Captain Chaos Enjoying the Ride

Nancy Cooley purchased a John Elway uniform, which Chris refused to take off as a child. "I would watch a Broncos game until they were losing," he said. "Then I would go outside and make up imaginary teams. I would make rosters and throw to the players and run and catch it myself. All day."

Nancy was raised in the Mormon church, but chose not to raise her children in Utah's predominant faith. "I didn't give them any church except the Church of Being Nice to Everybody," she said in a telephone interview from Logan this week.

"My kids are my life," she added. "They always have been."

After she and her two boys moved to Logan, their existence was spent shuttling between baseball, wrestling and football games. Tanner, a redshirt freshman, also plays tight end at Utah State, whose stadium lights she can see flickering from her back window.

"I worry about him being out there by himself, but he's got some good people around him," Nancy said of Cooley's new life in Washington. She mentioned Brian Kozlowski and Jim Molinaro, Cooley's two closest friends on the team, and Christy Ogilvie, the former Redskinette he has been dating for five months, and Christy's family.

Neither Nancy nor Ken Cooley, Chris and Tanner's father who remained in Powell, Wyo., have remarried. "My mom did a good job of keeping everything from us and letting us see my dad when we could," Cooley said. "She never talked bad about him."

Ken Cooley declined to elaborate on what drove his ex-wife to Utah with the children. "But it sure hurt when they took off," he said by telephone. "I really liked being a dad. There was a big void. Oh, man, when that happened there wasn't enough whiskey in the house to drink."

Though Nancy raised them, both boys maintain a relationship with their father. Nancy came to Washington for the Cowboys and Giants games this season; Ken saw Chris play the Eagles in November.

"Yeah, it's not like a father-son relationship," Ken said. "It's more like buddies. I like it that way."

"I'm close with him, but he's more like my best friend than a Dad," Cooley said. "I know I missed him growing up."

Ogilvie, who represented the Redskins in the Maxim magazine cheerleader spread the past two seasons, is still featured in the team's calendar, one of which she autographed for Ken.

"To be honest," Cooley's father said, "it wouldn't bother me a bit if he stayed with Christy. Captain of the football team meets captain of the cheerleader team. It's an all-American story, ain't it?"