Taylor Lewan and Will Compton went looking for a new sport to fill the summer. They picked the loudest one on the calendar.
NASCAR and Bussin' With The Boys announced Wednesday morning that the two NFL veterans are launching "Racin' With The Boys," a weekly show built on the same blueprint as their wildly popular football podcast. And here's the thing — they didn't do it alone. Peyton Manning's Omaha Productions, the shop behind the Manningcast, developed the series and is running production. That's a big-time partner, folks.
Here's how it works. Fourteen episodes, dropping on Thursdays all summer long, starting May 28. They'll live on the Bussin' With The Boys YouTube channel in their own "Racin' With The Boys" playlist, so you won't have to dig for them. And the debut comes out swinging: Ryan Blaney and Bubba Wallace, two of the most recognizable names in the garage, ride shotgun for episode one.
Lewan, never one to undersell a bit, laid out the mission in plain terms. "Now that the NFL Draft has passed, we have a lot of time until next football season, so we were in search of a new sport to follow," he said. "We've decided to make NASCAR our summer vacation hobby, and learn everything we can in the shortest amount of time possible."
Compton kept it simpler. "Whatever The Boys do… we're all in," he said. "Racin' With The Boys is no different. So, we're going to be fully immersed, and get as involved as possible with all parts of the NASCAR world."
Now, you might wonder why NASCAR would hand its summer to two football guys learning the sport on the fly. That's exactly the point.
"We're not trying to make NASCAR fit into someone else's box—we're letting Taylor and Will explore it their way," said Tim Clark, NASCAR's executive vice president and chief brand officer. "That's where the fun is, and honestly, that's how you reach people who might not have given the sport a shot before."
That last line is the whole ballgame. The sport doesn't need to convince the diehards — they're already here, every Sunday. The trick is the casual fan, the football guy, the person who has never sat through a green-flag run but might watch two funny dudes figure it out in real time. Creator-driven content has become the front porch of this sport, and NASCAR knows it. It's the same instinct that put a rotation of Cup drivers in The CW's O'Reilly Series booth this spring — go where the audience already is.
The Boys aren't filming from a studio and calling it a day, either. Lewan and Compton will be at the Cracker Barrel 400 at Nashville Superspeedway on Sunday, May 31 — shooting content, meeting fans, and getting in the way of as many drivers and crew members as they can find. That's the part I'd buy a ticket for.
Look, plenty of celebrities have parachuted into this sport for a weekend, smiled for the cameras, and disappeared. This feels different. Fourteen episodes is a commitment. Omaha Productions doesn't slap its name on throwaways. And the timing is no accident — the show launches the Thursday after the Coca-Cola 600, right when the sport has the whole sporting world's attention.
The Boys went looking for a summer hobby. NASCAR just made sure they found a season.