2 NFL Players Amongst Missing Boaters in Florida

A Coast Guard search got underway on Sunday looking for four football players whose fishing boat disappeared off the coast of Florida on Saturday. The boating group included two professional NFL football players - Detroit Lions free agent Corey Smith, 29, and Oakland Raiders linebacker Victor ("Marquis") Cooper, 26.

Nick Schuyler and William Bleakley, former University of South Florida football players, were also on board Cooper's boat.

A friend of the players notified the Coast Guard around 1:30am Sunday to report that the boat had not returned to harbor at dusk, as had been expected. The men set out on the boating excursion at 6:30am Saturday from Clearwater Pass in an 21-foot Everglades boat.

At the time, the skies were fair. However forecasters were warning of bad weather heading into the Gulf of Mexico. The Coast Guard said that they had not received a distress call.

The search began at 2:00am. The Coast Guard deployed a 47-foot lifeboat, a C-130 Hercules fixed-wing aircraft, an HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter, and the Coast Guard Cutter Crocodile. The search covered about 750 square miles of choppy ocean water.

A Coast Guard spokesperson said:

"The whitecaps make it hard to spot the vessel, which is only 21 feet. sWe are continuing our search efforts with all the air and water assets we have. We can't speculate on when we will end the search."

Cooper played with the Raiders as a linebacker in 2008, and with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2004 and 2005. Smith was a defensive end with the Lions last year, and played with the Buccaneers from 2002 to 2004. He became an unrestricted free agent on Friday.