Cooper in H.S.: Amazing athlete living close to the edge

CLEARWATER, Fla. - When Riley Cooper was Clearwater Central Catholic's football and baseball hero, everything, it seemed, bounced harmlessly off a body one coach said "must have been made by the god of sports."

Tacklers. Blockers. Errant fastballs.

And trouble.

If Cooper's career survives the blowback from his now-infamous racially insensitive tirade during a Kenny Chesney concert, it won't be the first time the 25-year-old Eagles wideout has skated away from potential disaster.

Trouble shadowed Cooper throughout his three years as an athletic prodigy at the private high school, which was located not far from where his family has lived since relocating from Oklahoma when he was a toddler.

Some of it was the typical stuff that dogs teenage athletes everywhere - bad grades, injuries, profanity, tantrums directed at officials and umpires.

But there were far more serious incidents - one in 2003 involving a theft at a party, a car burglary that same year, and, after punching through the window of a BMW being driven by a teenager, criminal mischief charges in 2006.

None, police records here indicated, ever resulted in legal penalties. Restitution was made for the items Cooper and a few other juveniles were accused of stealing. And the teenager who lost a window - and likely a few years off his life - dropped the charges when, according to his attorney, Cooper's father paid for the damages to his auto.

Though the BMW driver, Jasim Alidina, was of Middle Eastern descent, Cooper's teenage troubles did not reveal any problematic racial attitudes of the kind that recently brought his NFL future into question.

A peek into Cooper's boyhood in and around this sunny resort town revealed instead a physically gifted kid from a well-to-do family who found plenty of trouble, a penchant apparently exacerbated by an inability to tame the same aggressive impulses that made him a top national prospect in two sports.

"His intensity," said Mike Jalazo, his football coach at CCC, "was overwhelming."

Emilio Fernandez, who managed Cooper one summer on a Florida Bombers baseball team that captured a national title, said his centerfielder and middle-of-the-order hitter was "basically a good kid."

"He had his moments," Fernandez said. "If he had a problem, it was that he was more aggressive than your average 17-year-old, which is something I think came from his football background. And he came from some money, so he was probably a little bit spoiled."

Riley Thomas Cooper was born on Sept. 9, 1987, in Oklahoma City. His parents, Larry and Monica, moved to Florida shortly afterward to take advantage of a booming real estate market.

The family lives in an affluent neighborhood in adjoining Seminole, where Larry Cooper is president of his own realty company, the Investment Building Group.

Cooper's local legend began on a steamy August day in 2003 when the sophomore showed up at CCC's football camp. He had transferred there after one year at Seminole High.

"It was pretty clear what kind of athlete he was," said Jalazo. "We knew he was going to help us somewhere."

Cooper was a rare combination of size, speed, and attitude. He instantly became a Marauders starter at wide receiver and free safety. A kick- and punt-returner who also filled in at running back and quarterback, he physically outmatched and punished opponents.

By sophomore season's end, even though he had missed time because of a suspension, the Marauders were in the state playoffs and Cooper's name was prominent on the national recruiting map for both football and baseball.

When he was a junior, one football scouting service rated Cooper - who had run a 4.56 40 and had a vertical leap of 40 inches - the sixth-best prospect in the nation.

But less than a month after his arrival at the school where palm trees shade a handsome Haines Bayshore Road campus, he encountered a sizable speed bump.

On Sept. 13, 2003, according to a Pinellas County Sheriff's Office report, the 15-year-old Cooper and three teammates took several new NFL footballs from the car of a local memorabilia dealer.

The dealer, Matt Doniger, had parked his Chrysler PT Cruiser in the school's lot while he played basketball in the gym. Returning to his vehicle, he told police, he saw several players stuffing the balls, destined to be sold after they were signed by some Tampa Bay Buccaneers players, under their shirts.

Since burglary is a felony, police at the scene read Cooper and the other juveniles their rights. But the dealer decided not to press charges after one of the fathers - the report doesn't make clear which - showed up and agreed to pay for the five balls that had been damaged.

According to that report, a CCC coach informed the police that the four players were due "harsh sanctions" and that their "football careers at the school were over."

While Cooper was briefly suspended that season, it's unclear if it was related to the theft. The publicly stated reason was academic difficulties.

