FRISCO, Texas – Each year, hundreds of NFL players showcase causes that are important to them on their cleats for the NFL's My Cause, My Cleats campaign.
On Sunday, players around the league will sport colorful, custom designs on their feet that are usually made by larger companies or long-time artists.
For some Dallas Cowboys players this season though, they'll find a custom cleat designer within their own walls.
Meet Nate Benjamin, the graduate assistant athletic trainer who with an unlikely side gig: doing custom cleat work for the likes of Dak Prescott and other Cowboys players every week.
"Who? Nate?"
Before the 2025 season started for Dallas, Benjamin came into the locker room to deliver a pair of cleats to Sam Williams. The pair had two weeks to make because Benjamin had to hand-place individual gemstones around the entire cleat.
While that happened, Prescott happened to be walking by and caught eye of the glimmer exuding from Williams' cleats.
"I'm like 'Where'd you get those?' and they're like, 'Nate did them.' I'm like, 'Who? Nate?'" Prescott said. "And I actually probably forgot about it at that time until the next time was bringing somebody his cleats."
That came just a couple weeks later, when Benjamin and Prescott crossed paths again.
"I was kind of amazed by the work," Prescott said. "And I asked him 'Where'd you learn?' And he's like 'Hell, I just picked this up.' And I'm like, 'Well, you're doing good. I mean, you want to do some of mine? You can, like, let's do it.' And we started working."
A phone call away
Benjamin, a native of upstate New York, said he "did not have an artistic bone in my body" after middle school. In fact, he also didn't even know what an athletic trainer was until he tore a ligament in his thumb at his second football practice as a walk-on wide receiver at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York.
It was his time in the training room then with Hartwick's current head athletic trainer Heidi Hofbauer-Buzzy that led him to want to be in the profession.
"After that, I was like, 'This is 100% what I want to do. I want to do something medical, something sports, and I think it ties it in really well,'" Benjamin said. "So ever since then, that's all I wanted to do."
Sure enough, it was. Benjamin went on to get his bachelor's in biology/biological sciences at Hartwick, then went to grad school at Delaware where he got his master of science in athletic training, and recently finished a post-graduate certificate in musculoskeletal injury management at the University of Kentucky.
While working full time with the Kentucky football program and also attending class, he went in one day to his boss, Kentucky Executive Assoc Athletics Director for Sports Medicine and Performance Jim Madaleno, and asked him for advice on getting to work in the NFL.
"He didn't say a word," Benjamin said. "He picked up his phone, called the head trainer at the Dolphins. They said, 'We have our guys, call [Saints assistant athletic trainer Bobby Feeback].' Puts his phone down, picks it up, calls Bobby with the Saints, he says 'No, we have our guys. Call the Cowboys.' Calls the Cowboys, talks for two minutes, and then he's like, 'Alright, you should hear from them.' I had an email the same day."
Shortly thereafter, a phone interview was set up for a few days later and after a 10-minute conversation with Cowboys assistant athletic trainer Greg Gaither, he was offered the job. Benjamin then started with the Cowboys in May of 2024, where he began to build relationships with players in the training room as well as find inspiration to pursue a hobby he never imagined would turn out the way it has.
A white pair of Nike cleats
It all started with a pair of white Nike cleats.
Benjamin was gifted them by a Cowboys equipment staff as he prepared to join an intramural flag football team. During his time with the team, he'd seen plenty of custom cleats and thought, "' That's really cool.' Not that I could ever do it, but that's something that I enjoy."
That one pair changed his mind.
"I was like, 'I'm not gonna give these to anybody, so let me just see if I could do it,'" Benjamin said. "Spent two weeks watching YouTube videos, trying to figure it out, figure out the basics. Bought a few things of paint, tried it out. "They were awful. But I really enjoyed it."
One day in the training room, Benjamin was talking with Cowboys safety Donovan Wilson and the topic of custom cleats came up, and Wilson opened the door for Benjamin to customize a pair for him.
"I was like, 'Woah, that's pretty crazy,'" Benjamin said. "So I really went all in."
He bought airbrushes, stencil cutters and all kinds of equipment, sitting down one weekend to create the pair as best as he could for Wilson's liking. At the end, Benjamin called them "the most basic cleats I've ever seen" and "nothing crazy at all," but Wilson was still fired up. So much so, that a big surprise game for Dallas' season opener against the Eagles in September.
"We get to Philadelphia for the first game, and he walks out for the coin toss and I'm like, 'Oh my God, he's got my cleats on right now.'" Benjamin said.
What started as around a $400 invest turned into closer to $1500, and now he's made pairs for plenty of players in the Cowboys locker room. He does it all after working around 12 hours every day in his role as an athletic trainer, then after 20-30 minutes of decompressing when he gets back home, works on cleats for 3-4 hours before sleeping around five hours a night and doing it all over again the next day.
"I think that speaks highly of the type of man that he is," Prescott said. "Just wanting to contribute, but not only that, he's smart, he's young, he's growing and he's doing as much as he can and anything that he can. And also while still being really great at his job as an athletic trainer and using his time off time and his time away from the game to contribute to players swag and to send messages whether it be through cleats or whatever."
