How To Be Awesome: Starring Chris Cooley, Featuring John Elway

Chris Cooley’s awesomeness is well-established at this point. Whether it’s scaring the crap of Donovan McNabb, marrying a Redskins cheerleader, celebrating his fiance’s birthday by drinking 21 shots with his father-in-law, or agreeing to a throw-off with the senior editor of this here website. You get the point.

But then he goes and prank calls half the NFL, and we learn the lesson all over again.

Cooley joined Rich Eisen on his podcast this week, and told Eisen about his favorite hobby: prank calls. Redskins Blog provides a transcript. First there’s his ongoing harassment of A.J. Feeley:

I’ve been calling A.J. Feeley for the last three years, and I actually finally ran into A.J. to talk to him about this, and it blew his mind that it was me.
I call him, and I pretend like I’m calling Jay Feely. So the other day I called him and said, ‘Oh, hell of a job kicking out in Arizona this year. You’re a great player, man, I love watching you. You’re an inspiration as a kicker.’ So he had saved all of these voicemails.

Pretty awesome, particularly because he’s pretending to be a guy that worships a kicker. But he really outdoes himself with his three-way prank calls to John Elway, Carson Palmer, and Marvin Lewis.

So I tried to call [reportedly disgruntled Bengals QB] Carson Palmer, but I just got to voicemail. In all of these sequence of calls that I made, I only got to voicemail. I hate call-screeners. I tried to do my best John Elway voice.
I told him I was [Broncos executive VP] John Elway, and I said ‘Listen, I hate Tim Tebow. I want you, I want you out here in Denver. And I know I shouldn’t be calling you, we can’t talk. You gotta keep it down. But we’re gonna make this work.’
So then I laugh for a minute, turn right around and call John Elway back. I talk to John. This is my childhood idol, by the way, and I said, ‘Hey, it’s Carson. I got your message and I hate Cincinnati, I don’t wanna be here. I’d love to come out to Denver.’ I mean, I accentuated these calls a bit, I’m giving you the short version.
Then I called [Broncos coach] John Fox [as Carson Palmer], and left three messages. And said, ‘John, got your number from a friend. I cannot get a hold of Elway, he left me a message, talking about coming out there. I know this isn’t the right time, but if you’ve got anything, if you know anything, call me.’
And then, to finish the sequence, I called [Bengals head coach] Marvin Lewis. I really made these calls. I said ‘Listen, I’d prefer to be an unnamed General Manager,’ but in the background I had someone yell ‘Hey Bruce!’ And I said, ‘There’s just a lot of tampering going on between the Denver Broncos and your quarterback.’
Then I actually went ahead and tweeted to Chad Ochocinco, from my twitter account (@thecooleyzone), I said ‘I heard Carson Palmer’s going to Denver. Is there any truth to that?’

There a lot of different ways to handle money, access, fame, and lots of free time, but nobody in pro football squeezes as much awesomeness from it as Chris Cooley. ... “Listen, I hate Tim Tebow. I want you, I want you out here in Denver. And I know I shouldn’t be calling you, we can’t talk. You gotta keep it down. But we’re gonna make this work.’” Cooley’s the best.