Why Collingwood premiership winner Mason Cox was everywhere during the AFL off-season

Stay out of trouble, stay out of the spotlight, and let’s not hear you or see you until training recommences.

Yet Mason Cox, the American junior soccer player turned college basketball back-up turned Australian rules project, is not ‘most AFL players’.

You’d have to be living under a rock to have missed seeing his face somewhere along his off-season tour as a newly-minted premiership player.

“Just creating a career in the AFL was ridiculous enough, you might as well enjoy all the extras that come with it,” Cox tells CODE Sports.

“I know these connections and opportunities may fade. Whenever the whole thing finishes, I can say, ‘I milked that dry and squeezed as much juice out of the lemon as I could and had some fun doing that along the way’.”

That he’s eminently sensible and engaging means the man with the big frame and bigger personality offers no off-season worries to Collingwood or his manager Liam Pickering.

Instead phone calls from the summer break are greeted with excitement about what weird and wonderful thing he’s doing next.

“He gives everything a go,” Pickering tells CODE Sports.

“That’s what you have to admire about Coxy. With most players you say, ‘Would you be interested …’ and it’s a flat no.

“He’s more likely to say yes than no to things.”

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Cox has been saying ‘yes’ all summer.

After playing an integral role on grand final day, Cox packed his premiership medallion and headed home to see family and promote the USAFL championships, in between guest spots at LIV Golf, the Las Vegas F1 Grand Prix and NFL, NBA and NHL games.

Back in Australia he was a VIP guest at the Melbourne Cup, in courtside seats at the NBL, visiting the fire ravaged Fish Creek Football Club and serving meals to the disadvantaged with the Salvation Army on Christmas Day.

Then there was the almost incongruous role as a Cricket Australia ambassador promoting the Boxing Day Test, before heading into slightly more familiar territory interviewing tennis stars at the Australian Open.

In the middle of all that was the unlikely concept of performing and recording a live edition of his ‘Mason Cox Show’ podcast at the new year music festival ‘Beyond the Valley’.

“I felt like 10 people would show up and then there were 300 people, all packed into this tent, standing room only … all different levels of sobriety.

“I didn’t really know exactly how to entertain a crowd of that size, so we changed some stuff on the go and got the crowd interacting and it turned out really great.”

If you hadn’t already been convinced by his much-documented journey from footy novice to carving out a significant AFL career, Cox is comfortable being out of his comfort zone.

In fact he thrives on it.

“That’s where you grow, right? Cox says. “You grow in the places you’re uncomfortable in.”

Holding a cricket bat for the first time and going on television and radio to talk about a sport he has little concept of is an example.

But his enthusiasm and ease to work with impressed those at Cricket Australia, just as it did with Tennis Australia, and Cox had a blast. Another success.

Pickering says it’s that willingness to embrace all around him that makes him so unique as an AFL player.

“He’s an interesting guy but he’s interested in what other people are doing. He will go out of his way to speak to people.”

Cox loves the idea of meeting people and connecting them with others who might help them. He is a reminder that genuine networking is not a ghastly LinkedIn brag creation.

And it never ceases to amaze Pickering how connected Cox has become in Australian media, business, sport and arts.

“You’ve got no idea how many people he knows. If you went through his phone you’d find some fascinating people. You go, ‘Shit, how do you have his or her number?’ … ‘I met them here when I went to this thing,’ he says.”

Cox welcomed future US President Joe Biden to an AFL game years back and now counts the US Ambassador to Australia, daughter of a president and true American royalty Caroline Kennedy, as a personal friend.

“Crazy aye?” Cox says. “She was the coolest.”

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Cox is self-aware enough to understand what some must think when they see his head pop up again on a screen.

“People might say, ‘He’s a flog because he does so much or he always tries to be the face of this or that’,” he says.

“But that’s a short-term mindset. I’m trying to look at the long-term experience and the long-term opportunities that might come from doing all these different things and building up a resume.”

Out of others’ mouths, that might sound calculated, yet this is genuine enthusiasm for whatever is next. He’s also self-aware enough to know that his AFL career, which seemed a million-to-one shot at first and has been on the brink of extinction more than once, may end at any time.

It’s all a wonderful bonus from Cox’s perspective: “I’m trying to make the most of the time I’ve got.”

He laughingly rules out a career following Kennedy into diplomacy or politics; “Darcy Moore is much better suited to that.” He thinks the media is where he will end up but does not rule out ending up on a desert island at some stage too.

Pickering thinks Cox’s interest beyond the AFL bubble is the ideal model to set up life post-football.

“The sky’s the limit for him post-career,” Pickering says.

“He knows his value now and that his profile is strong. Where he lands, I don’t know, but I think he’ll be involved in a lot of things. I think there’ll be an AFL role for him in the American market, along with the media.”

For now, Cox will continue to say yes.

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Though to the relief of his employers, he has learned to say no occasionally too. In the afterglow of his podcast performance at Beyond the Valley, self-restraint kicked in.

“They were like, ‘Oh dude, you should stay for the next couple days’,” Cox laughs.

“I was like, ‘I would love to, but being seven foot at a doof doof festival … I don’t know if I’d be able to hide very well!’”