It’s 8 am on a cool Friday morning. Most of the university staff is already gone for the weekend, but for Rams Offensive Coordinator Kyle Cox, his work week is just beginning.
“Come on in, have a seat man.” Cox exudes a friendly demeanor, despite his imposing physical stature. He wears a handlebar moustache that is about three days removed from a trim.
He types away at a laptop while studying tape of other teams in the Sooner Athletic Conference, the whirr of the video projector provides a sixty-cycle hum and defies the silence.
“Sorry it’s so messy in here,” Cox says. The office is cluttered, but not dirty. “I basically live here during the week.”
Cox came to Texas Wesleyan from Texas Christian University in 2018 originally as the passing game coordinator. In his short time at Wesleyan, he has moved up to the offensive coordinator spot under head coach Joe Prudhomme.
“I was looking for a change of pace,” Cox said.
Preparation for games at Wesleyan is just as crucial as it was for Cox at TCU, he insists that it is a different type of workload. One that demands more involvement than running drills and walkthroughs.
“The biggest difference for me has nothing to do with what happens on the football field on Saturdays,” Cox said. “I was putting in easily over one hundred hours a week at the office, often sleeping there, due to the workload required of graduate assistant coaches.”
For Cox and the rest of the staff at Wesleyan, there are many elements to coaching. Mentorship and the needs of players come before any snap of the football.
“A bunch of us are still putting in over one hundred hours a week at the office,” Cox said. “But a lot of [the time], sometimes it feels like a majority of the time, we aren’t doing anything related to football.”
Coaching can be all encompassing, from helping student athletes square away financial aid, to checking their grades and tutoring schedules.
“We have about ten coaches here at Wesleyan that are pulling off what sixty [coaches] are doing at TCU.”
Another testament to Cox’s style of leadership is the ability to recognize the hard work his colleagues are doing around him.
“[Director of Football Operations] Coach David Murphy never gets enough credit in this program for all he does,” Cox said. “He spends twenty hours a week just making sure the hotels, food and transportation for the weekend are set up and the plan is foolproof, he does all of that along with being the special teams coordinator and running backs coach.”
Cox’s biggest influence for his style of leadership comes from former TCU offensive coordinator Doug Meacham, who now is the offensive coordinator of the St. Louis Battlehawks, according to star-telegram.com.
“Doug [Meacham] had this brash swagger to him as an offensive coordinator that I just loved,” Cox said. “The kids loved playing for him, his whole philosophy is ‘we are going to be great at a handful of plays instead of decent at a hundred different plays,’ he would always say, ‘we are going to out execute our opponents into submission,’ and normally we did just that.”
Cox continues to edit game footage, labeling and marking formations on drop down menus on the video editor.
“What else do you need?” Cox asks. The friendliness in his voice is reminiscent of a bartender rather than a football coach. “I can get you a guy here in five minutes if you want more questions.”
Junior receiver Cole Maxwell, a native of Maypearl Texas appears in the office a short time later. Maxwell is physically imposing, but soft spoken and polite.
“Coach Cox is young,” Maxwell said. “The way he came in [to Wesleyan’s football program] was like, hot and heavy, he wanted to win right away.”
Maxwell said that Cox’s leadership style had influenced him and other players to not only play better for coach Cox, but to play better for each other.
“He set goals for us,” Maxwell said. “I think that inspired the rest of us players.”
Running backs/special teams coordinator coach David Murphy appears a short time later. Murphy is equal parts relaxed and direct, he too sports the same handlebar moustache as Cox. It becomes apparent that this is an inside joke between the staff.
“Coach Cox is probably one of the most hardworking people I have met in my professional career,” Murphy says. “His work ethic is unmatched.”
Murphy attests to Cox’s attitude.
“It’s infectious at times,” Murphy said. “It makes you take a look at yourself and think, he’s doing this, what can I be doing to move this whole thing forward?”
Cox’s demeanor and work ethic prove that football is more than just about wins on the field, winning starts as habits, work ethic and a state of mind. Cox learned an important lesson early on in his career from TCU quarterbacks coach, Sonny Cumbie.
“Cumbie taught me that football coaches can do so much more than just win football games,” Cox said. “There’s a lasting impact on the lives of players that he coaches, I just hope the same can be said for me.”
Thomas T. Moore 