Q&A with Dan Cody

OU's senior defensive end Dan Cody talksa about his career at Oklahoma and much, much more.

As the Sooners enter Big 12 Championship game week, a good guy for us to talk to is senior defensive end Dan Cody. Regarded as one of the best defensive ends in the country, Cody is not afraid to say what is on his mind and often you get a true feeling of what the pulse of the team really is.

It still eats at Cody that the Sooners lost in the Big 12 and in the NCAA Championship games a year ago, and that has driven him all year. Now that the week is here, Cody is ready to right what went wrong last year.

JH: You play on defense, but do you draw anything from watching Jason White on offense?

DC: “Jason is one of the best guys I have every played with. On and off the field he will do anything he can to help you, and he makes this journey much easier to handle.”

JH: Are you at that point in your career where you might look back a little bit, because it wasn’t that long ago when you were at Ada High School hoping and praying that the Sooners would offer you a scholarship?

DC: “When I came to college nobody had high expectations for me. It is not that high expectations are not good, but there really weren’t any high expectations for me. I was just talking to my parents about this the other day about when you come to a program like Oklahoma you have to grind every day. That is about the only consistent thing you can do for yourself. Your ability and whatever God-given ability is given to you has to be maximized.

"That is what they do for you here. The coaches on the field, the strength coaches and the training staff all help you maximize your potential as long as you work hard. That is the biggest thing and a lot of great players don’t always see the writing on the wall. What is on that wall is that you have to work as hard as you can. I hate to say that because it is so cliché, but it is true.”

JH: Do you remember when you came out of high school that people thought you might be a free safety or a tight end?

DC: “In high school in our district in Ada we didn’t have a lot of guys with speed. Here there would be quite a few guys running by me at safety, so I am glad that our coaching staff saw the light and put me at defensive end.”

JH: When you think back to all the victories that you have been apart of at OU that is pretty amazing, but your two biggest games are yet to be played aren’t they?

DC: “Yeah, and the biggest thing is that you never realize that you play football here for memories. You are so busy and everything is so intense around there that you don’t get to set back and take it all in very often. It is not that you don’t get to enjoy it, but if you don’t take a second to take a step back and take that nose off the grindstone for a second, then you lose the reality of what is going on around you. You lose focus. That is just part of it, but that is the biggest thing. I want to walk out of here and not hang my head in any way.”

JH: Are you watching a lot of the big college games on television?

DC: “No, I don’t. I don’t even have cable. I haven’t since last spring break. I like to distance myself from college football.”

JH: Surely you have a friend or friends that have cable?

DC: “I do and I have lots of friends that have cable. However, it seems that I spend more time talking than watching television.”

JH: So you are not a college football fan?

DC: “No, I am, but I want to distance myself from it.You get a big dose of it when you play ball here and with everything else that is going on I don’t want to worry about it. I just want to worry about what we have going on, and right now that is winning the Big 12 Championship.”