A farewell to Rogers, state icon on gridiron
A moment of silence, please, for Corky Rogers, the greatest high school football coach this state has ever known.
Corky, who won a record 10 state championships and recorded a state-record 465 victories while coaching mostly at Jacksonville Bolles, passed away earlier this week at the age of 76 after a long battle with cancer.
I interviewed Corky a few times over the years and he truly was what high school coaching is all about.
How dedicated was he to his team?
Corky once told me the story of being a passenger in a car involved in a fender bender one night in 1988. He got out to check the damage of the car in which he was riding when a drunk driver ran a red light and plowed into him at full speed.
Corky’s lower leg was nearly severed and was held together only by skin. Doctors thought amputation was a certainty because of the massive nerve damage. But after two months in the hospital, 17 operations and a calf rebuilt by plastic surgery, the leg was saved.
“It ain’t pretty, is it?” Rogers said as he showed me the misshapen leg on the day I interviewed him. “I can’t run anymore and my toe drags, but I can still coach pretty good.”
Believe it or not, Corky never missed a game or practice throughout the whole medical nightmare. During spring drills following the accident, his assistant coaches lifted him into a van and rolled him onto the practice field in a wheelchair.
He coached the season on crutches, including one game in a driving rainstorm against rival Ed White High when Rogers’ crutches got stuck in the mud just as a running back rumbled toward him on the sideline.
“Boom!” Corky recalled, laughing. “I got knocked over backward because I couldn’t get out of the way.”
When I asked Corky why he didn’t take the season off to recuperate after the near-fatal accident, he turned serious and said that’s not how he was raised.
“When I tell my players to never miss a practice and never miss a workout and to be totally devoted to the team, I better be doing it, too,” he told me.
That was Corky Rogers, a man who personified what a high school coach should be.
He lived it and loved it and dedicated his life to not just winning games but impacting lives, building character and molding men.
You will be missed, Corky. You already are.
Short stuff: Surprisingly, Tiger Woods is skipping the Arnold Palmer Invitational for the second consecutive year. I can just imagine after hearing the news somewhere up there in That Big 19th Hole in the Sky, Arnie downs a double Ketel One on the rocks, slams his glass on the bar and angrily walks out. … University of Florida athletics director Scott Stricklin responding to a fan on Twitter who wanted to know what time UF’s spring football game will start on April 18: “Expect a game time announcement next week.” Translation: “The SEC Network hasn’t told us yet.” … Did you see where Los Angeles FC owner Larry Berg predicted earlier this week that MLS will surpass Major League Baseball in popularity during the next 10 years? This, of course, is a stupid, ridiculous and irresponsible statement. I say it happens within the next seven years. …
Speaking of MLS, the entertaining Dwight Perry of the Seattle Times writes: “FC Cincinnati