Ankle injury not sidelining OU's Cooper
By JOHN E. HOOVER World Sports Writer
8/28/2006
NORMAN -- Jon Cooper knew something was wrong when he heard the bones crack.
He was surrounded by 21 other football players, pushing, shoving and grunting, jammed onto the goal line. They were swarmed by 52,625 frenzied Red Raider fans crammed into Jones Stadium.
But the sound that came from inside Cooper's ankle was unmistakable.
"We heard a loud pop," said Chris Messner, Cooper's teammate on the Oklahoma offensive line, "and we were like, 'Oh, crap.' "
Cooper's right ankle was stepped on during a goal-line play. The misstep left his foot and lower fibula dangling, turned almost 180 degrees.
"It didn't really hurt right then," Cooper said. "I mean, it hurt at first, because we were on the goal line and people were laying on it. I was like, 'Get off!' I was just kind of laying there trying to get up, and everybody was like, 'Don't look at it.' "
Left tackle Davin Joseph, now playing in the NFL, knelt down and tried to steady Cooper.
"I looked at it," Cooper said, "and kind of went in shock."
He wasn't the only one.
"I looked down at his foot and there was something clearly wrong with it," said Messner, who played right tackle that game. "Very gruesome."
Now, nine months later, Cooper is still recovering from the injury. That day back in November was just the second career start for the first-year freshman from Fort Collins, Colo. His promising future was abruptly snapped.
Cooper, now a sophomore, has regained his starting job as the Sooners' center. Immediate surgery and a follow-up operation left him with a seven-inch scar on the outside of his lower leg. Inside is a steel plate and 10 tiny screws holding things together. He says his bones have healed but the ligaments are "still sore, still weak."
Cooper's mother, Chris, said her son's recovery has been slow and painful -- and educational.
"Just out of my own ignorance, I thought, 'OK, he has a broken leg and bones heal, so we'll move right along.' I didn't understand all the complexities of the injury," she said. "The doctors and trainers have been very good helping us understand his healing process. As he goes along, they've explained that some things are going to hurt but that doesn't mean he's incurring more injury. It doesn't physically harm him just because it may be painful. . . . But I trust them. They've been very good."
Cooper's parents were at Jones Stadium that day. Tom Cooper, an assistant football coach at Fort Collins High School, had a playoff game the night before, and he and Chris left Fort Collins about 11 p.m. and drove to Lubbock. They rolled in about 9 a.m., changed clothes at the McDonald's down the street and went to the game. But they didn't stay long.
It was the first play of the second quarter. OU running back Adrian Peterson had gained a yard to the Texas Tech 1-yard line, setting up a fourth-and-goal.
"I heard it, first off," Messner said. "Right as the play was ending. It was a goal-line play, so it didn't last very long. . . ."
Dr. Brock Schnebel, OU's team physician, was out quickly and set the bone back in place.
"That's when it really started to hurt," Cooper said.
Within minutes, Schnebel and his staff were on the phone with Cooper's parents.
"I was just terrified because my son was hurt," Chris Cooper said. "I was told not to look. My husband said, 'His foot's pointing in the wrong direction; don't look.' So I didn't."
Jon Cooper, of course, missed Peterson's 1-yard touchdown run on the next play, as well as the game's controversial ending.
Going into this season, offensive line was the Sooners' area of greatest need. Messner, now at left tackle, is the only returning starter. Projected starter J.D. Quinn was kicked off the team. Projected starters Branndon Braxton and Duke Robinson are, like Cooper, only sophomores. And Cooper still isn't 100 percent.
"It's real important to have him back. He's a really big part off the O-line," said Robinson, who said he sees Cooper as something of a veteran "because he's really got most of everything down pat with his job, what he's supposed to be doing."
Cooper always felt a sense of urgency to get back on the field, no matter how much his leg and ankle hurt.
"Oh man, every time I think about it, it just starts to hurt again . . . Now, it feels like I can play. It still hurts and swells up, but I can play on it.
"From spring break until now, it's gotten 100 percent better."
John E. Hoover 581-8384
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