NC comedian talks do's and don'ts of college fandom and how NC State gave him a chance
Jon Reep is a proud NC State supporter and faced his share of licks from rival fans growing up in Hickory. He even saw it in Los Angeles, where he spent years building a career in comedy.
So naturally, he's dishing it back out lately with the Wolfpack's return to prominence in reaching their first Final Four in 41 years.
State fans may have seen him on Instagram posting celebratory videos and getting into pre-game trash talking during their run through the ACC and NCAA tournaments. He says he's a football guy first, but remembers going to basketball games at Reynolds Coliseum and seeing Jim Valvano's last speech there.
When it came time for post-secondary education, Reep said he spent some time at Catawba Valley Community College and took general courses without much of a plan. Then State gave him a chance through an adult education program.
"I was brainwashed as a kid," Reep said. "My mom's side of the family all loved Carolina. It was all Carolina all the time. I recently asked my mom, 'Did we have anybody that went there?' No, no, it's just what it was. And so I didn't realize it because I was growing up in it. I had to get out of it. And once I got out of it and looked around like, oh."
"The people who I like, the people who are more like me are the ones that go to NC State," he said.
In a recent project, Reep crafted an unofficial rule book on college fandom he's calling "rules and regulations on rooting in collegiate athletics." It's a detailed list of terms and conditions conceived on a flight to Denver. Reep said the list was built on a lifetime of trading barbs with UNC fans. Although he admits he wasn't a dedicated student growing up, he did graduate from NC State, giving him some credence in the fandom hierarchy, according to his list.
"The ones who talk the most trash are the ones that didn't even go to the school. So it would bother me. I would be out in public somewhere in Hickory with an NC State hat on and someone would come up to go 'boo, NC State. Y'all were horrible, man. You should root for Carolina.' And then I go, 'oh, you went to Carolina? When did you graduate?'"
The list of prerequisites includes categories such as jurisdiction and territory, proper pronoun usage and a law of "being true to your school." The complete list is on his Facebook page.
Reep cut his teeth at Charlie Goodnights, enjoyed hanging out at Mitch's Tavern and the no-longer-standing East Village Grill. He's still a North Carolina boy at heart, loving Cheerwine, Sun Drop and Bojangles'.
Reep is most known for his 'that thing got a hemi?' Dodge Ram TV commercial that frequently played in the early 2000s that took him from bankruptcy to stardom. A commercial agent got a read on Reep and found the role for him.
For the audition, Reep donned an old Goodyear outfit from a former job and put a wad of chewing tobacco in for a rural North Carolina aesthetic to win over the casting director.
"My agent called me up and said, I have an audition for you today. You're gonna be playing white trash. I was like, 'oh, okay. I know what that is.'"
He still gets residual checks from the ad and sometimes gives them away on his podcast. Despite that, he drives a Honda Passport, given that a Honda dealership sponsors his podcast.
"Before I know it, it turned into a whole campaign," Reep said. "So I didn't know what it was going to turn into. I knew it would be some money. I didn't know it was going to be that successful. And neither did they. Otherwise, they would have locked me down to a long contract."
That was in 2002. In 2007, he was the "Last Comic Standing," winning the fifth season of the show.
He moved back to Hickory in 2018 to help take care of his mother. Reep has two stepchildren and a wife.
Reep is performing stand-up in Denver this weekend and said he should be able to catch the national semifinal Saturday when State takes on Purdue.
You can find more of Reep on his podcast, Carolina Reeper.
