After the team drafted quarterback Joe Burrow, the pair of lifelong supporters cultivated a burgeoning brand that is sure to dominate tailgates and watch parties around Cincinnati this year.
If you happen to find yourself in the parking lot at a Bengals tailgate this fall, there’s a good chance you’ll hear a catchy tune about a guy called Jackpot Joey mixed in with the usual “Who Dey?” chants:
He’s got rose-colored Cartier
Cigar smokin’ protégé
Got diamonds in his chains
And ice runnin’ through his veins
He’s king of the AFC
Jackpot Joey
Many fans across the tailgate lot are likely to be sporting Jackpot Joey shirts, capes, hoodies, mugs—and drinking Jackpot Joey beer, which will make its debut at the start of this season.
In the center of all the action will be Matty Meyer, dressed head to toe in orange and black and singing the song he created and released ahead of the 2022 season. Meyer’s alarm goes off at 6 a.m. every Sunday, and he’s at the lot less than two hours later, welcoming fans into the Jackpot Joey tailgate by 8:30 a.m. Not far out of sight is his signature car, a bright-orange Toyota FJ Cruiser with Jackpot Joey decals on the doors, a Bengals logo layered over the state of Ohio on the side and the brand’s signature No. 9 flag flying off the back.
Courtesy of Matty Meyer
Jeff “Strawberry Ice” Trennepohl arrives at the scene not long afterward. Trennepohl’s tailgate routine is always the same, he says. His wife drops him off at the Bengals’ lot to start the morning before he makes his way over to the Jackpot Joey tailgate. It’s always his first stop, and he anticipates he’ll be spending even more time there this year—the crowd is bound to be even bigger with them handing out the new beer. He then goes down to Lot 1 to visit Bomb Squad, a tailgate run by Big John, and then to Bengal Jim’s tailgate, which is right outside the gates where Trennepohl enters the stadium to get to his seats.
Trennepohl has been a Bengals fan for all 47 years of his life. He was there in 1981, the year they first debuted the iconic tiger-striped helmets and made their first Super Bowl appearance—he’d rather not talk about the end result of that game, though, he says. He remained a fan all through the ’90s, a decade that most Bengals fans likely try to forget. He was there when the team won its first playoff win in more than 30 years, sitting in the stands as his son videotaped the tears pooling in his eyes.
Cara Owsley/The Enquirer/USA TODAY NETWORK
And yet, in all these years, Trennepohl has wished only once for his beloved Bengals to lose: On Dec. 22, 2019, the Bengals faced the Dolphins in the second to last week of the regular season. If they lost the game, their 1–14 record would secure the No. 1 draft pick the following April. If they won, they would lose their chance at drafting a franchise quarterback in the reigning Heisman winner out of LSU: Joe Burrow.
“Once we lost that game, I was so freaking excited,” Trennepohl says. “I didn’t know how big the Burrow effect would be, how much it would change the organization as a whole.”
At the time of the 2020 draft, Meyer was sitting like any other football fan: sitting at home watching picks get called from Roger Goodell’s basement—and admittedly, he says, a “few beers deep.” Burrow’s name was of course called first, sending him to Cincinnati, where he would eventually be joined by his college teammates Ja’Marr Chase, Thaddeus Moss and Tyler Shelvin. Meyer knew immediately the then 23-year-old was “a jackpot for the city of Cincinnati,” repeating the phrase so many times his daughter-in-law called him the next morning and told him: Do something with it, before anyone else does. The next day, Meyer arrived at work (he and his family own a window door company) and applied to trademark the nickname Jackpot Joey. By April ’21, almost exactly one year after the draft, he had a letter in his hand saying he successfully won the naming rights to the nickname.
Courtesy of Matty Meyer
The next step for Meyers and Jackpot Joey? Drive the four hours to Athens, Ohio, and go straight to the Joe Burrow Hunger Relief Fund to tell them he will be donating part of the proceeds from his new trademark to Burrow’s namesake charity.
“I was like, Hey, man, I’m gonna nickname [Burrow] Jackpot Joey, and we’re gonna dedicate a portion of sales to you,” Meyer says. “The look was just like, O.K., that’s cute, old man. We can’t wait to get a donation from you.”
Three weeks and one graphic artist later, Meyer had Jackpot Joey gear in his hand, right in time for OTAs and training camp to begin. He started giving it to players as they walked by—and they loved it, he says. The texts and calls were coming in soon enough: Tee Higgins was wearing his hat (a black trucker hat with the signature Jackpot Joey nine in bright orange) during a Bengals press conference. And better yet, a reporter asked the wide receiver where he got it.
“When we come in from practice, this guy’s always waiting with Jackpot Joey gear,” Higgins said. “I was like, Man can I get that hat? And he was like, Sure man, and he gave me some stuff for me and my mom. You know, gotta represent my boy Joe. Jackpot Joey, I mean.”
Meyer sold about 300 hats in the next three or four days. Chase has worn an all-black version of the No. 9 hat two days in a row at this year’s Bengals training camp. Burrow’s brother, Jamie, wore a camo one at the Super Bowl, the same hat Riley Reiff sported during an NFL Network appearance.
Kareem Elgazzar/USA TODAY NETWORK
Trennepohl first became involved with the Jackpot Joey brand by chance: As a Bengals guy, he talked about Joe Burrow on his daily podcast, Sports With Strawberry Ice. And every time he would, Meyer reached out and told him, “His name’s Jackpot.” It stuck. Now, the self-proclaimed Jackpot Joey “hype-man” helps Meyer promote the brand by going to practice with him, wearing the gear and putting together videos to get the word out about the brand.
Together, Meyer and Trennepohl have made the brand impossible for Cincinnati fans, players and the community to ignore—though they chalk it up to luck, both pointing out that none of this would have happened had Joe Burrow himself not been on board.
Meyer and Trennepohl were invited to take a picture with Joe Burrow officially on May 21, 2022. As they walked in, Burrow recognized them immediately—and when the fan fanatics manager that set up the meeting asked them to put away the Jackpot Joey flag, Burrow himself insisted: Keep it in the picture.
Courtesy of Matty Meyer
“It’s all because of Joe Burrow. If he hated the name, I would have stopped it in a heartbeat. But once we knew he liked it, and not even just that, he loved it. After that he started, like when he walked by me, being like, Hey, man, you can meet me over here. I’ll autograph,” Meyer says.
Trennepohl says he’s changed the experience of being a Cincinnati fan for the better, and the two are proud to be supporting him (and his namesake charity) through the Jackpot Joey brand—at tailgates, at games and everywhere in between.
“The way the whole aura of the organization has changed is night and day. Not only at the stadium, but just around the country,” Trennepohl says. “Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase, Tee Higgins, they made the Bengals cool again. That’s the thing. It’s cool to be a Bengals fan.”
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