The pro they called ‘Beef’ drew people in long before Barstool Sports found him

Only the final year of Cody Franke’s short life was available for all of us to see via the wonders of the internet, which has an uncanny ability to identify the transcendent among us.

Cody Franke — “Codeman,” to his family and lifelong friends; “Beef,” to those more recently arrived — died last month at age 31. Franke (rhymes with Yankee) was the son of the Midwest and was rising in golf’s teaching-and-merchandising business in the Southern California desert when Barstool Sports had the inventive idea to make him the media company’s first “Head Golf Professional.” Sam “Riggs” Bozoian, who worked closely with Franke at Barstool, shared the news about Franke’s death on Barstool’s Fore Play podcast. “He was the nicest f—ing guy, all day, every day, to every person that he met,” Riggs said. That post has more than a million views.

On Saturday morning, there was a memorial service for Franke, though the man’s sporting allegiances all pointed north, to Chicago. The service was held at Grace Community Bible Church, in the small Illinois town of Lake Villa, an hour-plus north by car from Soldier Field, home of the Bears. The service, available for anybody to watch via the magic of YouTube and lasting close to two hours, was billed as a “Celebration of Life.” You couldn’t imagine a more accurate description.

The speakers were all family members and longstanding friends. Franke’s grandfather wore a baseball cap with BEEF across its brim. He sat on a white plastic chair beside his wife, Cody’s grandmother. “Gramps” and “Grams,” in the storytelling that unfolded. In the foreground, off the pulpit, was Cody’s golf bag and a collection of golf caps, including one from the Masters. Behind the white plastic chairs, in tall, white plastic lettering, were the words FEED THE FIRE, a church motto. 

“Can I hear BEEF!?” Gramps asked the parishioners.

“BEEF!” they shouted in unison.

There were numerous references to Franke’s athletic gifts, for golf, boating and fishing, football, hockey, baseball. (“Don’t slide, Cody!” He slid.) Also his interest in history and his passion for sports-on-TV. There were more than a few references to his warmth, kindness, selflessness and size. His size was part of his personal calling card, along with everything else. He was a package deal. You took it all.

The speakers came to the pulpit in pairs and two of the final ones, Dominic Scopone and David Rudary, were classmates and roommates of Franke’s at Ferris State in Big Rapids, Mich. Both men spoke about meeting Franke as freshmen.

“Are you here to play football for Ferris?” Scopone asked in their first conversation.

“Ah, no,” Franke said. “Here for the golf program.” 

“Oh, cool. Me, too.”

Five or six minutes later, Franke tapped his future roommate on the arm and said, “That happens all the time, don’t worry about it.”

Rudary described being at a swim-up bar at a resort in Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic, late last month. Rudary, in lead-up festivities to his wedding ceremony, asked Franke, one of his groomsmen, what he would like to drink. Fifteen distracted minutes later, Rudary handed Franke a beer. “That doesn’t look like a Double Jack and Coke,” Franke said. “Luckily,” Rudary told the congregants, “he wasn’t very picky.”

Cody Franke died on that trip to the Dominican Republic, on Saturday, Oct. 25, the result of an unspecified and sudden medical emergency. Rudary described how his wedding band’s inner ring was made from wood from a Jack Daniel’s whiskey barrel. It was a nod to the cosmic gets entwined with the coincidental, and the hidden meaning of everyday life.

Scopone and Rudary urged their listeners to follow Franke’s path, to a life that has no regrets, to live a life where nobody can say a bad word about you, to live a life where you are doing for others. 

The dozen or so tributes at Grace Community on Saturday, in combination with the displayed visuals — a long reel of Cody Franke this-is-your-life photographs — painted a picture of a fully engaged man, despite the obstacles he must have faced in his everyday life.

Barstool founder Dave Portnoy and his colleagues must have, surely by intuition alone, recognized what Lorne Michaels recognized when he hired Chris Farley, the athletic, plus-sized comedian with Da Bears running through his veins, for the cast of “Saturday Night Live.” Franke, like Farley, was an everyman’s everyman.

Franke was devoted to the veterans’ charity Folds of Honor. In an interview, Sara Bush, a Folds of Honor official, described meeting Franke for the first time, at an event in Chicago. “His handshake was like a hug,” she said. Several days before the memorial service, there was a Folds of Honor fundraiser in Franke’s name at the Desert Willow Golf Resort in Palm Desert, Calif., where Franke had been a pro. A couple years ago, Franke, beside other big-hearted golf kooks, played 100 holes in a 24-hour period, including a bunch of golf played under a full moon, as a Folds of Honor fundraiser. Bush described a young man for whom “ma’am” and “sir” were second nature.

Franke’s golf coach at Lakes Community High, Bill Hamill, remembered a good golfer who could shoot in the low 40s for nine holes as a teenager and had one main swing thought: keep rotating your trunk, through the ball and into the final moment of your follow-through. Hamill, in a phone interview, said Cody followed his brother, Craig, first to the Lakes Community golf team and later to the PGA Golf Management program at Ferris State. Hamill noted how Franke’s adult teaching, examples of which are easily found on the Barstool website, are striking examples of straight-forward analysis that address universal golf fundamentals while allowing for a player’s body type and swing tendencies.

Hamill, amused by the memory, recalled Franke doing the shirtless, belly-jiggling Truffle Shuffle from the movie The Goonies after a triumphant Lakes Community win in a district tournament. He also described how he fueled himself, intra-round, with Snickers bars and bags of FritoLay chips, washed down with Mountain Dew. The Bible Community tributes were awash in Mountain Dew, too. Nobody was judging, not Coach Hamill, recalling Franke in high school, not anybody at the Celebration of Life event, either, where his mother, stepfather, brother, cousins and friends spoke, some from folded sheets, others with a cellphone in hand. The link to the service showed that a couple hundred people had watched it.

Millions watched Cody, Head Pro of Barstool Sports, compete in Barstool’s Internet Invitational. Played this summer, it featured 16 three-person teams, the golfers earning their roster spots by way of internet influence. The elimination-format event was meaningless and pregnant with meaning, as all of golf is. We attach — any of us, all of us — value as we see fit. We decide. That’s always been the case but there’s more of that now than ever before. The networks and your morning paper used to tell you what was important. Those days are over. Cody Franke stepped into the void, as Barstool’s decision-makers somehow knew he would.

The winning team got itself a $1 million to divvy up three ways. Before the finale — which was played on Aug. 16, 10 weeks before Franke’s death — somebody asked Franke what he would do, if this giant reality-TV payday came his way. “I think I’d pay off my parents’ house,” he said. The comment landed because it was pure Franke and not from a script. And because his answer was recorded. Million have likely heard that comment by now. Millions have watched the awards presentation, when Portnoy handed out winking pink jackets to the winners. Two of the winners slipped into them. Franke held his in his hands. When the moment was shot, in mid-August, it looked like a jokey pink sport coat that was unlikely to fit. Now it looks more like a shroud.

Cody Franke played his don’t-duff-it chip shot on the final hole, all that was needed to secure his team’s win, with a putter. How Beef is that?

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com