MIAMI — Whitehouse athletic director Adam Cook was in attendance for Whitehouse high school alumni Patrick Mahomes' win over the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl 54 after Arizona Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury gave him a ticket.
Coach Cook sent CBS19 a photo of him and and Kingsbury at Hard Rock Stadium. Cook was the head coach at Whitehouse when Patrick Mahomes made a name for himself locally, while Kingsbury was the head coach at Texas Tech when Mahomes became a household name.
"Coach Kingsbury got there," Cook remembered. "And as soon as he saw, he came over and gave me a hug. And he said, 'Hey, coach, just give us a picture real quick!' And then we got a chance to visit. I got to thank him, you know, face to face for what he done for me."
Cook said the seeing the Super Bowl was unlike any game he had seen before, let alone the fact that one of his former players was starting at quarterback for one of the teams.
"When Patrick and his teammates rushed out on the onto the field, I mean just electric, unlike any other game that I've been to. Every time they put [Mahomes'] face up on the jumbotron everybody in there was going crazy," Cook said.
Cook watched as Mahomes engineered a drive for the ages and sealed it with a touchdown pass late in the fourth quarter.
"I just remember at that point it was like reality setting in of ‘Hey this boy’s fixin' to win the Super Bowl,’ and that's what the feeling was is how he's fixin' to win the Super Bowl," Cook said. "And then I can remember when they got the turnover I sent [a text] out to my wife and a couple other people: ‘Ball game.'"
Cook believes this is only the beginning of a successful career for Mahomes.
"Come on, Super Bowl MVP? We're talking last year's the NFL league MVP, and now he's a Super Bowl champion. So he's already put himself up there," Cook explained. "And then you look on top of his character, he continues to do what he's doing now, good Lord willing the sky's the limit for what he's gonna do."