Cooper Mays explains how his farm upbringing impacts him on the field

Cooper Mays enjoyed a simple life on a Kingston, TN farm growing up. He spent countless nights stacking hay and maintaining his family’s property, priming him for the bright lights under Neyland Stadium.

Set to lead the Tennessee offensive line and expected to contend for the Outland Trophy in 2024, Mays is poised for another strong season at center for the Volunteers. Ahead of the regular season, Mays spoke about his upbringing with On3’s Andy Staples and how it turned him into the football player he is today.

“We grew up with about 110 acres. Cows, chickens,” Mays told Staples. “We used to throw hay bales all year ’round, dude. Terrible, terrible. The only thing I wanted for my birthday was to not do hay again, because we get done with practice for about two hours. I go throw hay for two hours in a hot barn, 91 degrees up there. Terrible.”

Mays said each bale weighed around 60 pounds. “It’s like hang cleans over and over and over,” he said. Everything had to be done by hand, as Mays said it was a small operation on a large plot of land.

While the labor that comes with farming was a lot for the younger Mays to go through, he said it shaped him into the man he is today.

“When you teach your kids how to work, it brings a whole new respect to kind of your whole life in general,” Mays continued. “But I mean — I’ll tell you right now, if I can go do the hardest [football] practice in the summer and then go two more hours of throwing hay and stacking hay that I just stacked up just to throw off of it to stack up again. I mean, if you can do that, you can do a football workout.”

Mays has more than proved his abilities on the field, and it shows given that he was named a Preseason First Team All-American by Walter Camp and was voted as a member of the Preseason First-Team All-SEC team by media.

Helping block for new starting quarterback Nico Iamaleava, the two have already developed a bit of chemistry since the former five-star recruit’s first start under center during the Citrus Bowl win over Iowa.

Tennessee will begin its 2024 regular season inside Neyland Stadium against in-state foe Chattanooga before travelling to Charlotte to play NC State inside Bank of America stadium in Wek 2.