Chris Cooley: How to Succeed in the NFL Without Really Trying
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SPORTS
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If it seems like the Redskins star tight end is having fun on the field, then you should see him off of it.
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 Where did your nickname Captain Chaos come from?
A couple of years ago, in St. Louis. It was the first time Joe Gibbs picked me as a captain, so me and [teammate] Brian Kozlowski made a bet for 20 bucks—and I'm sure he never paid me—that I wouldn't introduce myself to the Rams captains as Captain Chaos. So I'm this idiot second-year player looking Orlando Pace and Marc Bulger in the face and saying, 'Hi, I'm Captain Chaos.' Within two weeks, Reebok was making shirts.
So it wasn't because you rock cutoff sweatpants with '80s band logos on them?
I made those my rookie year. One day, I put a huge Slayer logo on them and dudes liked them, so we started finding the real logos online and tracing them on. I have 25 on there now—and it took an hour to draw each one. I didn't wash them my whole rookie year because I didn't want to ruin them.
Is your blog really a way to put your brother through med school?
Yeah. We thought if we could make 50 grand a year we could cover all of his stuff, and it's making way more than that. There's no reason to have any loans.
Do you regret posting that check with all your banking info on it?
[Laughs] I had to write a check to the IRS, so I took pictures of the check and edited it, but I uploaded the wrong one. My brother called 15 minutes later and said, 'What the fuck are you doing?!' So I spent the next six hours canceling all my accounts. It was stupid.
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ALL-MAXIM TEAM |
| Chris Cooley mad our 2008 All-Maxim Team, why not see who else made the list? Don't forget about the defense, either! | You got a lot of attention for saying that NFL rookies are overpaid. Do you feel vindicated now that Commissioner Goodell has said the same thing?
Yeah. It's funny, a lot of people responded to me saying, 'Why the fuck would you care? You're a millionaire?' But in your profession, if someone new comes in and instantly makes more money, no one's going to be happy about it. The average bonus in the first round is over 10 million, and half of them aren't playing football four years later.
So does Vernon Davis hate you because you named him specifically?
I wasn't talking shit; I just made a truthful statement. Vernon Davis is a good player, but his rookie contract was bigger than my free agent extension, which is crazy. He put up less stats than I did in my first two years, and I was making 200 grand.
Another way you can torture rookies is by pranking them. Do you have a favorite method?
I don't pick on guys like that, but I've seen horrible stuff. My rookie year they took a kid, taped him up, and rubbed Icy Hot all over his body. Dudes rubbed it on his balls and his butt crack and put him in a tub. The trainers found him 20 minutes later up to his neck in ice. That's the most extreme I've seen.
What's the worst you got?
I got dumb ones. I had to shave my head. The older guys made me bring donuts twice a week. But by the middle of the season I was starting, so I was like, 'Fuck you guys. Do whatever you want to do, but I'm not getting donuts anymore. I'm playing, you're not.'
You met your wife when she was a Redskins cheerleader. Did the team discipline you for that?
It's not a good thing to say, but for her it was 'you're fired', while I got high fives. They don't say anything to the players. Even most of the coaches were giggling about it.
That's not the best way to kick off a relationship.
I felt terrible because she grew up a Redskins fan and always wanted to do that. They actually talked to her about coming back after we were married, because apparently there's no rule about being married to a football player. [Laughs] She didn't do it.
Is it true that you celebrated her 21st birthday by doing 21 shots with her father?
Yeah. Her birthday was on a Sunday, so I got home from a game, went over to her house, and me and her dad did 21 shots of Jim Beam, which was hell. It was a rough night, but it's a great story.
We heard you knocked your own fantasy team out of the playoffs because you scored three touchdowns in a real game and your opponent was starting you?
I have a couple teams every year. This was just a regular Yahoo! league, so no one knew who I was. It was the semifinals, and I didn't even consider whether I was going to beat myself. But yeah, I caught three touchdowns. And the funny thing is that I helped him win and he'll never know.
How do you approach drafting yourself? Do you want you on your team?
I would draft myself in the order I'm supposed to. If Antonio Gates is on the board, I'm going to take Antonio Gates. [Laughs] I'm pretty competitive. I just want to win.
You say you're absentminded. How do you memorize a playbook?
An average offensive meeting is an hour and a half, and I can know everything that's going to be discussed in six or seven minutes. Then it's like Office Space. I just zone out. [Laughs] I have an unbelievable sketchbook of naked women. I'll just drag a Maxim in and draw three or four women in a meeting. I was an art major.
What if you get caught doodling?
The thing is—and, obviously, I'm totally busted now—if you look up every once in a while, it looks like you're taking notes, because I'm writing more vigorously than anyone else in the room.
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