The video explores the fascinating story of Mason Cox, a Texan who became an unexpected star in Australian Rules Football, also known as AFL. Despite the sport being little-known in America and characterized by its intense physicality and unique blend of various sports, Cox's journey from a novice to a celebrated player for the Collingwood Magpies has captured international attention. His presence on the field has also led to chants of "USA" from fans in Melbourne, highlighting his unique status.

Mason Cox's story is about not just overcoming odds, but surpassing expectations in a sport typically dominated by Australians. With no prior exposure to the AFL and standing out as the tallest player in the league, Cox pushed past multiple challenges, including adjusting to living and playing in a country far from his home in Dallas, Texas. His story includes highs like gaining Australian citizenship and lows including eye injuries that threatened his career, reflecting both determination and adaptability.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. evangelist [ɪˈvæn.dʒə.lɪst] - (noun) - A person who seeks to convert others to a particular religion or belief. - Synonyms: (advocate, promoter, missionary)

And he is an evangelist for his sport, one played on an oval surface almost double the size of an NFL field.

2. quintessential [ˌkwɪn.tɪˈsen.ʃəl] - (adjective) - Representing the most perfect or typical example of a quality or class. - Synonyms: (typical, ideal, ultimate)

At first glance, anyway, Mason Cox comes across as the quintessential Aussie rules or AFL player.

3. juking [dʒuːkɪŋ] - (verb) - The act of making a sudden movement to dodge or feint. - Synonyms: (dodging, sidestepping, faking)

Footy entails players running about 10 miles a game, juking, tackling, passing by punching the ball and scoring by kicking the ball through goal posts.

4. trajectory [trəˈdʒek.tər.i] - (noun) - The path followed by a projectile flying or an object moving under the action of given forces. - Synonyms: (path, course, route)

The football made of cowhide, by the way, travels in strange trajectories.

5. bloopers [ˈbluː.pərz] - (noun) - An embarrassing error or mistake. - Synonyms: (blunders, gaffes, slip-ups)

When Cox was a rookie new to the sport, these bloopers were part of the novelty act.

6. infamous [ˈɪn.fə.məs] - (adjective) - Well known for some bad quality or deed. - Synonyms: (notorious, disreputable, ill-famed)

After the combine, Cox was summoned to Melbourne, where he impressed Australian coaches with his height and his surprising agility.

7. preliminary [prɪˈlɪm.ɪ.nər.i] - (adjective) - An action or event preceding or done in preparation for something fuller or more important. - Synonyms: (introductory, preparatory, initial)

His breakout performance two seasons later in the preliminary final, like the NFL's conference championship game, suggested he could be a star.

8. evoked [ɪˈvəʊkt] - (verb) - To bring or recall to the conscious mind. - Synonyms: (elicited, stimulated, provoked)

Cox's coaches say he's never looked better. That's pretty damn good. I'm watching your practice, thinking Americans would love this, would go crazy for it. So, in 20 years, if there are a dozen Americans playing in the AFL, how's that go over with you?

9. insulation [ˌɪnsjʊˈleɪʃən] - (noun) - The act of insulating or state of being insulated; material used to insulate something, especially to protect from sound, electricity, or heat. - Synonyms: (covering, protection, padding)

Adding injury to insult. In 2019, Cox was raked across the eye in a game and diagnosed with two torn retinas, leaving him temporarily blinded.

10. fizzling [ˈfɪzl̩ɪŋ] - (verb) - To make a feeble or unsuccessful attempt; to fail ignominiously. - Synonyms: (fading, dwindling, diminishing)

Mason Cox, six surgeries later, he regained most of his vision, but was a diminished player and the great American experiment looked to be fizzling.

Texas man Mason Cox becomes unlikely Australian rules football star - 60 Minutes

Don't be fooled by the name they call Australian Rules Football footy, which sounds cute and precious, but footy is a sport that makes American football look like a quilting bee. It's a game of almost cartoonishly violent collisions without the benefit of pads. It features nonstop trash talk and is played on a field practically the size of a speedway. As the name does suggest, Australian rules football is the national sport down under, with games that draw 100,000 fans and TV audiences that per capita often outrate the NFL.

So why in the name of Waltzing Matilda do crowds in Melbourne sometimes break into chants of USA, USA? The answer? They're cheering. Mason Cox, a Texan who stands nearly 7ft tall, ranks among the best footy players out there and might be the most unlikely success story in global sports today. The story will continue in a moment. Sets it up Cox again. I cannot believe it.

At first glance, anyway, Mason Cox comes across as the quintessential Aussie rules or AFL player. At age 32, he's logged almost 100 games over eight seasons for the storied Collingwood Magpies, the AFL's equivalent of the Dallas Cowboys. And he is an evangelist for his sport, one played on an oval surface almost double the size of an NFL field.

