Nice article on Copeland.
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/colle...fbdca2f7e.html
COLUMBIA, Mo. • The night before Max Copeland left Billings, Mont., for the great unknown fate of becoming an undersized walk-on offensive lineman at Missouri, he had one message for his mother.
“Mom, this isn’t about me playing football,” Joanne Copeland recalled in a phone interview. “It’s about me showing not to myself but to anybody else out there who was told they aren’t good enough and will never make it. It’s about showing them that you still don’t stop trying.”
From that moment in 2009, Copeland’s fire hasn’t stopped burning at Mizzou.
As No. 8 Mizzou (9-1, 5-1 Southeastern Conference) plays tonight at No. 24 Ole Miss (7-3, 3-3), the walk-on-turned-scholarship starter has become a mainstay at offensive guard, a beloved leader in the locker room and one of the most colorful players in recent history to wear the black, gold and … orange?
Copeland came to Mizzou a 230-pound freshman with closely cropped hair — and will leave a 305-pound senior with a wild orange mane that hasn’t been cut since he arrived, with an unkempt beard to match. Emblazoned with black face paint on game days, Copeland gives life to the madman that’s been brewing inside for years. A gash between his eyes spurts blood every Saturday and only adds to the mystique.
“I was honestly scared of Max when I first met him,” sophomore center Evan Boehm said. “It was on my recruiting trip. I was like, ‘Oh my God, this guy is scary. I’m staying away from him.’”
Tailback Henry Josey had the same reaction when he came to Mizzou in 2010. Copeland reminded him of a soldier from the fantasy battle film “300.”
“He wasn’t weird but just a crazy guy,” Josey said. “I said, ‘I don’t know if I need to be around him.’ In the weight room, I was like, I’ll go do my own thing and stay out of his way. He was out of control.”
Their fears have subsided, to say the least.
“You get to know him and he’s the same brother as anyone else,” Josey said. “What’s there not to love about Max? He’s his own person.”
ONE OF THOSE GUYS
Michael and Joanne Copeland had their first of four children while living in Nashville, Tenn., and when Max was entering second grade, they moved to Liberty, Mo., closer to Michael’s alma mater, Mizzou. By seventh grade, the Copelands moved to Montana, and while Max didn’t become a star on the football field, there was only one place he wanted to go for college, especially after he attended a Mizzou camp and visited campus for a home game in 2006.
“He identified with those guys in the black and gold,” Joanne said. “He was going to be one of those guys.”
But football hardly defined young Max. He loved all kinds of music except country and devoured books on history and philosophy. He learned to play the guitar and bass and performed in his high school’s philharmonic orchestra. Heavy metal became his favorite — an older cousin introduced him to the Motörhead classic “Ace of Spades,” unbeknownst to Joanne until years later, she recalled — but his palate had room for more than one flavor. Even Russian composers.
“He could have a decent conversation with you about Dmitri Shostakovich,” Joanne said.
By his senior year, Copeland became a starting offensive lineman and earned a scholarship offer to Montana, a Football Championship Subdivision program in Missoula.
Thanks, but no thanks. There was only one place for Copeland, only one path. Missouri, as a walk-on.
“For a reasonable thinking person I can understand why that might be crazy,” he said. “But I’m not a reasonably thinking person.”
Not everyone in Billings understood Copeland’s decision, including some of his coaches.
“This is going to sound so cheesy, but this is totally sincere: He’s playing for all the little kids out there who people say, ‘You can’t do this. You’re not good enough,’” she said. “That’s not something Max ever heard from his parents. We told him to go for it. But coaches told him otherwise.”
NO WAY IN HELL
Four years ago, Missouri offensive line coach Bruce Walker never would had envisioned the walk-on from Billings becoming a two-year starter.
“No way in hell,” Walker said. “No way. He had these stupid little beads in this goatee beard, and I wasn’t going to play a guy who had that.”
Over time, Copeland grew on his coaches. He became one of the team’s strongest linemen and what he lacked in athletic skill he compensated with technique and energy.
“Early on in his career,” offensive coordinator Josh Henson said, “Coach Walker and I kept saying, ‘This kid, I know he’s not very good right now, but he does a lot of things right. He works really hard. And he really cares.’”
“He’s smart. He’s tough. He’s strong,” Walker said. “And he’s a great competitor. And you’ve got a chance to play in our world if you can do that.”
Still, all those qualities didn’t guarantee playing time, much less a scholarship.
“I’ve worked as hard as I possibly could going on five years,” Copeland said. “But working hard is only your ante into the hand. That’s not your guarantee that everything’s going to work out.”
It worked out for Copeland because it didn’t work for others last year. Early in preseason camp, a vicious run of injuries depleted Missouri’s depth along the line. Travis Ruth suffered a season-ending triceps tear. Jack Meiners twisted his knee. Two weeks into camp, the two best guards were a freshman, Boehm, and a walk-on, Copeland.
Joanne came to Columbia to watch a preseason scrimmage, and shortly after Michael and the rest of the family picked her up at the Billings airport, Max called with some news.
“I don’t know how but I knew,” Joanne said. “He was calling to say, ‘Dad, I got a scholarship.’ Of course, my husband started crying and the rest of us were screaming in the car, literally just screaming.”
A WARRIOR’S GAME
Copeland, no longer a walk-on, started 11 games last year and held off Ole Miss transfer Mitch Hall for the starting job this season. A sprained ankle kept him out of the starting lineup against Indiana and Arkansas State, but he’s been back for every SEC game, including the Oct. 12 victory at Georgia, after which Copeland put his broad tastes on display and quoted a line from a book he’d been reading on Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. That led to a brief media gag order, but he’s filled notebooks and tape recorders since then, sharing his worldly views on topics beyond football.
Copeland, a physics major who’s already earned his undergraduate degree, is one of 10 finalists for the Burlsworth Trophy, given annually to the most outstanding college player who began his career as a walk-on. Not that Copeland is looking for awards.
Just some metal, a touch of face paint and someone to hit for a few more Saturdays along a journey he knew he was destined to make.
“Football, I don’t care what anybody says, this is the greatest truth of all: It’s a warrior’s game,” he said. “And you can be the greatest athlete in the world, but if you’re not a warrior, you’re screwed. It’s not the place for you.
“If you’re a warrior and not an athlete, you’ve got an OK shot. And I’m definitely the latter. I am a warrior. And I hope that’s what they see in me, because I may not be good looking or smell too great, but I am a warrior.”