Fri, Aug 29 2008
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Published July 16, 2008 09:34 am - Charlie Cooper is probably most widely remembered among Tahlequah football fans from his days as Tahlequah High School football coach. Continuing a tradition By TRAVIS METCALF TAHLEQUAH DAILY PRESS — Charlie Cooper is probably most widely remembered among Tahlequah football fans from his days as Tahlequah High School football coach.
He coached the Tigers from 1980-1992 and compiled a 93-56 record. Now he has a new role as offensive coordinator at Northeastern State University. “Tahlequah is a very competitive community, the high school and the college,” Cooper said. “There is a lot of support in this community for the college. In high school, we had people following us around all over, and we did win a lot of ball games, but there were times when we didn’t win a lot of ball games and we still had a strong core support of people and the university has that too.” Cooper eventually left Tahlequah for Rogers, Ark., and retired in 2002 before coming out of retirement in January to be an assistant under new NSU head coach Kenny Evans. Cooper played on the 1963 NSU football team after transferring from Northeastern Oklahoma A&M. That year, the Redmen compiled an 11-0 record. Though he played defense, Cooper said you don’t have to have been an offensive player to be an offensive coach, and he feels defensive players make the best offensive coaches. “A coach who only knows offense can draw up the X’s and O’s, but somebody who has played defense can understand what the defense is going to bring at you,” Cooper said. This isn’t Cooper’s first college coaching job. He also coached at Coffeyville Community College in Kansas in 1974 and said he doesn’t see any big difference between the college game and the high school game, with the exception of speed. “People think it’s a lot of difference,” Cooper said. “It’s not a lot of difference. You’re dealing with people and you’re dealing with players, and if you treat them with respect, you’re going to get the results you desire. There aren’t any secrets in football. If you look at it, what they do in the high school level they do in the college level, and it all comes from the pros. The difference is the skill level.” Despite retiring at the beginning of the decade, Cooper said he still desires to coach. He has had a long-standing friendship with Evans from his days at Tahlequah High School and in Rogers. “I never lost my desire to be a football coach, I’m competitive,” Cooper said. “My situation when I retired was ‘well, I could.’ I’ve known Coach Evans since my high school days when he used to recruit players from me.” Recruiting is the biggest obstacle to college coaches, according to Cooper. He said it’s not just important to get the best players, but it’s important to get the best players who fit at the college itself. “The biggest key in recruiting players is for them to understand where they can have success,” Cooper said. “That’s the hardest thing to get across to them. Some of them, they don’t need to go to OU because they can’t play there. They need to go where they have success. As a high school coach, I had a lot of kids that wanted to play college football. We need to counsel them sometimes on where they can go and where they can have some success, and where they can stay in school instead of being a flop and feeling like a failure.” 
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