This is Cook Country
It’s game day in CoMo, and the newest issue of MIZZOU magazine is hitting mailboxes. After a sensational 2023 season culminating in a Cotton Bowl victory over Ohio State, Mizzou football makes it on the cover for the first time since the 2018 season. It’s been years since fans have been this amped for Tiger football, and optimism runs high.
Mizzou quarterback Brady Cook has been through some stuff during his career with the Tigers. His first season as starter was hampered by a torn labrum, yet he played through the pain on the way to a 6–7 season ending with a Gasparilla Bowl loss. Criticism rained down from fans. Message boards blew up. The following preseason, Mizzou’s QB1 was an open competition.
Cook won the job in 2023 and turned in a season for the ages, an 11–2 record and final AP ranking of No. 8 in the nation. Had the expanded 12-team college football playoff started in 2023, the Tigers would have been invited to dance.
The design of the magazine cover tells the story of Brady Cook, the good and the bad, all the noise that comes from playing quarterback in the SEC. We invited Cook to the studio for a portrait session decked in the all-white uniform. I brought a football that I had spray painted white days earlier for prop purposes. The background is filled with real world comments from internet fan boards and other media outlets over the past two seasons, and the tone of chatter progresses across the page, reflecting Cook’s substantial improvement over his career.
Cook was fantastic in the studio and every bit the model student-athlete a university would want. Mizzou is his dream school, and I can’t wait to see how he closes out one of the more memorable careers in recent Tiger Athletics history.
Watch a highlight video I produced for the issue: