Does CCU have more fun than any other college football team in the country? Perhaps so
“Imagine not being the Chants. We can’t.”
That post is pinned to the top of the Coastal Carolina University athletics Twitter page, and its message emanates from the football team’s combination of success and shenanigans in 2020 that is carrying over to the 2021 season.
“One thing the Chants know how to do is have fun,” said sixth-year senior linebacker Silas Kelly.
The Chanticleers have to have as much fun as any college football team in the nation, and they have adopted and promoted the revelrous image, going as far as referring to themselves as “America’s Team.”
The country has taken notice.
ESPN and other national media outlets have highlighted some of the hijinx, and last month The Athletic ran a story profiling the program with the headline: “Coastal Carolina — college football’s ‘fun team’ — showing no signs of slowing down.”
The examples of CCU football merriment, playfulness and tomfoolery over the past year are abundant.
▪ First off, the team displays its collective fun-loving character through head and facial hair. It might have a claim to having the most mullets of any team in the nation.
Some of the more glorious manes belong to long snapper C.J. Schrimpf, quarterback Grayson McCall and linebackers Teddy Gallagher and Kelly, who made a social media pitch to Head & Shoulders shampoo once players were permitted to begin benefiting from their name, image and likeness last month.
Head coach Jamey Chadwell has joined in with flowing locks as a result of a bet/promise he had with his players.
“I think it was Game 4 or 5 and one of them said, ‘Hey, will you grow a mullet if we win the Sun Belt?’ Of course I had no faith in them so I said, ‘Heck, yeah, whatever,’ ” Chadwell joked Tuesday, the eve of CCU’s first fall practice. “So I’ve got the mullet and it’s flowing pretty good right now. I tried to get out of it this summer and they wouldn’t let me. They said if I get out of it I have to get earrings or a tattoo, so I kept the mullet.
“Hopefully we keep winning and it will keep growing long.”
Once a game with BYU on Dec. 5 was quickly organized mid-week after Liberty had to cancel a scheduled game at Brooks Stadium due to COVID issues, the Chants embraced and promoted “Mormons vs. Mullets” T-shirts that were created and distributed by Coastal student Taylor Diveley.
Chadwell arrived at CCU’s first practice Wednesday with a mustache to go along with his mullet, the result of a fall camp ’stache contest between the coaches.
▪ CCU celebrates each victory uniquely and zealously.
Chadwell assigns a different assistant coach each game the responsibility of creating a trophy and postgame locker room celebration that is specific to the opponent.
The Chants, for instance, took a sledgehammer to a “Rock Chalk Jayhawk” rock following a win over Kansas.
But by far the most choreographed, elaborate and wild celebration came last year after a win over Georgia Southern, whose coach Chad Lunsford has been known to celebrate wins by dropping a “People’s Elbow” wrestling move on a folding chair.
So the Chants staged a WWE-like wrestling production featuring a staff member in a shabby version of the GSU Eagles mascot outfit.
It included a referee, ring bell and a pair of wrestlers (strength staff members) attacking the mascot, including one in a singlet sailing airborne off the top rung of a stepladder onto the mascot, which was being held on a broken table.
The mascot is then submitted in a back-breaker hold and the wrestler rips open two bottles of water and pours them over his face in the raucous locker room, reminiscent of Stone Cold Steve Austin’s celebrations with beer cans.
A video of the scene was posted on Kelly’s Twitter page and went viral.
The players learn in team meetings the week of the game what the trophy and celebration will be, but they only get to experience it if they win.
And there was a lot of celebrating last year, as the Chants went 11-1 overall and 8-0 in the Sun Belt and were ranked No. 14 in the final AP Top 25 Poll.
But many potentially entertaining locker room hullabaloos went unrealized in Chadwell’s first season as head coach in 2019 when the Chants went 5-7.
“We tried to have the same fun in ’19 but you just didn’t see it as much because we didn’t win as much,” Chadwell said.
Chadwell had a new celebratory fight song created that the team chants in the locker room following wins, as well.
▪ As the locker room celebrations show, the Chanticleers aren’t averse to props.
The Game of Thrones Turnover Cloak was introduced in 2019. The black cape has patches of fur on the shoulders and is modeled after the cloak worn by Jon Snow, formerly King in the North and heir to the iron throne in HBO’s “Game of Thrones” series.
It is given to a defensive player who has just recovered a turnover in the midst of reveling teammates on the sideline.
The cloak was the idea of strength coach Chad Scott and another staff member, and was made by defensive coordinator Chad Staggs’ wife Kelli. It goes along with CCU’s defensive nickname “Black Storm.”
