Cooper DeJean grew up in Odebolt, Iowa
Someone who grew up in a rural Iowa community is now a Super Bowl champion.
Cooper DeJean, who spent his childhood in Odebolt, Iowa, (population 985 in 2023), and his Philadelphia Eagles teammates captured the Vince Lombardi trophy on Feb. 8, defeating the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22.
“It’s not very often a kid from a town of less than 1,000 people gets to go to the Super Bowl,” Cory Duff, owner of a local diner in town, told The Associated Press in the run up to the game.
And DeJean played an important part in the Eagles victory, which also fell on his 22nd birthday.
The defensive back intercepted a Patrick Mahomes pass and returned it 38 yards for a touchdown. He also had three tackles.
“That pick 6 was for all of the small town kids in America,” John Hough wrote on X.
Odebolt, where DeJean grew up, is in Sac County, Iowa.
The county had a total population of 9,686 in 2023.
True to being a farming community, cows outnumber the people there by more than 37,000, according to USDA numbers.
In 2023, Iowa farms averaged a corn yield of 201 bushels per acre.
Sac County sat just below that at 199.1.
Thay year, farmers in Sac County planted 166,500 acres of corn and produced more than 31 million bushels.
When it comes to soybeans, growers in the county produced an average soybean yield of 58.1 bushels per acre – a small bump compared to the 58.0 state average.
Growers planted 138,000 acres of soybeans in 2023 and produced more than 7 million bushels.
The 2022 Census of Agriculture reports Sac County having 863 farms, with an average farm size of 399 acres.