Fore Play - RIP Cody "Beef" Franke

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

We remember the life of our beloved friend and colleague Cody "Beef" Franke.You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/foreplaypod

All right. It's been the worst day in the history of what we've been doing here. But we thought it's really important that we sort of address what happened and talk about our friend for anybody who doesn't know. A member of our family, Cody B. Frankie, passed away over the weekend. It's still unbelievably. fresh for us. But we understand that what we do is very public. And so, like I said, we wanted to get together and just at least try to honor Cody as best we could talk about him a little bit and address the situation. I think, you know, just for me, I've been thinking about it a lot for the last several hours.

I think it's really I think it's really easy for a lot of people to talk about being a really good, really nice person and it's really hard to do it on a day-to-day basis. I think life gets in the way, emotions get in the way, all the difficulties of life get in the way,

and yet Cody was the nicest fucking guy all day, every day to every person that he met. And I really love seeing all that information come out. And I feel horrible for his family, for his loved ones. And we're thinking about you big time. And again, we'd talk about him for a few minutes, but I'm just going to miss the hell out of beef. And I just want to say that I truly don't believe I ever met somebody

who was as universally liked and I'm going to miss a shit out of them. Yeah, man, it's just like, it's just a really tough day. Just like hard to believe, you know, you wake up and, you know, phone calls start happening and text messages start happening and you're just, it's a whirlwind, man. And it's, you know, we brought, beef came on like about a year ago or so and you know, you know what you're going to get when you just hire somebody that you don't have a ton of contact with. And then he was honest, the best. He was, I would see him on all these trips that we would go. He's, he's a, he's a friend of mine. Like, he's just a, he's a friend of all of ours. Like,

you just get really close with a guy who's that open, who's that friendly, who's that great, genuinely great. And I do see a lot of that going around today and, and people saying that about him. And it's true. It's as true as it's ever been. He, he was a, he was a great guy and just like the best guy to hang around with and i today i'm just really thinking about his family and how devastating this whole thing is it's just man it's been a really fucking shitty day really bad yeah really bad yeah um yeah it's a unimaginable loss um he uh he uh he really really was such a good dude.

Like, and it's, it's really hard to wrap your head around. This is real. His family losing a family member of that magnitude, someone that has that big of a personality and is that, um, has such an important role.

Uh, speaking with his father and mother and brother today was not easy. Um, they, they, they lost a son. They've lost a brother. I mean,

I can't. even imagine like outliving like your son is like unimaginable he brings someone to this life

and this world and you try and care for them and like for something like this to happen out of nowhere to them it's like it's not fair to anybody it's not fair to beef

it's not fair to the family so I can't even imagine what they're going through and uh it sucks

it's just like he doesn't deserve this nobody deserves this but he genuinely man would live every single day of his life as if you know it was his role to bring joy to people whether it was like he knew a stat or he knew a fact or like he was genuinely like happy to teach you about the golf swing and like professional golf made him so happy teaching and and the game and just like the joy that the game brought to other people brought joy to him and this was this was his life and I sat around all day day thinking about like where he's kind of come from and he he he was a teaching pro at all these different golf courses and made all these amazing connections across the whole entire country

everyone that has ever crossed baz with them loved them the messages we received today have been off the charts just overwhelming and then we just like inserted him into this world and there was a part of me being like did we even have to bring him into this world like what was that about like maybe he was just living a good life. And then you think about like the year that he had and watching how much joy he had doing what we were doing and traveling the country and going to all the Barstall classics and meeting people that love this game. It brought him so much joy. Like Cody had the best year of his life. And and for this to happen is like, it's so gut-wrenching and it's just, it's so fragile. This world and this life that we live is so fragile. You could be on top of the

world and the next day it could just all get taken away from you and the same for your family members whatever and it's just such a reminder like you have to take every single day as if it is your last and I genuinely feel like he lived his life like that like he was always going to make an impact no matter what no matter how he felt no matter what was going on in his world in the world in general he was going to make a positive impact on the world he knew that putting out good energy would receive good energy and I'm going to miss the shit out of them. I'm happy that we got a chance to meet them and become friends with them and he was a part of our family and he always will be a part of our family. My prayers and my love go to his family members. I can't imagine what they're going

through. And yeah, thank you to everyone that's reached out. I mean, it's just been a, it's been a really bad day and I'm going to, I'm, you know, my life is better that Cody Frankie was a part of it. And I'll always, always remember him. I'll always hear his voice. I'll always, I'll always hold him with me. So, yeah, that's really all I got. Just an incredibly generous guy. I know a lot of people are putting out their stories, but he, you know, in order to keep his PGA teaching professional membership, you know, he went through the process of getting the simulator at the Barstool, Chicago office listed as like an official location. And then he would teach people in the office.

Sure, occasionally you might see part of it for content, but he would stay at the office of 11 at night, midnight, one in the morning with people just working on their golf swings with them. Just the most weekend average golfer folks that are in the Barstall universe that play maybe a couple rounds a year and just grinding with them to try to get their swings better. And there's videos of him showing them with the phone. Here's where you're at. You need to move this.

You need to tweak that. and not doing that just for any sort of gratification other than just he liked to help people. And golf was the biggest outlet that he had to help people. He was obsessed with the game. The only Barstall Classic, he missed the whole year, is because he went down to the PGA of America headquarters, and he was working with kids. And there's all kinds of videos coming out of him trying to help kids.

