Mississippi Today
So strong, so fast, but the collisions had lasting effect on Johnie Cooks
Some days you never forget: This was August of 1979. I was new to the Clarion Ledger where my first job was to cover Mississippi State. The football Bulldogs were in two-a-days, and it was a brutally hot, humid morning workout when I first saw Johnie Cooks, shirtless and in shorts, glistening with sweat, running through drills.
“My God,” I remember thinking, “who is that?” As I wrote that day, “Cooks has more muscles in his neck than most humans have in their arms.” He was a sculpted 6 feet, 3 inches tall and weighed 240 pounds, slim in the waist, huge through his chest and shoulders. His trapezoid muscles, the ones between his neck and shoulders, were insanely huge and seemed to ripple as he ran. He was as fast as the fastest running backs and cornerbacks.
Some plays you never forget: This was October of 1980, Orange Bowl Stadium, Miami. State was playing the mighty Miami Hurricanes, quarterbacked by future first ballot Pro Football Hall of Famer Jim Kelly. The game was tied, and Miami had the ball. Kelly went back to pass. Defensive ends Tyrone Keys and Billy Jackson hit Kelly from either side just as he threw. The ball fluttered down the field until Cooks snatched it, and headed for the end zone, knees pumping high. Two Miami players hit him en route, but Cooks did not so much as acknowledge them. He shrugged them off like pesky gnats and never broke stride. His pick-six gave the Bulldogs the lead in a game they would win 34-31.
Some games you never forget: 1980, Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium, Alabama vs. Mississippi State. No. 1 ranked Bama, coached by Bear Bryant, hadn’t lost in forever, certainly not to Mississippi State, and was a 20-point favorite. Cooks, from his middle linebacker position in State’s 4-3 defense, was everywhere that day. He made 20 tackles and at one point in State’s landmark 6-3 victory, Cooks challenged the Bear himself. Bama had called timeout on a fourth and one situation. Cooks took a few steps toward the Bama sideline and shouted, “You got to go for it. You know you got to go for it. You are Bear Bryant, you know you got to go for it.”
And this one from 1981, also at The Vet: Southern Miss vs. State, both nationally ranked. Emory Bellard, the State coach, called it “a hoss and and a hoss.” The next week, Southern Miss would put up 58 points on Bobby Bowden and Florida State. Not this day. Southern Miss, with the remarkable Reggie Collier at quarterback, eked out a 7-6 victory in a game that was stopped intermittently as players from both teams were helped off the field after violent collisions, many involving Cooks. The great Orley Hood dubbed it, “The Limp Off Bowl.” “Cook was a monster,” Collier told me years later. “What a great, great player. I’ve never been hit so hard in my life.”
All these memories flashed Thursday when I heard the news that Leland native Johnie Earl Cooks, age 64, had passed away following a long illness. Johnie and I ran into each other often over the years, and I know this to be true: A proud warrior on the field, he was kind, caring and funny off it. I always enjoyed his company. How could you not?
Glenn Collins, the Jackson native and superb defensive tackle who played six NFL seasons after his State days, knew Cooks better than most. “Johnie was such a tremendous linebacker but an even a better person and teammate,” Collins said. “He kept us all laughing all the time.”
Cooks will go down as one as the greatest players in Mississippi State football history, despite missing most of that 1979 season with a severe knee injury that required surgery. It was the first of many football afflictions that would take a terrible toll on Cooks in his later years. We will get to that.
But first we should talk about all Cooks did achieve, which is to become a first team All American in his senior season at State, the second overall pick in the 1982 NFL Draft, a Super Bowl champion in 1991 with the New York Giants, and a Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer in 2004.
Prior to his 2004 induction Cooks talked about growing up poor – but very much loved – in the community of Long Switch, out from Leland in Washington County. He was the sixth of nine children. Entering the ninth grade, Cooks, bigger and faster than his classmates, decided he wanted to play football. One problem: A physical exam was required and the exam cost five dollars, which the Cooks family did not have have. Minnie Bell Cooks, his mother, improvised, as Johnie would explain: “My mom borrowed the five bucks from her bossman so I could play. Her only requirement was that I couldn’t quit.”
And Cooks didn’t quit until at age 33, in 1991, a series of injuries forced the issue. The cumulative effect of all those injuries took a much greater toll later in life. In 2008, Billy Watkins and I wrote a project for The Clarion Ledger about the myriad physical issues former Mississippi NFL football stars were facing later in life and how little the NFL was doing to help them.
Cooks’ was among the worst-case scenarios. At age 49, he was afflicted with arthritic knees, severe lower back issues, numbness in his legs and feet, the near total loss of vision in his left eye and several other lesser ailments. He said he couldn’t remember the last time he had slept through the night.
As the years have passed, those ailments worsened considerably, a sad reminder of the price many football warriors pay later in life for the glory of their younger years. Few pay a more painful debt than did Cooks from so many hits in four years of high school ball, four years at State and 10 in the NFL playing a position in which violent collisions are part of the job description. Again, few hit harder than Cooks, but in football the guy delivering the hit often suffers as much damage as the guy he hits.
Better, today, to remember the Johnie Earl Cooks of 1979, with a physique as chiseled as a Greek statue, a broad smile, a quick laugh, and with the speed to run down the fastest backs.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
On this day in 1954
Sept. 7, 1954
In compliance with the recent Brown v. Board of Education decision, schools in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., were desegregated. Baltimore was one of the first school systems to desegregate below the Mason-Dixon line.
