Video Prohibition Slayed: The Chris Cooley Interview

One more time, with feeling!

To recap: earlier this week, I attempted to post an innocuous Redskins fan video from training camp. I was told to take it down, due to team rules prohibiting any speck of Redskins Park video from running on a newspaper Web site.

Undeterred, I then attempted to embed Redskins related videos from local television stations, which were posting great quantities of Redskins related videos in handy embeddable video players on their Web sites. This worked fine, until the Redskins complained to the stations and the stations complained to our lawyers and I was told to take them down.

Finally, to keep from losing all self-worth, I relied on the bonds of bloggerdom to score an invitation to Chris Cooley’s mom’s house for lunch on Thursday, where under most commonly held interpretations of international law, NFL video restrictions do not apply. When we arrived, Nancy Cooley and Chris Cooley chided me for a recent blog post (which, honest, was meant as an homage to Chris’s rare honesty), but were otherwise extremely hospitable. Nancy made Chris lunch, while he sorted through dozens of unopened packs of football cards. Highlights of our conversation are above, the full, unedited monstrosity is below. (And due to some massive coincidence of fate, Cooley also happened to have an officially sanctioned video posted on NFL.com yesterday. Note how I’m not afraid to share.)

Watching these won’t change your life. But it’s training camp, and it’s the Redskins, and it’s video, and our readers like all three of those things, and that was the whole point. Stay tuned for future interviews with your favorite Redskins at gas stations, mini marts and take-out joints throughout the greater Ashburn metropolis. And thanks for making this month interesting, Mr. Snyder.

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