Rex Sharp reflects on almost a quarter century at Mizzou
Last week, PowerMizzou.com broke the news that head athletic trainer Rex Sharp would be taking on a new role in the athletic department. For 23 years, Sharp has been the director of athletic training as well as the head trainer for the football team.
Sharp said that he worked 12 to 14 hour days five days a week, not including game days during football season. All told, that is approximately 85 hours a week for more than two decades. He has been the head trainer for a college football team for each of the last 37 years, beginning at Northeast Missouri State, where he was the first trainer in the program's history and had nothing more than a file cabinet and a telephone in his office on his first day.
After his stint in Kirksville, he spent 11 years at Ball State University before coming to Mizzou in 1996. Beginning this week, Sharp will continue the oversight of the department, but will give up many of his day-to-day duties with the football program.
"I think it's a shock to a lot of people, but it's not like this has just come up recently," Sharp said. "I have been advocating and had been advocating that if and when I retired, my suggestion and recommendation would have been for the athletic department to hire someone (specifically) for football."
Sharp said he will have input along with Barry Odom and Jim Sterk on who takes over the role going forward. He will continue to be on the sidelines during Mizzou home games. He has not yet decided if he will travel with the team to road games.
"My wife will probably get tired of having me around more," he joked.
The demands of the job are extensive. But Sharp wouldn't change them.
"If you want to work at this level, with these student-athletes, because that's what it's all about, that's the job," he said. "That's okay. Again, that's what we expect to do because we're here for them. We're serving the student-athletes. They want to get better, they want to be great. We appreciate that, we're going to try to match their effort."
How much has Sharp seen at Mizzou? He had been on the job a few months when Barry Odom tore his ACL in the spring of 1997. Sharp said he and Odom spent every day together doing rehab prior to the 1997 season. The only exception was the day Sharp left Columbia in the morning to go to the Indianapolis 500 and drove back the same night so he would be able to do rehab work with Odom the following morning.
He singles out a number of players over the course of a 40-minute conversation ("I talk too much," he says). The toughest player he worked with?
"I would say Brad Smith," Sharp said. "He had injuries nobody knew about because he didn't want anybody to know. The only people that knew were his mother, because we always communicate with the parents, Brad, myself and Coach (Gary) Pinkel."
He recalled the work with Jeremy Maclin, who tore an ACL during the summer before his true freshman year.
"In October, he's running 110s on the sideline. Three-and-a-half months later," Sharp marveled. "We weren't going to play him because we'd already decided that, but I knew he was going to be fine. Then the first time he touches the football for Missouri, he runs a punt back for a touchdown. That was another time where Dr. (Pat) Smith and I were standing together and went 'Wow.' Really special moment."
Perhaps no player is more linked with Sharp than running back Henry Josey. Josey suffered a grotesque knee injury against Texas in November of 2011. By the end of the game, Sharp had already seen the MRI.
"My first concern was whether he was going to be able to walk again," Sharp said. "Can he lead a normal life?"
After delivering the news to Pinkel that Josey had torn the ACL, the MCL, the meniscus and the patellar tendon (an injury the coach would say the severity of which is usually seen in car wrecks), Sharp retreated to his office and broke down in tears. He still has never watched the story Mizzou produced on Josey's recovery because he says it is too emotional.
Josey missed the entire 2012 season and Missouri went 5-7. He returned to the field for the 2013 season, but Sharp saw the first sign it was going to happen months before. The Missouri players used to run two 40-yard dashes for time on what they called "Fast Fridays." One Friday in February, Josey asked Sharp if he could run.
"I don't know if that's a good idea," he told Josey.
The trainer relented, allowing Josey to run one 40-yard dash instead of the two his teammates would run, telling the tailback he had to be sure he was completely stretched out and warmed up before.
"He ran a 4.36," Sharp said. "The fastest he had ever run was a 4.32, so we're four-hundredths of a second off. The whole place was going absolutely crazy."
Sharp said he knew Missouri was going to be pretty good with Josey back in 2013. But he couldn't have written the script.
"First game back, he goes for a 50-something yard touchdown. Everybody is in tears. I know I was," Sharp said. "Then the run against Texas A&M (that clinched Missouri's SEC East title).
"It's been an awesome thing. I love the young man."
Among those with whom he spent too much time, Sharp said he wishes he could have seen a healthy Elvis Fisher continue his football career. He still has a knee brace that Danario Alexander wore after one of his three ACL surgeries (they had black, gold or white braces that the receiver could coordinate with his outfit).
"Boy, that was a talented young man," Sharp said.
But as far as regrets go, nothing compares to the summer of 2005 when Aaron O'Neal died following an offseason workout.
"Worst time of my life," Sharp said. "There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about it."
Sharp said he writes a letter to every training staff when a player under their supervision passes away because he has been through it and knows the awful feelings that everyone involved carries with them.
His other major regret?
"That we never won a national championship," Sharp said. "We were close a couple of times. That year (pointing to a poster of the 2007 team in his office) was one and then in 2013. We were just that close."
Sharp steps aside from his daily duties proud of Missouri's efforts in addressing mental health issues (he is part of a staff meeting every Thursday about any mental health concerns of Mizzou athletes), in educating players on the danger of concussions and how to recognize them and of the relationships he built with players over nearly a quarter of a century.
"We've done a good job here," he said. "We've put in a national championship effort."
Rex Sharp isn't walking away. He's still going to be around. Just maybe not as much.
""I'm not away from football. I'm going to do as much, or as little, as I want," he said. "It's going to be busy now, but it's going to be a lot different. I'm still coming in. I'm still working. I'm going to try to stay out of everybody's way and let them do their thing."