A month after a dozen Black students began attending what had been an all-white school, demonstrations took place, one of them turning violent when 800 whites attacked four Black students. White parents began pulling their children out of the schools, and by 1960, the district was majority Black.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
USM admin say program cuts are necessary to afford future pay raises for faculty, staff
The University of Southern Mississippi will look at cutting under-enrolled programs even though administrators say it is not facing a financial crisis.
The budget is balanced, despite a four-year period of decreasing revenue and increasing costs, and USM has adequate cash reserves.
The move is necessary, top leaders said at last month’s convocation, so the research institution in Hattiesburg can survive the increasingly competitive future facing higher education in Mississippi by becoming a “unicorn” among its peers, offering programs students want and the state needs.
“Colleagues, this is plain and simply the reality of where we are in higher education today, and progressive institutions all across the landscape are doing the same,” President Joe Paul told faculty on Aug. 19, according to a video the university has since taken off YouTube after faculty and staff had a chance to watch it. “We can no longer simply kick the can down the road and hope things can get better. We will instead take charge of our future and crease a uniquely positioned, distinctive public research universty of which we can all be proud and feel ownership.”
Paul added that cuts are also one of the few ways the university can afford more pay raises for its faculty and staff, some of whom will receive merit raises this fall for the first time in eight years. (After protesting, minimum wage workers at USM won a pay raise two years ago.)
“My goal for us is not to go another eight years before offering raises again, that accomplishes little,” Paul said. “If we are to develop a true salary increase plan that is competitive and sustainable, we simply must continue to do two things with discipline and consistency. One, we must all continue to grow the enrollment through recruitment and retention … while also continuing to find efficiencies and decrease spending as an institution.”
USM was able to afford the raises, which total about $4.4 million, through what Paul described as two years of systematic reductions in administrative spending. The university cut 22 unfilled and six filled positions at its Hattiesburg and Gulf Park campuses.
An increase in state appropriations also helped support the raise, but USM isn’t able to say how much because “the raises come from the university’s operating budget and the amount is not broken down by revenue source,” Nicole Ruhnke, a spokesperson, wrote in an email.
The raises addressed a significant concern for faculty at USM who held a protest for fair pay earlier this year.
Low salaries are an issue across Mississippi’s higher education system, which has struggled to attract and retain talented faculty. In recent years, the governing board of Mississippi’s eight universities has repeatedly heard how Mississippi’s faculty and staff are paid well below the average salary of other Southern states.
In an effort to fix that, the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees asked the Legislature to provide $53 million in funding this year so that each university could afford a 6.4% raise.
IHL’s spokesperson John Sewell wrote in an email that the system ultimately received $27 million in unrestricted new funding, not enough for 6.4% increase.
That funding also needed to cover other inflationary costs facing the institutions, like PERS and health insurance, Sewell wrote.
Therefore, IHL left the final decision on raises up to the institutions, so Sewell could not say how much each university spent. Plus, the system’s final appropriation bill, which IHL negotiates on behalf of the eight institutions, did not include specific language regarding raises.
“IHL did not prescribe a fixed amount of new funding to be dedicated to raises as the individual institutions needed the flexibility to balance the increased costs for PERS and health insurance along with other inflationary costs before considering the amount for possible raises,” Sewell wrote.
Those costs are also driving USM administrators’ review of under-enrolled programs, which comprise a minority of USM’s programs.
Lance Nail, the provost, is leading that effort. In response to questions from Mississippi Today, Nail and Paul did not participate in an interview but provided statements.
Nail wrote that details about the program review will be worked out in the coming weeks in consultation with faculty, staff and administration.
“We will look at each under-enrolled academic program individually in collaboration with the deans, school directors and faculty, and determine what has led to low enrollment, student and market demand, as well as other contributions the program provides within the academy.” Nail noted. “These include the program’s contributions to the general education core, pre-major requirements, research and service.”
Last fall, USM deleted three degrees after IHL’s academic productivity review, which is triggered when a program is deemed to have too few graduates in a three-year period. Those degrees were a bachelors in international studies, and doctoral degrees in music education and criminal justice.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Richard Lake joins Mississippi Today as audience engagement specialist
Mississippi Today is pleased to announce that Richard Lake has joined the Mississippi Today team as Audience Engagement Specialist.
In this role, Lake will work directly with journalists, editors and readers to ensure Mississippi Today’s Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism reaches every corner of the state and beyond.
“Richard has developed into a respected member of the journalism community here in Mississippi,” said managing editor Michael Guidry. “He brings such an invaluable variety of skills to our newsroom that will help us further enhance how we engage with our members and growing audience.”
Born in San Antonio, Texas, Lake graduated from Mississippi State University in 2022, earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a minor in political science. Richard comes to Mississippi Today after over two years as WJTV Channel 12 News’ Senior Political Correspondent. A former Mississippi Today intern, Lake previously worked on the audience team. He also completed an internship with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, working as a production assistant.
While at WJTV, Lake was named a finalist for TV Rookie of the Year at the 2023 Mississippi Association of Broadcasters Awards. Lake was also a part of WJTV’s award winning reporting on Mississippi’s 2023 gubernatorial election.
“Finding creative ways to provide our audience with the journalism they expect and deserve is more important now than ever,” said Lake. “I’m excited to apply innovative strategies and work alongside this incredible team in furthering the impact of our reporting.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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