Born in the same area that produced football royalty Earl Campbell, Erik Dickerson, and Adrian Peterson, Hunkie Cooper seemingly had no choice but to pursue gridiron glory.

It was a way to stay out of trouble in the streets of Plymouth, Texas but also a source of community pride.

“Growing up in Texas, you don’t exist if you didn’t play football,” Cooper said. “It was a way of life for us growing up, and for the community.”

The game instilled a fierce, Texas-sized competitive drive in Cooper that translated from the Pop Warner field to the bright Friday night lights of Westwood High School. There, he lettered in baseball, basketball and football, where he starred as the team’s quarterback. When it came time to leave, he decided to pass up offers in the other sports to pursue his dream of becoming a football player.

“They told me that I was ‘undersized,’” he said, mimicking his many doubters. “I always felt that I had to prove myself and it drove me to succeed.”

Success for the 5-foot-9, 190 pound future Ironman was imminent, but not without a few road blocks along the way.

Hernandez “Hunkie” James Cooper was born in Texas and named after a war friend of his Vietnam veteran father. Before leaving for war, the two had made a pact that if one died, the other would name a child after them. Hernandez died, and Hunkie’s father knew he had to keep the agreement.

Though he was dubbed “Hunkie” for his muscles by his eight older siblings, Cooper says the name “Hernandez” is “sentimental” and “special” to him – especially after the death of his father.

“That’s why I always wore no. 14,” he remembered. “Because that’s the age I became a man.”

But Cooper and the no. 14 jersey looked as if both were destined for failure after an immature decision led Hunkie to lose his scholarship from one junior college, an incident that had him contemplating swearing off football forever.

It took some firm words from his mother, and a tough work ethic, to put Cooper back in position to return to college football.

“I had to pay for school, so I took a job at a meat packing plant killing cows,” he said. “I was killing 500-600 cows a day making money so I could get back.”

The hard work paid off, and Cooper enrolled at the Nevada Junior College, now Navarro College, before walking-on with the football team. With a newfound humility and commitment to detail, he led the team to a National Junior College Association championship before graduating and joining the Division I Rebels of the University of Nevada- Las Vegas.

Scoring four touchdowns in his debut, Cooper went on to earn two All-Big West selections and cemented himself in the lore of UNLV, playing six different positions in his career.

But he still had one more hurdle to climb.

The NFL panned him and the Canadian Football League didn’t work out, so Cooper took a job working in a Las Vegas Casino and Hotel.

Only Cooper can explain what happened next.

“One day, Pete Kiletta (then-Director of Player Personnel for the Arizona Rattlers) came into the hotel and asked me to try out for the Arena Football League,” Cooper remembered. “I had heard the name but I didn’t know too much, so I wasn’t too sure. He told me just to come out to training camp and see how it goes, so I did.”

The rest is history.

Initially signed as a fourth string wide receiver, his role expanded almost immediately, as the Rattlers’ recognized his knack to affect every part of the game – and both sides of the ball. As a rookie in 1993, Cooper was named the League’s Most Valuable Player with more than 1,400 return and receiving yards.

“You control your success, not other people,” he said thinking back to his days as a junior college backup quarterback. “[Arena Football] is football for football players; it’s like playing in the street. We were common folk, people who were doubted, it was professional sports the way it should be.”

Cooper ranks second in AFL history in all-purpose yards and finished his career in the top 10 of four other offensive lists. He was named First- or Second-team All-Arena six times, and was one of the best “Ironmen,” in the history of the Arena Football League.

Cooper was always the consummate teammate and loyalist, two qualities that sometimes go missing in the big-money era of professional sports. He spent 12 seasons with one team, the Arizona Rattlers, bringing them from the AFL ashes to a League power.

“I appreciate Arizona because the fans there respected the Rattlers,” he said. “They were excited to be there and showed dignity and character.”

With the amount of wins that Cooper contributed to, this may not be a surprise. In 1994, he led the team to its first ArenaBowl appearance, a 36-31 upset victory over the Orlando Predators.

“They didn’t even put our names on the ticket,” a slighted Cooper remembered. “We were the underdog but we knew we could win. I remember some of the Predators talking about the places they were going to party after they won – and they may have partied after – but we left as champions.

The Rattlers won a second ArenaBowl in 1997. Cooper was named the Ironman of the Game.

Arizona continued to rise to the top of the Arena Football crop over the next several years, appearing in the big game in three consecutive seasons from 2002-2004, but lost all three times.

Cooper retired in 2005 as one of the all-time greats, and was named the fifth Greatest Player in AFL History by the 2006 AFL Historical Committee. He was selected in 2011 as an inductee to the Arena Football League Hall of Fame.  

“I wanted to always play the game with execution, heart and determination.”

For twelve seasons, Cooper did that.

Not bad for an undersized meat packer.