Review: S.A. Cosby’s reissued debut thriller proves he was a master from the start
You’ve had this experience. You find yourself in a crowded room, with no bathroom, and no one to help. No one to be an EMT, an EMT, an EMT — you have to use your guts, your eyes, your knowledge of the room’s layout, and your hands and your feet. (It’s your first time in the emergency room, right?) For S.A. Cosby, that first experience came to pass during his college football career.
In 2004, Cosby had played a single season at Ole Miss, for whom he did not get a sniff in any of the games. But his career had just gotten under way, and he and the coach were going back on the road for a bowl game.
Ole Miss’s bowl game was a big one — Sugar Bowl XII, played in New Orleans. The team was underdogs against the top-ranked team in the nation. But they didn’t have to be. The Rebels beat Texas A&M, 24-16. That was the first bowl win of Cosby’s college career.
It’s not clear that any other coach would have let Cosby skip the bowl—I mean, it would be hard to put a team in front of Texas A&M that needed to be stopped—but it’s clear that the NCAA didn’t know about him. This is why: The NCAA considers football players who don’t play to be “uncoached.”
On August 1, 2005 — about a year after the Sugar Bowl win — S.A. Cosby went to Texas A&M, the team that Ole Miss beat in the Sugar Bowl.
The game was on ESPN. But just before the first quarter began, a reporter with ESPN asked the Aggies if they wanted to make a statement about the coach.
S.A. Cosby wasn’t happy about the question. He’d taken a big step out of the public eye
