Meet the Trolls

The "pundits" get some things right. Here's what they say about the Cold, Hard Football Facts:   CHFF dominates the mainstream media at the Pro Football Writers of America annual writing awards in both 2009 and again in 2010. Our moms are so proud!   "Brilliant sports journalism" – Ben Maller, Fox Sports Radio Network   "Guys like (CHFF publisher Kerry J. Byrne) are smart about football and they think about football." – Peter King, Sports Illustrated

"A potty-mouthed new media trailblazer" – David Scott, Boston Sports Review

"We get a lot of ideas from CHFF" – Steve Sabol, NFL Films

"The most amusing thing I've read about sports ... in the 21st century" – King Kaufman, Salon.com

"A must-read website for pigskin folk" – Bob Ryan, The Boston Globe   "I'm a CHFF-oholic" – Bill Livingston, Cleveland Plain-Dealer

"The Cold, Hard Football Facts is an addiction" – Gerry V., WRNO, New Orleans

"Stout-hearted geniuses" – Dan Shanoff of "Daily Quickie" fame and DanShanoff.com

"Cutting-edge analysis" – Allen Barra, The Wall Street Journal

"(The Cold, Hard Football Facts are) hard working and harder drinking" – Rich Garven, Worcester (Mass.) Telegram & Gazette

"Refreshingly intelligent football analysis" – John Gonzalez, Boston Magazine

"An awesome site" – Chick Ludwig, Dayton Daily News   "Your site and your people do a great job" – Adam Schefter (left), ESPN

"Whack jobs!" – Tom Curran, NBC Sports.com

"The best NFL site in the world" – DarkPartyReview.com

"An awesome website!" – Homer True, ESPN Milwaukee   See the Cold, Hard Football Facts on SI.com here   See the Cold, Hard Football Facts on Boston's WEEI.com here

See the CHFF-Esquire magazine tailgate here

See our beloved Bonzo the Idiot Monkey in the Wall Street Journal and our most recent Wall Street Journal interview (April 26, 2008) here.

Also read some nifty interviews with Potentate of Pigskin Kerry J. Byrne here and here for some behind-the-scenes info on the evolution of CHFF.   ***   The Cold, Hard Football Facts are an omniscient, all-powerful gridiron guru and emotionless arbiter of all things pigskin. We planted our flag on Planet Pigskin in September 2004 and since then we have rumbled over hacks, "pundits" and opinions with reckless, unrelenting and fact-filled impunity in our M1A1 Abrams Tank of Truth.   Six months after the creation of CHFF, sports fans at BostonSportsMedia.com named us the No. 1 sports site on the Web. The site earned the same honor again in 2006. Also in 2006, sports fans at Football Outsiders.com named Cold, Hard Football Facts.com the No. 2 independent football site on the Web. Our unconquerable stories are built upon the bedrock of numbers, data and analysis and not upon rickety stilts of opinion stuck into the sucking, muddy morass of rumor and innuendo.   Cold, Hard Football Facts writers have no shame. We make up for it by having no pride, either.  

YOUR CHFF TROLLS:   KERRY J. BYRNE Our Potentate of Pigskin created the revolutionary Cold, Hard Football Facts concept and is the nation's foremost authority on the "gridiron lifestyle" of beer, food & football. He's also food and drinks writer for The Boston Herald and has spent much of his "career" traveling around the beer-making capitals of the U.S. and Europe while writing for Esquire, Yankee Magazine, Penthouse (yes, that Penthouse), America Online, Epicurious.com, Boston Magazine, All About Beer and many other newspapers and magazines, most of them highly disreputable.   Kerry took first-place honors in the Pro Football Writers of America 2007 writing awards and swept the floor with the "pundits" in the PFWA writing awards in 2009 and again in 2010. He was twice named North American "Beer Writer of the Year" at the Great American Beer Festival (2000 and 2001) back in his sudsy "professional" beer-drinking days.   He's also a two-time winner of the Quincy Hi Sckool Spelin' B (1986 and 1987).   When he's not ruthlessly crushing misguided gridiron opinions, he marches around the ColdHardFootballFacts.com cardboard-box world headquarters singing the Notre Dame fight song, creates exciting new tailgate recipes and cleans his Ruger 30.06. His hobbies include crying at the end of "Rudy," admiring the stats he kept from his 1984 Strat-O-Matic football season and driving around Harvard Square blasting Toby Keith CDs from the speakers of the PIGSKIN Ford pick-up.
 

TODD C. DEVRIES Our Potentate of Pigskin met DeVries during the annual CHFF road trip to State College. Amidst a tailgate of equal parts 1) Yuengling Lager-slugging and 2) co-ed gawking, Todd convinced the Chief Troll it was time his mighty Cold, Hard Football Facts dabble in the college game. A true college football geek, DeVries founded a website of the same name in 2008 (CollegeFootballGeek.com). 
 
Via this platform, he blazed a trail as the pioneer of on-line college fantasy football strategy and advice. Showing no bias in covering all 120 FBS schools, DeVries can proudly rattle off the two-deep of Utah State just as easily as Ohio State – a feat both impressive and incredibly pathetic. He currently resides in Central Pennsylvania with his football-crazed wife and 8-year old twins. 

FRANKIE C. CHFF bon vivant Frankie C. is a former U.S. Marine turned cubicle-bound corporate worker ant who re-captures the thrill of amphivious invasions of Third-World sh*thholes through the thrill of competitive karaoke. His greatest accomplishments include an honorable mention in the 1981 Quincy Public Schools art show and a victory in the 2002 Red Parrot pub karaoke championship. Frankie wants everyone to like him not for his achievements, but for his marginal looks and borderline song and dance skills. His "Frankie Five" feature was recently named one of the 10 million most influential internet colums of the past 25 years. And, for the record, Frankie C. has never participated in an amphibious invasion of anything more daunting than his bathtub.  

TONY COCCO One of the oldest and fattest of the Trolls, Cocco's claim to fame is that he lived in South Florida in the 1990s, where he survived Hurricane Andrew. But he lived only because he fled his Coral Gables home like a coward and headed for the nearest shelter he could find: a cardboard box under the local Metro Rail station. He liked the cardboard-box experience so much that a gig with the Cold, Hard Football Facts was a natural career regression. Tony has a journalism degree from the State University of New York and has written for several publications, covering both sports and politics. Like most Trolls, he remains unmarried and unappealing to women, but someday he hopes to have enough money to purchase a lovely young Russian bride and bring her to live with him in his cardboard-box kingdom.  

WILLIAM BERRY Better known as castlelong1 to the CHFF Forum crowd, Berry occasionally shoots us the wonderful videos and links to other sites you see here on our crappy little site. Often accused of being racist because he's such a douche, Berry wants you all to know that he's not a racist and that he hates everyone equally regardless of race, color, or creed. He hopes you are f'in happy. He's also our token ADA contributor. He suffers from a rare degenerative disease, which explains his sometimes misspelled rants in the CHFF Forum. He says, "If an idiot like you cares, I live in New Bedford, Massachusetts.  I'm 42.  Now go and be a good little moron and bother somebody else."