Skip to main content
Join Now
Get a profile. Be recruited.

Coffeetown Reunion: Humble Beginnings in 2019

Wes_Blankenshipby: Wes Blankenship12/14/21Wes_nship
coffeetown-football-reunion-humble-beginnings-2019
Photo by Tim Warner/Getty Images

People ask me every now and then how an idea like Coffeetown football presented itself.

“Just take your radio dial for a spin on a fall Friday night,” I usually tell them. “You’ll understand.”

The crackle of a poor AM signal, clinging onto your car’s antenna for dear life

An announcer having a spiritual experience over his home team’s three-yard pickup at left guard.

That same announcer eating his mic, as his voice falls flat, when the rival team picks up a first down.

Advertising reads for seemingly every down, distance, yard marker and pylon. The plays on words in these spots feature some of the finest marketing in America.

An obligatory halftime spotlight on the “academic accomplishments” of the team’s star player, that still ends up being more about ball than learnin’.

This is the language that many Americans hear through their car speakers on Friday nights, if they aren’t at the game themselves. It’s a language that only a few, passionate souls speak.

Even if you don’t speak it yourself, you immediately understand it when you hear it

I heard this language growing up in Georgia, and briefly lived it as a high school football player. It was a lifeline for me professionally, as I worked in local TV news covering those games all over the state.

Each TV station has a small army that deploys to games of interest around its specific market on Friday nights

Some games are 15 minutes from the station. Some feel like 15  hours.

When I filmed enough action to fill a 45-second highlight on our 11pm news, I’d hop in my WMAZ or WXIA news vehicle before halftime, and tune in to the game I was just filming. (It was important to keep a gauge on any updates to the score, because you couldn’t always count on the crew in the booth to share it with you.)

That’s when I’d hear radio gold, like this: 

After hearing enough of these calls, I knew that this part of our lives was worthy of a comedic routine, by someone, someday. One of the many comedians I admire was actually a journalist, columnist and author before becoming a ‘humorist.’ His name was Lewis Grizzard.

I had the disillusioned thought, every now and then, that I might want to pursue a similar path one day

And I knew that if this alternate reality ever presented itself to me, that this universe of high school football radio calls would be part of my respectful, observational, comedic commentary.

In 2019, out of the local news business and with nothing to lose, I got that opportunity to bring my vision to life. It wasn’t on a stage doing a standup routine. It was through a new app I’d been experimenting with called TikTok, which allowed me to improvise one-liners, high school football names, and made-up ad reads.

I had my headphones on after a workout in the LA Fitness parking lot. There was a cup of Jittery Joe’s coffee in my car’s cupholder. I think that’s where ‘Coffeetown’ came from, but I honestly don’t remember consciously connecting those dots.

I did know it would make for a great spitter between plays of this first “broadcast,” vs. Mulchwood.

That first video got enough response from people I respected, and from high school football radio announcers that I didn’t even know, that I felt dangerously empowered to continue this Coffeetown journey.

This world and characters began to take on a life of their own. People asked me when I’d make another one.

“Who’s Coffeetown got this week? Is Donnie Chuggs’ collarbone OK?”

Others made fake twitter accounts for Nacho Davis and the Chuggs brothers. I still don’t know who those people are, but they weren’t me. This little idea was getting crazier than I could have imagined.

Then, Coffeetown made it to cable. Ryan McGee asked if ‘Marty and McGee’ could use a clip on the SEC Network, and an entirely new audience met Coffeetown. I didn’t have much of a plan to keep making many more.

After this, there was no turning back.

A clip on the SEC Network. Justin Moore. The ‘Marty and McGee’ show. What began as a TikTok in my car quickly started attracting its own, in-on-the-joke, Coffeetown football community.

People who knew the language when they heard it. People not just in the south, as my Twitter caption read on every Coffeetown football ‘broadcast.’

I heard from people all over the U.S.

This was an institution in their lives, whether they sought it out or not.

The weekend of the 2019 Texas A&M – Georgia game gave me an unforgettable opportunity to take this little act onto the set of ‘Marty and McGee.’

I didn’t know for sure if I was going to be on the show that day, but they tapped me in with a couple minutes of airtime to spare.

At this point, I’d created a fictional school, with fictional characters and fictional ad reads. But I still can’t drum up a string of words that capture the feeling I had that rainy day in Athens.

It wasn’t about being on TV. I’d done that before. It was about the realization of this crazy idea. Someone even stopped me in Sanford Stadium at halftime of that A&M game to tell me Donnie Chuggs got robbed. Coffeetown football wasn’t real, but it was real fun to be in on the joke.

That validation doesn’t happen without people on both sides of the microphone on Friday nights across the country.

There is no Coffeetown football without that feedback. I wouldn’t have made a second video without it, and I definitely wouldn’t have made a second “season.”

I thought 2019 was a whirlwind. There was no way 2020 could be more unpredictable than that, right?

More on that in Part II – the 2020 Coffeetown Reunion.