Nice Kicks: Shifting towards your personal kicks, how many sneakers do you own within your collection?
DeAngelo Hall: Oh man, I can’t even count it. I have boxes, on boxes, on boxes of shoes. I have houses in Atlanta and Virginia and both closets are at capacity. My wife has been urging me to get a lot of them out of there. Sometimes I’ll just have a giveaway and invite some of the homies over and give them some shoes I haven’t touched in a while.
Nice Kicks: Do you remember the shoe that got everything started and made you fall in love with sneakers?
DeAngelo Hall: Air Jordans did it for me as far as building my passion for sneaks, but we rocked it all. I remember when Kobe was first with adidas I had those. I had the old Iversons, I rocked the Air Force Ones, I even rocked the old Filas with the strap.
Nice Kicks: What’s currently in your sneaker rotation?
DeAngelo Hall: I’m such a Kobe fan that I’m always rocking Kobes in each and every colorway. I’m also a huge KD fan, so those are probably my top two shoes at the moment. They’re both so easy to get on and they’re both so comfortable on your feet– you can wear them all day. I have almost every color of each shoe.
Nice Kicks: I saw that you reached out to Kevin Durant about potentially getting a KD cleat. What’s the status on that?
DeAngelo Hall: Yeah, back in the day the S. Carters were everywhere and everybody had them. I remember going to a Pro Bowl and seeing Roy Williams, who was a safety for Dallas, wearing a pair of the S. Dots as cleats. Through his connection with Kelly Rowland, he had Jay Z send me a pair and they were already hot as a casual shoe but to turn them into cleats, I was just like, “Maaaannn.” But with Kevin being the guy at Nike right now, I know that if [Reebok] can put cleats on the S. Carters, then [Nike] can put cleats on the bottom of some KDs. I’ve just got to get through to the right people and make that happen. I definitely would love to rock the KD cleat. He’s a huge Redskin fan being from the DC area. In fact, he was out there on Sunday. I ran out of the locker room so fast that I didn’t get a chance to run up on him and talk to him about it, but I’m definitely going to hit him up soon and try to make that happen.
Nice Kicks: Lastly, what can we expect from you going forwards as far as cleats on the field?
DeAngelo Hall: To continue to bring some hotness to the field. With me being a DB, obviously I believe in the mantra that if you look good, you play good. So, I’m always trying to look fly as possible and bring variation. I want to give each sneaker artist that I work with a chance to put something hot together. I try not to put too much pressure on them or put any limitations on them. I let the artist do what they do and hopefully I get a chance to rock them in a game. At some point I might end up auctioning them off, but for right now I’m wearing them to put ’em up.
You know, I don’t know why football players don’t get the same respect as far as having their own shoes, but there is definitely a market out there for it and hopefully this will be the start to some crazy things. Some crazy, big things.
Keep up with DeAngelo Hall on Instagram and Twitter. Tune into Gridiron Kicks every week for more coverage of custom cleats.
