Amari Cooper’s emotions roil as he steps in front of a Browns team meeting; he’s not sure he’s ready to relive an eye-opening tale capped by a memory that will forever alter connotations of super glue.
It’s July, the start of the four-time Pro Bowl receiver’s second season in Cleveland after a March 2022 trade from the Dallas Cowboys. Admittedly, he is not a natural speaker. But, at the opulent Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia, he’s decided to share his story during coach Kevin Stefanski’s team-building exercise called the “4 Hs.”
The ballroom-like setting in the sports complex on the resort grounds is filled with 90 players and the coaching staff. It isn’t easy for Cooper as he goes through his history, heartbreak, heroes and hopes. They’re things he’s never talked about in front of a group.
“It was something I decided to do for the team,” the 29-year-old says. “It’s important that we know each other.”
Growing up in the Coconut Grove area of Miami, Cooper was one of five children raised by his single mother. Green worked minimum-wage jobs, including as a restaurant cashier, often bringing home Mexican or Cuban food or sushi that Cooper says expanded his palate. The siblings attended an after-school program at The Barnyard, one of Cooper’s favorite charities to support since the University of Alabama grad was drafted fourth overall by the Oakland Raiders in 2015. His father, Terrance Cooper, was not a part of his life, released from the Florida state prison system in April 2022, according to a public records search, after serving a 30-year sentence for burglary.
During his kindergarten and elementary school days in Florida, Cooper had just one pair of shoes — “church shoes,” as he calls them. The loafers were so worn out from running at football practice that his mother, Michelle Green, super glued the flapping soles nearly every night.
One of Cooper’s counselors eventually started to ask others for cast-offs they could give the youngster, but they were always too big. Even a desirable pair of size 5 Jordans had to be rejected because Cooper couldn’t cut and move in them.
“I’m from the projects; everybody who grows up in the projects is poor. I think the difference with me is we were, like, the poorest among the poor,” Cooper says. “No matter how I hard I tried, I could never get the stuff I wanted.”
Even though some of his teammates had also survived tough childhoods, Cooper’s words at the Greenbrier drew a strong reaction.
“After he gave his 4 Hs, everybody stood up and clapped,” says Browns linebacker Sione Takitaki, conceding that he’d also worn ripped shoes as a kid. “I felt like everybody already had respect for Amari, but after that, I feel like the respect was just deeper.”
These hardships molded Cooper, but they also sparked his love for fashion.
Today, when the Browns star takes his turn to address the media each Thursday, he is known to wear a lust-
inducing designer hoodie.
He can’t contain his clothes and shoes in one spot at his primary residence in Dallas since he gave his girlfriend the largest closet, so he might convert a spare room into a walk-in wonderland.
When he played for the Cowboys, luxury department store Neiman Marcus provided him with designer outfits in exchange for Instagram posts. He speaks fondly of an iconic Tom Ford jacket.
It all goes back to what he didn’t have during those days in Miami.
Green had more than five children to feed, Cooper says, because there were always a lot of people in the house.
“My oldest sister is 10 years older than I am. She started having kids at 17,” Cooper says. “I had a niece staying with me, then I had a nephew.”
By the time Cooper was drafted, Green was working in the restaurant code compliance department for the city of Miami Beach. She says she felt comfortable with the children walking around their neighborhood of “West Grove” and that crime mostly involved those selling drugs.
Cooper says they lived in the projects from the time he was age 4 to 16. He would sometimes get home at 11 or 12 at night and had to get up at 5 a.m. for school, which included a 15-minute walk, 10 to 12 stops on a train, then a bus. Green, who later got custody of her two nephews, eventually moved closer to Miami Northwestern High School, where Cooper caught passes from NFL-bound quarterback Teddy Bridgewater.
As for Cooper practicing in tattered “church shoes,” Green says, “I guess he was determined. He just wanted to make his mommy happy.”
Cooper got that chance after the 2015 draft, when his hard work and determination paid off and he set her up with a house and a Range Rover. Green, in turn, says she sent him off to the pros with a warning.
“I knew he was humble, but when you get some money sometimes, you don’t know how a person is really going to turn out,” Green says. “I always used to tell him, ‘Please, don’t make it rain in the clubs.’’’
Cooper assured her that would not happen but looked forward to buying the things he always wanted. He knew the average NFL player’s career lasts three-and-a-half to four years, so he held off. He bought his first car, a BMW i8, when he was a 20-year-old rookie. A friend in the Raiders’ player engagement department discouraged the $125,000 purchase, suggesting a cheaper Maserati instead.