FOCO released a bobblehead in December featuring Chauncey The Chanticleer wearing the Turnover Cloak with a sword.
▪ Kelly and Gallagher had a playful back and forth with Pat McAfee after the ESPN analyst and show host picked Arkansas State to cover a 3.5-point spread in early October and the Chants beat the Red Wolves by 29.
In an on-field video shot after the game and posted on Gallagher’s twitter page, they scolded McAfee for picking against them and for mispronouncing “Chants” on air. Gallagher wrote “Hey Clown aka Pat... I heard you didn’t believe in the Chants. How’d that work out for you?”
McAfee responded: “I didn’t know that humans like you 2 existed on the CHANTS roster. If I knew those mullets were flying around on that teal field, we all know I would’ve swung that hammer DAHN on the Myrtle Beach savages. That’s on me. I apologize.”
In admonishing McAfee on the Chants’ pronunciation, Kelly erred by saying “that’s how it’s produced” instead of “that’s how it’s pronounced.” They eschewed another take to correct the gaffe, and “That’s How It’s Produced” took on a life of its own and became a catch phrase that was featured on T-shirts and referenced throughout the season on social media.
The banter continued with McAfee, who wore a CCU shirt that was sent to him, and other analysts who picked against CCU as the season progressed.
CCU’s social media banter involved fans and players from opposing teams throughout the season and offseason as well.
▪ CCU branded itself America’s team midway through the season after a number of its games were on national TV and Chadwell had a heavy weekly schedule of national media interviews. The Chants included the hashtag #AmericasTeam in most social media posts.
There are player nicknames as well, as Kelly has been branded the “Sheriff” and Gallagher is the “Mayor.”
▪ When Scott, officially Coastal’s director of football speed, strength and conditioning, was named the 2020 FootballScoop Strength & Conditioning Coach of the Year in June, the Chants couldn’t celebrate in a normal fashion.
They carried and tossed Scott into an ice pool, and he reacted by jumping up, flexing, screaming and leading the players in chants of “Chants! Chants! Chants!” The episode was posted on social media by Gallagher.
Who’s to blame ... um, responsible?
The coaching style of Chadwell and his staff, and the personality of the team’s current leaders, are each partially responsible for the culture and atmosphere in Conway.
“I do think we have some unique personalities who enjoy playing and enjoy themselves, and I’ve never been one to try to squash personalities,” Chadwell said. “But also we put a lot of work in, and I think what you don’t see when you see the fun is what they do behind the scenes to allow that fun to happen. There’s fun in winning.
“Part of what we’re about from a coaching standpoint is we’re going to reward hard work, and part of rewarding hard work is having fun and enjoying it. But having fun means you have strong relationships among each other, you enjoy being around each other. ... When you invest in something and believe in something and have a shared interest in that, and you’ve all sacrificed for something to happen like that, when it’s time to celebrate you let it out.”
Chadwell was hired from Charleston Southern to be CCU’s offensive coordinator and associate head coach prior to the 2017 season and became interim coach for that entire season when then-coach Joe Moglia took a medical sabbatical. The team went 3-9 in the midst of a transition from FCS to FBS. Chadwell took over in 2019 when Moglia stepped down to focus on administration following a 5-7 season in 2018.
Moglia gave the team a mixture of freedom and accountability in his own way with his Be A Man (BAM) philosophy, but Chadwell made some changes to the staff and policies, and added things geared to be fun including the game-by-game trophies.
“I feel Chadwell brought that in with him,” sixth-year offensive lineman Trey Carter said..” It took a while to integrate into this program, we had our growing pains and stuff like that. But he’s always been about wanting to have fun and winning and having fun while you’re doing it.”
The players know hard work and winning are required for much of the fun, and the Chants do believe they have more fun than any other team.
“We’re not like the New England Patriots. We’re the fun team,” Carter said. “We like to have fun but we’re going to win while we’re doing it too. It’s not fun if you lose. There’s none of the stage dives and stuff like that if you lose. ... Everything we do is different than a lot of programs that I’ve heard from, just the way we approach things and the way we approach certain obstacles.”
Kelly said the culture that facilitates the fun is based on the team’s brotherhood.
“It’s fun to work hard for people that you love and I love all my teammates and every one of my teammates loves each other,” he said. “That’s kind of the culture that we’ve built.”
The team’s brotherhood is promoted and policed by its experienced leaders.
“In a lot of programs there are going to be little cliques on the team and stuff like that,” Carter said. “Here there’s not a teammate that has bad blood with other teammates. We make sure we kill that in the locker room. ... We respect each other and I think that’s what separates us.”
That, and all the resulting fun.
This story was originally published August 4, 2021 at 2:23 PM.
