STARKVILLE — John Cohen was introduced as Mississippi State University’s 17th director of athletics Friday afternoon.
Cohen, who served as MSU’s baseball coach for the last eight seasons, replaces Scott Stricklin, who took the same job at Florida last month.
“I love Mississippi State University,” Cohen said. “I’m here to serve our coaches, all of our sports, all of our student-athletes, and all of our student body.”
Details of Cohen’s contract weren’t released.
MSU President Mark Keenum enlisted the help of Daniel Parker of the Parker Executive Search Firm in Atlanta, the Bulldog Club’s Mickey Holliman, who also served as the chairman of the search advisory, and MSU’s Executive Director of External Affairs Kyle Steward during the search. He called it an “exhaustive” search in which he interviewed several athletic directors and other people in administrative positions at other schools. He didn’t name any of the other candidates.
Keenum said he met with Cohen, 50, on Monday for a follow-up interview. It was unclear when an initial meeting, if there was one, took place. He said it became apparent after the follow-up meeting Cohen was the right choice.
“We kept coming back to John Cohen,” Keenum said. “He’s someone who has been here in our athletic program for eight years leading our highly successful baseball program. But more than just leading our baseball program to College World Series and conference championship, he’s also been very involved and very active in helping to lead the entire department. He’s absolutely the best choice.”
Cohen, 50, played baseball at MSU from 1987-90. He has spent more than two decades coaching college baseball and has been the head baseball coach at MSU since 2009. In July, he was given the title of associate athletic director.
A Tuscaloosa, Alabama, native, Cohen has led the Bulldogs to a College World Series finals appearance, a Southeastern Conference regular-season championship, and a SEC tournament championship. Since 2009, MSU baseball has had 133 players selected to the SEC Academic Honor Roll, including three-straight SEC Scholar Athlete of the Year winners from 2013-15.
While winning 284 games as a head coach at MSU, Cohen has demonstrated the ability to develop players and coaches. During his tenure, 135 MSU baseball players have been selected in the Major League Baseball Draft. Two of his assistant coaches at MSU have gone on to head coaching positions at SEC programs.
Cohen said his top priority moving forward is finding a baseball coach. Cohen didn’t talk directly about any possible candidates to replace him as MSU baseball coach.
“I love our baseball program, but more importantly, I love Mississippi State,” Cohen said. “I am profoundly grateful for the chance to lead the totality of MSU athletics as I have tried to lead MSU’s baseball program — in daily and dogged pursuit of championships at the highest level.”
When Cohen was asked about current LSU assistant Andy Cannizaro as a possible candidate for the job of baseball coach at MSU, Cohen only said, “We might re-visit that at some point.”
Follow Dispatch sports writer Ben Wait on Twitter @bcwait
Staff Reports were included in this story.
Ben Wait reports on Mississippi State University sports for The Dispatch.
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