John Cohen
When John Cohen was named Mississippi State University’s 17th director of athletics on November 4, 2016, he wasted little time putting his stamp on the department. Since that time, the former MSU head baseball coach and two-time Southeastern Conference
Coach of the Year has overseen arguably the greatest era in Bulldog athletic history. Since the spring of 2018, State has claimed five SEC team championships, representing the most in a two-year span in school history.
Cohen, who spent more than two decades coaching college baseball, was named MSU’s head baseball coach in July of 2008. Nine years later, Cohen’s official role in administration began when he assumed the role of associate athletic director in addition to head baseball coach. The following November, he took charge of an athletic department that has since achieved new heights in athletic, academic, facility, and fundraising achievement.
As a baseball player at MSU, Cohen was a key player on the Bulldogs’ 1989 SEC championship team and 1990 College World Series team. He graduated from MSU with a degree in English in 1990 and received a master’s degree in sports management from the University of Missouri in 1994.
Following a six-year stint with Missouri as a graduate assistant and assistant coach, Cohen was the head coach at Northwestern State University from 1998-2001. Cohen spent two seasons as an assistant baseball coach at the University of Florida before becoming the head coach at the University of Kentucky in 2004, a position he held for five seasons before returning to his alma mater. Cohen guided the Wildcats to the program’s first SEC championship in 2006 with a remarkable worst-to-first finish in his third season.
Cohen is the only coach in SEC history to win an SEC championship, SEC tournament championship, and advance to the College World Series both as a player and head coach.
Cohen was recently appointed to the prestigious 10-member NCAA Division I Baseball Committee. He is serving a four-year term that began on Sept. 1, 2019.
Cohen and his wife, Nelle, are active members of the Starkville community. The couple has two children, Jordan and Avery.
