Cook had a plan for everything

I wrote a book with John Cook and it offered at least the tiniest glimpse into why Nebraska volleyball was so good.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

The thing about having never written a book before but always wanting to is anything seems doable when presented with the opportunity. Maybe even normal, because how would you know if it’s not?

John Cook retired after 25 seasons as Nebraska’s volleyball coach on Wednesday. We wrote a book together and this is the best way I know how to offer something more than career highlights (numerous) and a recounting of accolades (also numerous).

In the summer of 2016, Cook reached out to my former boss, Aaron Babcock. Nebraska’s head volleyball coach wanted to write a book and needed a writer. Aaron recommended me, and asked if I was interested. I recommended our mutual colleague, Mike Babcock, the best writer I’ve worked with and author of multiple Husker books. Just made sense. I’d be stumbling around in the dark while Mike had walked these woods before.

Mike passed the opportunity back to me because as good as he is as a writer, he’s even better at helping others do the work they hope to do. I got to write a book with one of the most successful college coaches in any sport because others thought I could more than I did. It needed to be ready in five months. I signed a book contract on Aug. 5, 2016. The book was due Jan. 6, 2017.

I had been around Cook at multiple press conferences at that point, but we didn’t have a personal relationship prior to starting the book. The first time I walked into his office was definitely the first time he ever had reason to know who I was.

Cook wanted to get his ideas and experiences out into the world. He was used to talking openly and often with reporters—to a degree we don’t often see with coaches at his level—because he was genuinely interested in growing interest in volleyball, a sport¹ he didn’t set out to coach. The book, however, was a chance to bundle everything he’d learned to that point, and he was invested.

He gave me a general outline of the book, chapters he already had in mind. He gave me a list of other coaching books he loved, which I promptly purchased in advance of our first meeting. I put my recorder down on the conference table next to his office the day we started, and we just started rolling. This was still August. We were packing the “book days” in while Nebraska was preparing for the season ahead.

It was an expectation-filled season. Nebraska had made the final four, in Omaha, in 2015. The Huskers returned almost all of their key players for 2016 and opened the season No. 1 in the AVCA rankings. From a book-publicity point of view, wouldn’t it be great if Nebraska won the title and then a book explaining Cook’s approach to it all arrived eight months later?

That didn’t happen. Nebraska rolled to a 31-3 record, winning its first Big Ten title in five seasons, but was swept by Texas in the semifinals of the NCAA Tournament. Our book didn’t get the storybook ending—despite what most, including me, would’ve predicted coming in—and that’s probably for the better, no matter what I thought at the time.

The Huskers did win it the following year with a team that had to replace three All-Americans, two assistant coaches and, for Nebraska, started a lowly fifth in the preseason rankings. Fifth? That’s almost out of the top-five! But that (again, relative to Nebraska) lightly regarded team—which is the ultimate testament to Cook’s run in Lincoln—took home the trophy. It was the Huskers’ last national championship trophy under Cook, and that’s OK. It doesn’t change anything now that we know someone new, former Husker and architect of a Louisville rise as head coach, Dani Busboom-Kelly, is leading² the program.

The 2024 Huskers were the best NU team I can remember. I wasn’t paying special attention to the program prior to starting the book, but how could you not after that? Last year’s team was as good as I’d witnessed once I’d started paying specific attention;

Cook, in his own, calculated way, agreed.

“This team actually played at the highest level of any team I’ve ever coached, statistically and how we measure things,” he said.

That’s over 25 seasons at Nebraska, five national titles. This team that didn’t win it all was as good—no, maybe better—than those that did. Not a slight towards them and not just the sort of thing you say after a loss. I believe it and believe it doesn’t belittle anyone in the expense of uplifting others.

This is what coaching is, and that’s something I didn’t know when agreeing to write a book in five months with one of the most successful coaches in Nebraska history. You have to get used to doing a great job and coming up short of the standard your previous greatness has already set. That’s just how it goes, and if you’ve never competed at that level, it’s hard to understand.

I won’t claim to understand it.

But I felt like I got at least a glimpse at what made Cook so successful. He came with a plan for the book. During the time we were together, it felt like the book was the only thing that mattered though I knew it wasn’t. In some ways, in hindsight, I feel fortunate to have experienced a fraction of a fraction of what it must be like to be coached by Cook: “Here’s our objective, here’s how we’ll reach it, but desire is no guarantee we’ll get there. Here we go.”

I’m proud to report that the book we produced, “Dream Like a Champion,” remains in print and has sold more than 10,000 copies to date eight years on. That might not seem like a big number, but most new books don’t stay in print that long because they don’t sell that many copies. I contributed nothing outside of labor to that total, which I’m also proud to report, but people from all walks of life want to know how Cook did it.

Happy retirement Coach Cook.

1. That would probably be football, where he started his coaching career. Those 2016 interviews remain stuck in my brain for a lot of reasons, but one of them is because Cook would always ask me, a football reporter, about what I thought was happening over there.

2. More on what the means to come in future newsletters.