Popular ‘Call Her Daddy’ podcast host Alex Cooper claims she was sexually harassed during her time playing soccer at Boston University more than a decade earlier.
The culprit, according to Cooper’s new Hulu documentary, was the school’s long-time former coach, Nancy Feldman.
‘I felt a lot of anger—anger at my coach, anger at my school, and anger at the system that allowed this to happen,’ Cooper said in the Hulu documentary, as quoted by Vanity Fair. ‘I don’t think anyone could’ve prepared me for the lasting effects that came from this experience. She turned something that I loved so much into something extremely painful.’
Cooper’s allegations of unwanted attention and invasive questions are corroborated by her former dormmate and teammate Alex Schlobohm. What’s more, Cooper further claimed she went to school officials about Feldman’s behavior, only to have her concerns dismissed.
Daily Mail has reached out to Boston University officials and Nancy Feldman for comment, as did Vanity Fair. Neither BU nor Feldman has issued a response to the claim.
‘It was this psychotic game of, ‘You wanna play? Tell me about your sex life. I have to drive you to your night class, get in the car with me alone,’ Cooper claimed in the film, Call Her Alex.
Popular ‘Call Her Daddy’ podcast host Alex Cooper claims she was sexually harassed by a head coach during her time playing soccer at Boston University a decade earlier
‘I started trying to spend as little time as possible with her. Taking different routes to practice where I knew I wouldn’t run into her, during meetings, I would try to sit as far away from her as possible. Literally anything to not be alone with this woman.’
Sometimes Feldman would pull Cooper in to sit next to her on the couch, the podcaster claimed, adding that the coach would often stare at her or place a hand on her thigh.
Fearful of Feldman’s power over her own scholarship, Cooper contacted attorneys who warned her of the potential consequences of taking legal action.
‘If I’m gonna be real with you, they will drag this on for years and this will be your life,’ Cooper quoted the attorneys in the film.
Eventually Cooper approached university staff about the problem.
‘I want to play my senior year,’ she said, recalling the conversation. ‘I want to finish out what I worked my entire life for, but I can’t play for this woman. They said, ‘We’re not gonna fire her, but you can keep your entire scholarship and that’s that.’ No investigation. Within five minutes, they had entirely dismissed everything I had been through.’
Alex Cooper, owner of Unwell Hydration (L) and Jessica Berman, commissioner of the NWSL (R) pose for a photo prior to the NWSL the NWSL match between Bay FC and Angel City FC
This is not the first time Cooper has referenced the alleged harassment. She told The Athletic in 2022 that she planned to talk about it after she was ‘healed.’
‘I’ll talk about it one day,’ Cooper said. ‘I had a traumatic experience happen in college with regard to soccer. It made me a stronger person. So, learning the tools of competitiveness, resilience, having to gain confidence in yourself. Although it was hard in the moment, that does translate to who I am today as the host of ‘Call Her Daddy.’
These days Cooper is a media titan after starting her podcasting career at Barstool Sports and moving on to Spotify with a three-year, $60 million deal in 2021.
Feldman coached the BU Terriers since 1995, when the school first adopted women’s soccer as a varsity sport, until 2022. Over that time, she guided the Terriers to 14 NCAA Tournament appearances, 13 conference titles and was twice named NSCAA Coach of the Year.
