Who the Heck Are the Columbus Cooligans Anyway?

What a time to be a Crew fan, eh? 5-1?? WOW. This team somehow keeps finding ways to surprise and delight.

We could keep going with superlatives for this entire newsletter, but the main order of business awaits. So settle down in the stands and grab a coffee, a cuppa, or a cold one because it's time to meet the jerk behind the curtain, the captain of this fine ship we call Columbus Cooligans …

The name’s Justin. You may or may not know me from my time at the sadly now-defunct Columbus Alive, where I was editor-in-chief for ~3 years.

That was a lifetime ago, so for those who haven't yet stumbled across my scribblings, here's the lowdown.

In the early 2000s, I started blogging about the Crew for ESPNFC (back when it was called Soccernet). I didn’t get famous or anything but did get panned by the infamous Bill Archer on BigSoccer.

My Crew baptism by fire.

Later, I wrote the 614 Magazine cover story, “Cult of Crew,” where I chronicled the rise of the rabid Crew culture we know today, alongside the birth of the Hudson Street Hooligans bar on Summit (RIP).

At Columbus Alive, I wrote dozens of columns on the Crew — and edited many more by Chris DeVille — but I’m most proud of our collaboration with Massive City FFC and JR Bell

Together, we created the “HOME” cover story illustration for our USMNT World Cup Qualifier coverage. The cover image ended up on ESPN, a tifo, and Jon Miller’s back.

Massive City and I also worked together to reimagine a new Crew crest. Or, well, 28 of them. Another one of the most-memorable parts of my career.

Still, I consider myself a Crew fan more than a Crew journalist. I started writing about the Crew all those years ago largely out of desperation to connect with other Crew fans.

Even when I covered the Crew for Alive, I spent more time in the Nordecke than the press box (much to the Crew press team’s chagrin).

I’ve practically breathed the sport since I could chase a ball. My childhood bedroom walls were collaged with cutouts from Eurosport catalogs. I’ve had the pineapple haircut and the McBride.

I played year-round, as often as possible. On football fields, tennis courts, basketball courts, my yard, my driveway, my bedroom walls.

I was no Appalachian Adu but I wasn’t bad. I was all-league and all-district in high school and even took my talents to the banks of the Muskingum and Ohio rivers to play for Marietta College.

As for the Crew, I've been obsessed since the first game in the Shoe in 1996 and have been a proud Nordecke STM nearly every year I’ve lived here. (These days you'll most often find me in the Nordecke’s Upper West Side. Say hi!)

After all this time, I still get chills watching Crew games. I still spend days after a victory buzzing, intoxicated — especially these days under Nancy and in an always-packed Nordecke in a beautiful new stadium.

It's been good times, yeah?

So, why this fanzine?

For one, there's never been a better time to be a Crew fan, and that gives me the itch to write. I’m also just as eager to connect with other Crew fans as I’ve always been.

And finally, I’ve long loved soccer fanzines, especially those from the 1980s and 1990s, and have always wanted to do something similar here — to contribute to the culture, not just cover it, and to do so with an independent spirit, not from the press box or behind a journalist’s desk.

While I don’t have many ambitions for CREWZINE!, I do know the types of stories I want to tell, and I’m stoked to tell them because they’re stories I’ve long wanted to read.

Most of all, though, I hope CREWZINE! is fun to read, that you look forward to its arrival in your inbox at least twice a month.

I also hope I’m not alone, that other Crew fans join in and contribute, that the Columbus Cooligans truly earns the plurality in its name.

I’d love to get pitches on just about anything — except for game coverage. (There’s enough of that already.)

I’d especially love:

• Personal essays on your most memorable or first game, or the crew you Crew with

• Nor-on-Tour photo diaries

• Art, comics, memes, crafts

• Behind the scenes features on tifos

• Food & drink reviews at LDCF

• Crew oddities, gameday rituals, collections, tattoos, pets

If interested, please email ideas to [email protected].

And please, let me know what you think, especially as more pieces come out. I’m itching to release the next few already.

Thanks so much for reading!

Your pals,

Columbus Cooligans

PS If you want to support CREWZINE! further, please subscribe and share.