EDITOR’S NOTE: The Knox County Sports Hall of Fame inducted its inaugural class on Nov. 2, 2019 at the Knox County Historical Society. Seven local athletic legends made up the first class of inductees. Knox Pages reporter Grant Pepper helped research each inductee in preparation for the ceremony. This week, we will run stories based on that research. Pepper used resources like Newspapers.com, the world’s largest online newspaper archive, to collect statistics, quotes and anecdotes pertaining to each athlete.
Listed at 6-foot-3, 210 pounds, Harold “Cookie” Cunningham may be the most accomplished two-way athlete ever to emerge from Knox County.
Cunningham played professional football and basketball at the same time after graduating from Ohio State in the 1920s. In an era where playing two professional sports was rare, but not impossible, the Mount Vernon native took full advantage.
Cunningham began his two-way professional career in Cleveland in 1927. He played end for the Cleveland Bulldogs of the American Football League that fall, then switched into gym shorts and sneakers and starred for the Cleveland Rosenblums of the American Basketball League in the winter.
It would be the first of many professional stops for Cunningham, who played for three pro football teams and two pro basketball teams during his first five years out of college.
Cunningham came along before professional sports schedules expanded, and eventually overlapped, causing football season to run into basketball season. Had Cunningham entered the professional ranks a decade or two later, he would have had to choose. One reporter later called Cunningham “a living monument to an extinct species of athlete.”
“A few since his time have mixed two pro sports – like baseball and basketball – but Cookie is thought to be the last of the major two-sport professional in football and basketball,” the reporter wrote. “A rare breed died with him in the early 1930s. Its chances of ever being engendered again have virtually vanished.”
Long before Cunningham became a two-way professional, however, he honed his skills at Ohio State University. Cunningham was an all-American end on the football team and an all-conference center on the basketball team.
Cunningham, known as a big and physical end, played his final college football game against one of the sport’s greats – Red Grange, of Illinois – back in 1925. Curiously, both were originally named “Harold,” both wore No. 77, and both met at midfield to shake hands before the game, as captains of their respective teams.
The two would end up playing together on the Chicago Bears four years later; Grange, a three-time all-American and game-changing pro player, has since been enshrined in both the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame.
But on that day, in 1925, Cunningham and Grange went head-to-head. While Illinois won the game by five points, it was Cunningham’s defensive line that kept Grange from scoring.
Although little was written about Cunningham’s football career – his Ohio State teams were good, not great – the opposite could be said about his time on the hardwood.
After leading Mount Vernon High School to a state championship in 1922, and then a runner-up finish in the national tournament, Cunningham went on to excel at Ohio State.
He accounted for roughly 30 percent of Ohio State’s points during his three varsity seasons, scoring 472 points in an era where final scores often hovered in the 30s and 40s. He was a top-five Big Ten scorer all three years at Ohio State, including two seasons where he finished third on the list.
Cunningham was known for his consistency – he missed only one collegiate game, due to a lingering football injury – and his finishing ability around the basket. He had great footwork, reporters noted, and big hands – one story written during his professional days claimed he was one of the centers in the U.S. who could palm a basketball.
Before all of the college and pro notoriety, however, Cunningham was just a kid from Mount Vernon. He began his football and basketball careers here, and it is here where his older brother gave him the nickname, “Cookie,” for his fixation with the homemade treat.
After his playing days were over, Cunningham coached basketball in the National Basketball League and at two universities. He then moved to Florida and made a name for himself as a successful businessman. Cunningham lived to be 90 years old, having passed away in 1995. In Knox County and Ohio, he’ll be remembered forever as a premier two-way athletic talent.