Whatever, it was the talented youngster's second encounter with the law in six months. Sheriff's Department records also indicate that on March 29 of that year he and two other teenagers had been suspects in a petty theft.

According to that police report, the trio showed up uninvited at a party in Largo. The daughter of the residents later identified them as the persons responsible for taking three PlayStation CDs and another guest's wallet from her bedroom.

No formal charges ever resulted.

Cooper's junior football season was truncated by a serious shoulder separation that also cost him a year of high school baseball. A swift, powerful centerfielder, he eventually would be picked by the Phillies in the 2006 draft, his 15th-round status reflecting his stated preference for college football.

In the summer of 2005, Cooper played with the Miami-based Florida Bombers, an elite baseball program that has produced numerous major-leaguers.

"He was a five-tool guy who could have played in the big leagues," said Fernandez, who founded the program and coached Cooper's team. "You don't see many kids as big as he was who run a 6.4 60. But because of football he just didn't devote enough time to it.

"But he still holds a couple of records for us. In a regional playoff game, he hit two grand slams in the same inning and finished with 10 RBIs."

The Bombers had Hispanic and African American players, including current Oakland A's second baseman Jemile Weeks, and Fernandez said there was absolutely no racial trouble.

CCC, which enrolled about 500 students when the Eagles wideout attended, had only two or three African Americans on the football team, according to Mark Feldman, a football assistant then.

"There were never any problems of that nature," said Feldman. "I don't remember anything like that involving Riley or anyone else."

CCC teammate Colin McCarthy, now a Tennessee Titans linebacker, said the remarks attributed to Cooper were out of character.

"From a friend, to a teammate, to a guy I grew up with, [the incident at the concert] doesn't reflect the kind of person he is," said McCarthy.

Jalazo agreed, telling FoxSports.com "you didn't get a sense of hatred toward anyone from Riley."

Jalazo, who now coaches at Northeast High in St. Petersburg, Fla., and heads a community program aimed at aiding ex-prisoners, said the N-word - which Riley directed at a security guard in the video that led to his brief Eagles suspension - was often used too casually by contemporary athletes.

"When you're in a locker room, kids will play music that throws the N-word around to the point where it makes people my age really uncomfortable," Jalazo said in the same interview. "This is the word that doesn't have the intense meaning to them as it does to people who are older. . . . I've got white kids and black kids who throw this word around like it's nothing."

Overall, Fernandez said, Cooper was "not problematic at all" except for the occasions when his temper bubbled over and he tossed equipment or yelled at an umpire.

That happened in football too.

In August 2005, the Florida High School Athletic Association suspended Cooper for three games for "directing profanity at an official" during the waning moments of a 27-0 loss to Jesuit High.

McCarthy received a one-game suspension, which apparently was the FHSAA's punishment norm. Asked to explain Cooper's harsher penalty, an FHSAA official said it was because of the "severity of the infraction." When CCC appealed the suspension, it was reduced to two games.

But it was just after midnight on March 11, 2006, that his most serious off-the-field legal problem occurred.

According to police, Cooper and some friends were walking along Buttonwood Lane near Largo after attending a party. Driving a BMW, Alidina, 17, made a U-turn near the group.

Alidina told police the boys then stopped his car and asked if he knew another teenager who apparently had been at the party. When he said he did not, Cooper's fist suddenly smashed through the window, spraying glass on the passengers and blood on the interior.

Cooper's father, however, told police that his son had been startled by the car's turning so near and that he had thrust his arm against the partially lowered window in a defensive reaction.

The boys fled the scene, but Cooper was later charged with criminal mischief after police found him being treated for his badly cut right arm at Morton Plant Hospital. The injury forced him to miss his senior baseball season.

Alidina's lawyer, Jim Stearns, said the incident turned out to be a case of mistaken identity.

"When the father agreed to pay for the damages, my client was not interested in pressing charges," said Stearns. "It wasn't a racially motivated thing."

Cooper, who by then had accepted a football scholarship to the University of Florida, graduated that June with a CCC class of 126. A CCC administrator would not allow a reporter to view yearbooks and student newspapers from the player's tenure there, stating that "we do not share that information."

"There's one thing you remember about Riley when he was in high school," said Feldman, "and that's that he was an amazing athlete."