Joe Cooper (born January 22, 1979) is a former

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

linebacker Linebacker (LB) is a playing position in gridiron football. Linebackers are members of the defensive team, and line up three to five yards behind the line of scrimmage and the defensive linemen. They are the "middle ground" of defenders, p ...

who played one season with the Calgary Stampeders of the

Canadian Football League The Canadian Football League (CFL; french: Ligue canadienne de football—LCF) is a professional sports league in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football. The league consists of nine teams, each located in a ci ...

(CFL). He played

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

and attended Independence High School in

Columbus, Ohio Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, and t ...

. He was also a member of the

New York Jets The New York Jets are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Jets compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. The J ...

and

St. Louis Rams The St. Louis Rams were a professional American football team of the National Football League (NFL). They played in St. Louis from 1995 to the 2015 season, before moving back to Los Angeles, where the team had played from 1946 to 1994. The arri ...

of the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

(NFL).

College career

Cooper played for the

Ohio State Buckeyes The Ohio State Buckeyes are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent Ohio State University, located in Columbus, Ohio. The athletic programs are named after the colloquial term for people from the state of Ohio and after the state tree ...

from 1998 to 2001. He enrolled at Ohio State University in the fall of 1997 but was not eligible to play football that season. He earned All-

Big Ten The Big Ten Conference (stylized B1G, formerly the Western Conference and the Big Nine Conference) is the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representati ...

and

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Third Team All-American honors in 2000 after recording 80 tackles. Cooper was also co-captain of the team in 2000 and 2001. He was voted the most inspirational player of the Buckeyes by his teammates while also being named the team's most outstanding linebacker by his coaches in 2000.

Professional career

New York Jets

Cooper was signed by the New York Jets on April 24, 2002 after going undrafted in the

2002 NFL Draft The 2002 NFL draft was the 67th annual meeting of National Football League (NFL) franchises to select newly eligible football players. The draft is known officially as the "NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting" and has been conducted annually sinc ...

. He was released by the Jets on September 1, 2002.

Calgary Stampeders

Cooper played in three games, starting all three, for the Calgary Stampeders in 2002.

St. Louis Rams

Cooper signed with the St. Louis Rams on January 7, 2003. He was released by the Rams on July 22, 2003.

References

External links

Just Sports StatsNFL Draft Scout
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cooper, Joe Living people 1979 births Players of American football from Columbus, Ohio American football linebackers Canadian football linebackers African-American players of American football African-American players of Canadian football Ohio State Buckeyes football players Calgary Stampeders players Players of Canadian football from Columbus, Ohio 21st-century African-American sportspeople 20th-century African-American sportspeople