became the University of Delaware’s Sports Information Director, and once again had to put on his business noose. In silent rebellion, Carpenter decided to give the necktie his own flare.
“When they told me I had to start wearing a necktie, I said, ‘If I have to wear a tie, I’m gonna wear the ugliest tie I can find,'” Carpenter said. “So I got the two ugliest ties I could find — and I still have them — and the [Athletic Director] never said anything.”
“If you think of Ed Carpenter,” Weinberger said, “one thing, above anything else, is he wore a more outrageous tie every day.”
Eventually a kindhearted athletic director informed Carpenter he no longer had to wear his customary hideous tie, but by then there was no turning back.
“It got to the point where I never had to buy one,” Carpenter said. “People would give them to me.”
After retiring from his post to a standing ovation from the student section at Agganis Arena in 2006, Carpenter eschewed the life of leisure to remain involved with several BU organizations and work as an usher at Fenway Park.
“The Red Sox job is perfect,” Scheitrum said. “He’s got that grandfatherly way. You wanna tell him what you did in school today. You wanna tell him you hit a home run so he’ll pat you on the back.”
“[BU has] really been a terrific place to work,” Carpenter said. “And I think what’s made it so special is the quality of people who work there.”
None more so than the grandfather of BU athletics, who can still be found wandering Babcock Street from time to time, perhaps looking for some task to quench his undying thirst for work.
Mentor, role model, philosopher, workaholic, fashion rebel — Ed Carpenter would be missed on Commonwealth Avenue, if he ever truly left.