Footy entails players running about 10 miles a game, juking, tackling, passing by punching the ball and scoring by kicking the ball through goal posts. Bang. Six points for splitting the center uprights, one point for the side ones, arms in the air that has gone through. It's unlike anything else you've ever seen. It's probably the roughest sport in the world. I'd say it's a mix of basketball, football, it's a mix of soccer, cricket, even. There's really no rules.

A few sticks at each end, just try to kick it through those and then whoever does that more than the other team wins. Sounds like fun. Yeah. For three straight goals, Mason Cox delivers like a human blowtorch, not only catching and kicking, but mastering the art of the specky, a tactic that transforms an opponent's back into a stepladder. Yes, it's legal.

It is one of the major things of AFL that people look at and they go, oh my gosh, that is insanity. To stick your knees on someone else's shoulder, launch yourself up to 15ft in the air, take a grab, come down and then be looking at this guy going, yep, I just literally jumped on top of you. It's like getting dunked. Yep, it's very similar.

Cox, already a big target, knows a good hands. But Mason Cox is the most unlikely player in the history of the sport. Never mind that at six foot eleven he's the tallest player ever to suit up, or that he's the only American in the league. He lived the first 23 years of his life without knowing the sport of footy even existed.

He may be an Aussie celebrity and may recently have starred in the AFL's equivalent of the Super bowl, but is still mastering the sport's nuances. And he's still fuzzy on basic footy facts, as we observed at practice. Kangaroo Brin. What's this made out of? Kangaroo skin. That's pigskin. What is it? Pigskin. Pigskin. I should probably learn a few things. Think they give him grief about that. You should hear them ribbing him about his accent.

Here's Collingwood captain Darcy Moore. He's kind of this weird fusion between southern drawl and Aussie accent. That's an interesting mashup. He definitely loves putting it on in the locker room. That's for sure. The Texas draw. He puts the Aussie on for us. You think?

The football made of cowhide, by the way, travels in strange trajectories. Get a load of Cox's story. What would you have said the odds of success were gonna be? You could comfortably say one in a million. One in a million.

Because there's so many talented players all around the country that just never make it, and the odds of succeeding are just so. It's so difficult. Like any professional sport, there are so many things seen and unseen that make it really hard to succeed. No skills, no track record. Yeah. No knowledge. No knowledge.

Living, you know, thousands of miles from home by himself. It's an extraordinary thing. Home for Cox was suburban Dallas, where in high school he had to duck under doorways, but played soccer with a great annoyance of classmates who played hoops. There's no way that he's not on the basketball team at seven foot. What else could you possibly do at 7ft tall other than play basketball? Right. And Mason is a prime example of that.

There's a whole possibility of things you can do at seven foot. That's Marcus Smart, now a Boston Celtics star who went to high school with Cox. Here we hear height is wasted on the tall. That's the old saying, you know, all his height is wasted on this tall dude for nothing. But as we've seen, it's not wasted at all.

After high school, Cox went to Oklahoma State, majoring in engineering. As a sophomore, he was approached about an unusual on-campus job, practicing with the women's basketball team and simulating tall opposing players, including Brittany Greiner.

When the men's team was short on height, they too called on Cox, which reunited him with Smart, then the team star Mason Cox, back into the game, a walk-on. Cox spent part of three seasons as the last option off the bench for Osco. He says he did guard Embiid for a little bit. He did guard Embiid for a little bit.

When you remember that when he was at KU, he did guard Embiid for a little bit. Yes. When OSU once played Kansas, Cox matched up against Joellen Bede, now one of the NBA's best players. And Cox held his own. He's always had a little spunk, a little fire to him. He had moments where, you know, you be like Mason, like, wow, I didn't know you could, you know what I'm saying? I didn't know you had that in you. Like, is everything okay?

Know a little bit about being a physical athlete. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. Shortly before graduating in 2014, Cox lined up a six-figure engineering job at ExxonMobil. Then came an intriguing opportunity. A scout hunting for graduating college athletes contacted OSU to see if Cox might want to attend a combine in Los Angeles for this thing called AFL.

You'd never heard of it? Oh, no, I'd never heard of it. Like never once had a word been spoken about it in my life. So we googled it as everyone does, and then this thing comes up and it's like AFL's biggest hits and it is literally people getting knocked unconscious. And yet you go to this combine. I have no idea what I'm getting myself into.

I land in LA, I get picked up in an unmarked white van, thrown in the back and he goes, we're going to go to the hotel and we're going to do three days of training. Pen Price enlisted Smith to Matthews and steady shoots at goal. If Americans know Aussie rules football at all, it's likely because in the 1980s, before it could afford NBA or NFL rights, ESPN aired AFL games.

