Riding with the Blue Moth

Bill Hancock led a charmed life. He married his high-school sweetheart. He had two successful sons and a beautiful grand-daughter. He ran the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. In the ascension of his career of college athletics, he moved within the echelons of the top sports figures in the world. On January 27, 2001, everything changed: a small Oklahoma State University airplane crashed in a snowstorm. Ten people died that evening; one of the passengers was Bill’s son, Will Hancock. Bill and his wife, Nicki, coped with how to survive the loss. Yet, they knew that they had to go on living for one another, for their marriage, as well as for their son, Nate, for Will’s wife, Karen, and for their young grand-daughter, Andrea. Bill, who had run 15 marathons, chose to bicycle across the United States in an effort to confront his grief, head-on. He and Nicki started the journey in Huntington Beach, CA and concluded at Tybee Island, GA. Ultimately, the 2,747-mile journey from the Pacific to Atlantic coasts, became something much more important than a cycling trip of coping. It became a journey in discovery as well as one of recovery. RIDING WITH THE BLUE MOTH (Publication Date: June 2, 2015; ISBN: 978-1-936946-57-0; Price: $17.95; Nautilus Publishing) is part-memoir, part-travelogue, and part-homage to a son, whose life was taken from him, in a short moment in time. It is a story of example, of how a person can recover from tragedy, and loss, and then find peace and stability. On his journey, Bill battled searing heat and humidity, aggressive dogs, unforgiving motorists and dead armadillos. As he rode, his thoughts continued to return to two common points: Will being gone forever and the prospect of how their family would move forward. As he rode across the country on his bike, he began to term his grief the “blue moth,” riding on his shoulder, as he powered through nine different states and landscapes, as Nicki drove the highways before him to set-up for their evenings at camp-sites. The pesky “moth” that fluttered around Bill was a modified beaming lamp in an empty parking lot. Some suggested, before he hit the road, that he use medication instead of exercise; some suggested he get back to his job. Bill chose to battle his situation as an emotional journey, as an infantry solider on a Cannondale bike. After 36 days, traveling through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, Bill put his foot in the Atlantic Ocean. He made the journey, and the “blue moth” remained on his shoulder, in the same way that his son always would remain in his heart. Yet, he had made it, both physically and emotionally, and he had proved to himself and anyone else who has suffered through grief, that people have the mettle to stand-up, dust-off, and get on with life, if they actually want it bad enough. RIDING WITH THE BLUE MOTH is an example of how a man was determined to beat-it, did it, and was brave enough to write about it in a way to inspire people, all people, who have faced challenges, head-on.

Bill Hancock has achieved a unique triple at the upper echelons of intercollegiate athletics. He was the first full-time director of the NCAA Final Four; the first Executive Director of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) and is currently the first Executive Director of the College Football Playoff. Bill served for 13 years as director of the NCAA’s Division I Men’s Basketball Championship—the three-week “March Madness,” event that culminates with the Final Four Basketball Championship Tournament. Bill is a 1972 journalism graduate of the University of Oklahoma. In the fall of 1971, he joined the staff of the university’s athletics department as assistant sports information director. After his newspaper-publisher father died in 1974, Bill spent four years as editor of his family’s daily newspaper, the Hobart, OK Democrat-Chief. He has been inducted into the halls of fame of the College Sports Information Directors and the All-College Basketball Classic. In 2010, the Kansas City Sports Commission honored him with its “Outstanding People in Sports” award. He was a 2012 winner of the Regents Alumni Award at the University of Oklahoma. Bill has served on the United States Olympic Committee staff at 11 Olympic Games and two Pan American games. His hobbies include grand-parenting, cycling, running, classical music and American history.