When Prescott wore the first pair of cleats that Benjamin designed for him against the Green Bay Packers in Week 4, a pair of Air Jordan 1's customized like a World War II plane in silver, Benjamin knew they needed to be perfect.
"The first emotions that I had when he finally went out, I go out to warmups and he's out there. I'm looking and I'm like, 'God, there better not be any paint that comes off these… please just don't let it come off.'" Benjamin said.
After a quarter or so, that feeling faded away and the reality of what he had accomplished in such a short time really set in.
"'Wow, our franchise quarterback is wearing cleats that I made for him,'" Benjamin said. "Prime time, Sunday night football against the Packers. This is crazy. Thinking back to where I started six, seven months earlier, I was like, 'We came from that, doing an awful pair of cleats for myself to now having Dak Prescott wear my cleats on the field.' It was just crazy."
The favorite pair that Prescott has received from Benjamin came a few weeks later when the Cowboys faced the Broncos in Week 8, a blue low-top pair of blue Jordan 3's that had x-ray images of a foot painted over it as a nod to Halloween, which came five days after the game.
The biggest message yet
With his work is no longer a secret, five Cowboys players and three of Benjamin's co-worker asked Benjamin to design and create their My Cause My Cleats for the 2025 season, which will be worn on Sunday when Dallas takes on the Eagles.
Brandon Aubrey, KaVontae Turpin, Kaiir Elam and Donovan Wilson will all wear a pair of Benjamin's work, and the trust the players have in Benjamin to do the work for causes this important to them is something he doesn't take lightly.
"It was awesome, especially because some of the guys that have asked I haven't even done cleats for, and they asked early. [Turpin and Aubrey], they asked me two months before…" Benjamin said. "There's 70 guys on the team that get My Cause My Cleats. They send them out to companies, different people that do them. I was like, 'These guys don't even know what I can do.'"
"And just because they know me and they trust me, they're going to have me do it for them. And this is a big deal, it's not just custom cleats. It's not just for show. They have a cause they want to represent and they're trusting me to do it for them."
From Elam's perspective, it wouldn't have even matter if he didn't know who Benjamin was.
"Even if I didn't know him, I would admire his work," Elam said. "He uses a different type of paint that doesn't chip after first use, second use. I like his work, he does great designs, and we just build a relationship with me getting treatment in the training room as well."
Benjamin uses Angelus leather paint and liquid kicks finisher to do his work. It's part of a process that begins with sanding each cleat, using acetone to remove any factory finish, and then putting down a coat of adhesion promotor to let the paint stick on the material since cleats usually don't have material that holds paint well.
It's that level of dedication to his craft that entices players like Turpin to go to Benjamin for business, because he's helping them and they want to help right back.
"We don't have to go outside the building looking for guys to do customized cleats and he's right here," Turpin said. "That's a good business for him, so the guys taking care of him. That's good for us too."
The fifth player that asked Benjamin to make cleats for him was Marshawn Kneeland, who tragically passed away on November 6. Benjamin and Kneeland both arrived with the Cowboys on the same day, and the two became very close after spending a lot of time together over the course of the year.
Kneeland came to Benjamin and asked him to make him a pair of cleats for My Cause My Cleats. After Kneeland initially didn't know what cause he wanted to support, he texted Benjamin a few days later and said he wanted it to be centered around mental health. When Benjamin heard the news of Kneeland's passing, he knew he wanted to do something special with the pair.
"My first thought was I can't let anybody get these cleats," Benjamin said. "These need to be in my possession so that we can figure out what we can do to honor him."
When the team got back together for the first time after Kneeland's passing in person, Benjamin showed head coach Brian Schottenheimer the pair and said if there was anything he'd want to do with them, to let him know. Schottenheimer was completely on board, the two shared a nice moment, and are now coming up with a way to appropriately honor Kneeland with the cleats.
A strong support system
Benjamin credited a large reason why he was able to invest in the work he does with his cleats was his bosses. He works with head athletic trainer Jim Maurer, director of rehabilitation Britt Brown and assistant athletic trainers Greg Gaither, Justin Howe and Hanson Yang.
"My bosses are super supportive of it even if it is a huge time commitment outside of work," Benjamin said. "They get excited with me when I show them a new project that I'm working on, which is a huge part of the reason why I wanted to make them pairs for My Cause My Cleats."
So along with the five players on the field, Maurer, Yang and Cowboys director of sports performance Scott Sehnert will all sport custom pairs that Benjamin designed on Sunday.
He's also made his own pair of My Cause My Cleats, dedicated to one of his close friends Ben Christman. Christman was an offensive lineman at the University of Kentucky when Benjamin was working there, and the two spent just about every day together.
Shortly after Benjmain left, Christman passed away in his sleep from a heart condition. On Sunday, Benjamin will wear a pair of cleats dedicated to the Revere School Fund in his honor and then send the pair to Christman's parents, who worked with him on the design, to decide what to do with them from there.
All in all, what began as just something Benjamin found "cool" has now turned into a hobby and a business, which has grown to allow him to do meaningful work for himself, his co-workers, and Dallas Cowboys players.