He also, I never met a guy at my life who just tip people cash tips all the time. everything that we did. Every cart that we ever got out of, he would hand cash to people. If he thought the Uber driver made like a really nice turn, he'd hand him like $20 and be like, beef, you can cash tip or you could tip on the app. He'd be like, it's not the same, Briggs.

It's not the same. And he just was always tipping people and always appreciating people for their service, for anything that they were doing. And that always meant the world to me. So I think Frankie put it great. I'm better off having been able to be friends with beef. And I just think that if everybody had a little bit more Cody beef, Frankie in them,

that the world would be a much, much better place. And it has been just a really hard day to lose somebody like that. It really has. Yeah. And I think, you know, we travel all over the country, Barstall Classic shooting videos. as we meet a lot of people. And it was astounding to me the amount of people that I would run into who knew Cody,

who knew beef. And like he had a whole life before he joined us, obviously. But he like, he brought joy to so many people, so many people's lives and just love the game of golf. Like that's being a, being a genuinely nice person and having passion and loving what you do and spreading it to other people is an incredible legacy to have.

And he has that. He absolutely has that because again, I would just, I run into people all the time and I have run into people all the time who are just like, oh yeah, look at this video that beef sent me. And it's just him in an Instagram DM talking about somebody's swing. And he's, he just touched so many lives that he just 31, man. That's, that's like just way, way, way, way, way too soon. And it's, fuck, I'm going to, I'm going to really, really miss him. I really am. It's just not enough time from, you know, no.

It's just not enough time. Yeah, he's going to live on through all that he did, and he did a lot in his 31 years. I mean, he really did. He made an impact on a lot of people, and that's showing today, and that will show for a long time. And, yeah, we're going to keep things going. That Internet Invitational, I know people probably saw that we pushed it

with Bob does sports today. due to the news and everything that's going on. We're going to post those videos. We spoke with his family. They want people to see what he did for a living and how much he enjoyed it and how much joy he brought to other people. And that resonates in this video series that's coming out. They don't want to hide that.

They want to celebrate it. If this is what he did and this is what he loved to do, they want to watch it. They want to watch everything that he loved and that he had a passion for. And that really, that really hit me hard today. Talk like, like hearing them say that. And, and, uh, they know how much this all meant to him. And, uh, so, you know, I think it's going to be pretty, it's going to be a pretty emotional watch.

That's for sure. Um, just, just know that like this is, uh, he did what he, he did what he was, he was doing what he loved to do. And that's really all you can ask for. We get one crack at this life. And a lot of people. don't figure it out. And Cody figured it all out. Like he figured out how to be a good person.

He figured out how to be a good family member. He figured out how to be a good colleague. He knew more than I'll ever know. It just came easy to him. It came natural to him. Similar to what you said about the tipping, he taught me a little trick of throwing 20 bucks on the cart, like where you put the scorecard and you just send the cart down to where the cart

yard is and it's going to make someone's day. And I was like, I was like, well, can't you give it to the guy, clean the clubs. He's like, well, this is a little extra. Let's send it into the yard and someone will find it. It's like a little Easter egg. He did that at every single golf course he went to. This is hard to believe. Like, we're not just saying this because it's a nice thing to say after someone passes. Like, this is, you could have caught us. If you said, let's do, let's do a nice hour on Cody, you know, a week ago. We would have been like saying the same exact stuff. This guy really made this kind of impact on us. That's why we hired him. And that is why he was in the Barstall office.

And a lot of people that we've brought into the mix and what at all these different brands when you bring someone in that hasn't been at barstle for a while sometimes you don't know how it's going to mesh and he was completely immersed in the barstall world he was a barstall guy he was at the office he was going on on the camp trips with them for all these different types of types of content and he was the guy he'd everyone gravitated around he was telling jokes one liners sitting around the fire he was the one getting the conversation going um it's uh you know biz and and whit and uh and yans today on spit and chicklets said that barstle is a family and it is like we are family i'm celebrating nine years here you guys been here for longer than 10

years um this is this is all i know of my quote unquote adult life and uh and you know we are tight-knit group and we do all this together we we we win and we lose together and beef was a part of that uh more than anyone possibly could have been he was he was he was he was our blood he was he was he was in our he was in our pack man he was and he's going to be a part of us forever um And that's, you know, I'll never forget him. And hopefully we can keep his legacy going because he deserves it. People deserve to have more, you know, as much Cody in their life as we did. So we'll do everything we can to keep that going.

Yeah. Absolutely. And I mean, I'm like selfishly excited to watch these videos. You know, you're only out there with a few of a people at a time. And so you don't know what beef's doing. how he's interacting with folks. But I know I got texts from so many people that were at the Internet Invitational that played in the Invitational today that just were like, no way, man.

Like that guy was the nicest guy. That was the first time I had met him. I was so devastated that he's gone and he was able to have that impact on all those folks who are big personalities, big successful personalities in what we do. And so I am. I'm honestly excited to see. And I know it's going to be insanely emotional as kind of all those videos roll out. But I do all of his close loved ones, all of his family.

We're thinking about you so hard right now. It's been such an emotional day as folks can tell. And he will be a part of our family forever, honestly. forever and I'm I'm I think we're all lucky that that we found him that he did join our pack and he made us he made us way better and we're going to have some shoes to fill now that he's gone but I appreciate all the outpouring of love and support the amount of positive things that people have said about about beef the amount of people that responded and just said this hit me so hard it is how I felt as well

And so yeah, I think that's pretty much it from our end. Thank you, everybody, you know, for listening for this and following along this entire journey and giving us this platform. And Cody was a big part of us being able to build that platform. So we're going to miss him a lot. And that's all I got.