But the sport was founded in the 1800s as a way for cricketers to stay in shape in the off season. It's especially popular in Melbourne, where the MCG, at nearly 100,000 capacity, the largest stadium in the southern hemisphere, will routinely fill for games. After the combine, Cox was summoned to Melbourne, where he impressed Australian coaches with his height and his surprising agility. Soon after, he declined his job at Exxon and signed with Collingwood.

We get the initial taste of what he's capable of. Can't kick, can't handball, but seven foot tall Craig McRae is now the team's head coach. In 2014, he was the head of development and assigned to Tudor Cox. He'd finished college. He wanted to travel Europe, but he took the football with him. I get this video late at night of Mason kicking the ball in some forest in Scandinavia somewhere.

And there's Mason running really awkwardly, carrying the ball like this and then chopping the ball onto his foot. There was progression, but there's still a long way to go. See what he does. Cox approached his development like the engineer he was supposed to be. And that's why they pay him the big bucks. Making steady and deliberate progress, solving the physics of using his height as an advantage, not a liability.

Yes. And he's doing all of this with guys that have been playing their whole lives. Yeah, well, we grew up, you know, sleeping with little footballs. Yeah, we slept and breathed it and idolized the game. Mason had none of that. What made you think he could pull it off? He's got that chip that, hey, I'm gonna prove a lot of people wrong.

Present up. Cox made his big league debut in April 2016 on the hallowed ground of the MCG, an annual rivalry game held on Anzac day, a national holiday. I remember sitting in this locker room just thinking to myself, holy smokes, like, this has happened pretty quickly.

You're sitting here about to play in front of the most passionate fans probably in the world on one of the biggest days and you barely know what the sport is. I still had questions on rules at that point, like, I didn't 100% know what was going on. He was standing arm in arm with his teammates when Australia's national anthem started.

I think to myself, I go, I don't know a word and everyone else is belting him out next to me. So I kind of just laughed myself and just kind of hum along. I had no idea. And that kind of took the nerves away. That settled you did. That settled me.

The game started as if scripted. Cue the sports movie music. A ball spilled out. RC Moore got the ball and saw Cox in the distance and punted it to the rookie. This could be a fairy tale.

Who caught it and scored with his very first kick. He rides at home. What a beauty. Can you believe an American in his first game has just kicked the first goal on Anzac Day? That day, I think, was one of those days that solidified that, you know, this might be something I do for quite a long time.

Cox was literally off and running. His breakout performance two seasons later in the preliminary final, like the NFL's conference championship game, suggested he could be a star, having crossed 15 time zones, Cox's parents were in the stands that day as he scored three times. Can he guide it through? Yes, he can. Three of the very best. It's one of the greatest stories, I reckon, in Australian football, unfolding before our very eyes.

As Mason Cox became a fan favorite, he also developed into what locals would call a fair dinkum Aussie. That's not. This country's really got my heart. I think. I'm still marveling at your accent. Are you the most American Australian or the most Australian American? Probably the most Australian American. I still love American. I'm still American, but I'm half and half now.

Flanked by his captain, his coach and his parents, he got his Australian citizenship to prove it, and he's seen more of the country's exquisite landscape than most natives. But as in any sports movie, there were setbacks in this play.

He resembled a basketball player who headed down court for getting to dribble. He's gone. He's gone. Oh, boy. When Cox was a rookie new to the sport, these bloopers were part of the novelty act. When Cox was a veteran, the passionate Collingwood fans were less forgiving.

You've seen that? Yeah. Yeah. The judgment, the criticism. Adding injury to insult. In 2019, Cox was raked across the eye in a game and diagnosed with two torn retinas, leaving him temporarily blinded. That, he says, was when he felt the distance from home. I'd lost one of my senses all within 48 hours and had to figure out if I ever was gonna play AFL again, if I was ever gonna see again.

What's that internal conversation going like? You know, did I do the right thing? Come in here. Now I have something that's probably going to affect me for the rest of my life. Was it worth it? And you feel quite isolated and alone.

Mason Cox six surgeries later, he regained most of his vision, but was a diminished player and the great American experiment looked to be fizzling. Then Cox made an equipment change, adding another distinguishing feature, becoming the first afler to wear prescription goggles.

He had one of his best years this year. Cox's coaches say he's never looked better. That's pretty damn good. I'm watching your practice, thinking Americans would love this, would go crazy for it. So in 20 years, if there are a dozen Americans playing in the AFL, how's that go over with you? I would love an American to break every single record I've done because it means that I've left a mark, you know?

You know how extraordinary and unlikely this story is? I'm gonna look back and think you had the most ridiculous life you could possibly think of. That makes no sense. And I took it by the horns, and I made the most of it. Learn the rules, or lack thereof, of Australian rules football. It's a chaotic sport that no one really knows about. Bar Australia at 60 Minutes Overtime.

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