“I’m like, ‘I don’t want a Maserati, I want this car,’” Cooper says. “I got it, and I was kind of scared. I was working extra hard. I was always scared when I made purchases. I didn’t make many.”
Cooper says he didn’t feel comfortable spending big until the Raiders traded him to the Cowboys in the
middle of the 2018 season. The Cowboys picked up his fifth-year option, then in March 2020 signed him to a five-year, $100 million contract with $60 million guaranteed. (Not long after he was traded to the Browns, Cooper’s contract was restructured, giving him most of his $20 million salary as a signing bonus and adding two void years.)
Cooper began filling his closet with the help of a personal shopper at Neiman Marcus. His infatuation with clothes went back to his days in West Grove.
“I had a lot of guys who were doing illegal things for money, but for some reason, they always had the best style,” Cooper says. “It’s not just about buying the clothes; it’s about how you’re putting it on. That’s a very intriguing thing. I always said to myself, even when I didn’t have much, when I got a pair of new jeans, I would put it on the right way to make it look good.”
Professional athletes’ walk-in photos have become big hits on social media, but Cooper says he doesn’t dress up for every game.
“I have to be feeling it,” he says. “But on the days I do decide to dress up, the way I shop, I don’t have to pick it out. I have four or five guys who send me pictures of stuff almost every day. Shirts, shoes, jeans. I’ll be like, ‘Yeah, that’s nice, send it to me.’”
Blue is his favorite color, but Cooper is mindful to pick out clothes in different shades.
Cooper’s Instagram is filled with shots of him wearing gaudy jewelry and designer labels like Gucci, Fendi and Dolce & Gabbana. There is debate in the locker room on whether Cooper is the best-dressed Browns player, with some singling out quarterback Deshaun Watson.
“He always puts that thing on. If you see him wear the same outfit twice, it’s very rare,” tight end David Njoku says of Cooper.
Shoes are also a Cooper obsession, perhaps ignited when LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony were selected in the 2003 NBA Draft.
“Carmelo signed with the Jordan brand and came out with some shoes. My friend had them on in class and I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, those are so nice. I want those,’” Cooper says, thinking back to the third or fourth grade.
“The thing about the Jordan brand, sometimes they’ll come out with a shoe and then they’ll shelve it for like 10 years. When I got to college, my first or second year we were getting Pell Grant money. I went to the shoe store and the Carmelos were there. I didn’t even want it, but I was like just because I couldn’t have them back then, I got them.”
Cooper says he never wore the Anthony kicks and gave them away two years ago when he cleaned out his closet. Usually, he purges 50 pairs a year.
“I guess he remembers how it was for him growing up wishing he could have like other kids had,” Green says. “Now he’s able to buy whatever he wants, he has that tender spot in his heart to give it away to people he thinks need it more than him.”
With the aid of his sister, Cooper puts on charity events at The Barnyard for Thanksgiving and Christmas, the latter with essays determining which families will receive $500 gifts. He says he donates clothes and shoes to those in his old neighborhood and his girlfriend sometimes takes bags to local Boys and Girls Clubs. But Cooper hasn’t forgotten he was once the kid with only one pair of shoes.
“There’s a part of me that really yearns for those type of moments for myself because I never had,” he says. “Then there’s also that side of me like, ‘I never had, so I’ve grown accustomed to not having it. I can survive like this.’”
Now in his ninth NFL season, Cooper is enjoying the good life and using his unique sense of style to show how far he’s come.
“It’s a good feeling when you’re dressed up. It adds to your confidence, it makes you feel better,” Cooper says.
Now that they know what’s on the inside, Cooper’s teammates will never be distracted by what he’s wearing on the outside.
Browns linebacker Anthony Walker Jr., who has known Cooper since their high school days together in Miami, says Cooper sharing his 4 Hs was “a special moment.”
“I’m from around the same neighborhood as him and I never knew that story,” Walker says of the church shoes. “His mom did a great job, raised a great young man. I tell people all the time, ‘You never know someone until they speak and tell their own story.’ Someone who rarely speaks, but when he does it’s very powerful.”
Long-snapper Charley Hughlett didn’t just hear Cooper’s tale, he felt it.
“You could see it on his face as he’s going through the story, it was almost like he was going through how far he’s come,” says Hughlett, a co-captain. “That’s mind-blowing that he came through those circumstances and beat so many odds. I’m sure he used that as motivation for a long time.”
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