The name came first: 12 Angry Mascots. The launch of two successful careers, viral fame, a Topps baseball card, and a celebrity softball dream all followed. Before the whole media world pivoted to video, this pioneering comedy troupe filmed a series of sports sketches for ESPN, Comedy Central, and YouTube.
Scott Rogowsky, now the popular HQ Trivia host, and Neil Janowitz, the editorial director of New York magazine entertainment site Vulture, met at a job interview back in April 2008. Janowitz was an editor at ESPN The Magazine seeking new voices to contribute short sports takes tinged with humor. Rogowsky’s mother had a friend who passed along her son’s résumé. Recently, the pair recalled their introduction.
“We met up and, I think, almost immediately, you were like, ‘I have no interest in contributing to the magazine,’” Janowitz said.
“I said, ‘I don’t think I’d be very good at this,’” Rogowsky added.
The interview was over as soon as it started, but the conversation veered to comedy. Rogowsky had been doing stand-up in New York City, and Janowitz had been taking improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade, the club started by Amy Poehler and others. Rogowsky brought institutional knowledge of the comedy world, Janowitz from the sporting realm. They soon started a partnership producing sports comedy under a name Rogowksy had been kicking around: 12 Angry Mascots.
This is all I’ve ever wanted in life. Now excuse me while I spend the next 120 hrs deciding my walk-up song.
The pair became Internet video trailblazers before social media sharing made that a viable profession. For a few years, 12 Angry Mascots had a good run, both online and as a live variety show. Showtime’s “Inside the NFL” tagged along when cornerback Darrelle Revis was a guest, offering national exposure. The Wall Street Journal wrote a full page article. Jerry Seinfeld crashed a show.
Monetizing the work proved too challenging. The troupe disbanded in April 2011, going out on top with a sold-out live show featuring New York Giants receiver Amani Toomer as a guest. Rogowsky then embarked on a meandering professional path. In 2014, he tweeted out his modest life goal: “Just tryin to get to that Celebrity Softball level of fame.”
In August 2017, however, Rogowsky began hosting HQ Trivia. The online quiz quickly became a viral sensation. Millions tune in twice-daily. He’s been nicknamed the “Quiz Daddy” by fans he, in turn, calls “HQties.” He’s headlining a comedy tour. And, last month in D.C., he played in MLB’s Celebrity Softball game alongside Hall of Fame athletes (Andre Dawson, Tim Raines, Shaquille O’Neal) and Hollywood actors (Jamie Foxx, Ashley Greene).
Rogowsky retweeted his four-year-old post with a comment that evoked an old 12 Angry Mascots video starring Curtis Granderson. He wrote, “This is all I’ve ever wanted in life. Now excuse me while I spend the next 120 hrs deciding my walk-up song.”
tweeted 4 yrs ago when I was an anonymous schmo w a DIY talk show. On Sunday I'll be playing in the @MLB All-Star Legends & Celebrity Softball Game at Nationals Park. This is all I've ever wanted in life. Now excuse me while I spend the next 120 hrs deciding my walk-up song. https://t.co/bH9IvwX3gS
— HQzy Greenberg (@ScottRogowsky) July 11, 2018
Axe Body Spray commercials were a pop culture touchstone in 2011. John Axford was dominant as the Brewers closer but received as much attention for his facial hair, winning the American Mustache Institute’s Robert Goulet Memorial Mustached American of the Year Award (even though he’s Canadian).
The 12 Angry Mascots crew took an Old Spice bottle and photoshopped on a new label for Ax Mustache Spray. “Just bad word play,” Janowitz said of the concept. They invited Axford to a crew member’s apartment and filmed a parody ad.
“Forgot to pack a lip sweater? Try this,” Axford quipped in the resulting video. “One quick spritz, and you’ll be looking like [Mark] Spitz. Or, more to the point, me. John Axford.”
Asked about that sketch earlier this summer, Axford remembered the experience fondly and added an epilogue. The pitcher had taken the Ax Mustache Spray bottle with him and, two months later, presented it to Fox Sports’ Chris Rose in a midgame interview during which Axford and teammate Francisco Rodriguez impersonated each other.
“He came down and was talking about he couldn’t grow facial hair,” Axford said of Rose. “I think I wore K-Rod’s glasses. K-Rod put on a fake mustache. And this was in the game we were doing this, and I handed Rosey the bottle. ‘Here, use this mustache spray.’
“He kept it on the [MLB Network] Intentional Talk desk for a little while. I thought that was a fun end event of what happened with that silly commercial.”
Digital video is now a major driver of ad dollars, with platforms populated by full-time YouTube Creators and social media influencers. Dozens of pro athletes own their own production companies. Back then, however, when 12 Angry Mascots was publishing either independently on YouTube or professionally for ESPN and Comedy Central, the climate was very different.
“There wasn’t meaningful competition,” Janowitz explained.
“There was also no placement. We were buried on that website,” Rogowsky said, before adding: “For people to go on Comedy Central’s website and view an embedded video that’s not being shared? It was impossible to share this stuff.”
Perhaps if their foray into video had started a few years later, 12 Angry Mascots would still exist.
“We’ve talked about that,” Janowitz said.
“If we were doing it now,” Rogowsky added, “you’d probably get millions of views on Facebook.”
They are probably right in the estimation of Kevin Allocca, YouTube’s head of culture and trends, and the author of Videocracy. Allocca’s book explores the history of internet videos becoming a social phenomenon. Janowitz and Rogowsky’s work came long before YouTube was a hub of channels for athletes, leagues, and brands.
“In general, the early era in web video sketch comedy was sort of defined by what we’d call ‘the cubicle circuit,’ that is, people sharing videos on email, chat, web forums, and, eventually, social media while generally screwing around at work,” Allocca wrote in an email. “That is mostly pre-2010. It’s not a surprise that sports-related comedy would do well then, given the demographics.
“Over time, social media sharing became a more mainstream activity and channels grew audiences of subscribers that would come back on a regular basis. The low number of subscribers on this channel speaks to where in the timeline this channel falls, I think.”
12 Angry Mascots’ very first video, which was published in Jan. 2009, reached the curated home page of YouTube. Called the “Super Bowl XLIII Writers Room,” the sketch played off conspiratorial NFL fans’ belief that the action is scripted and the results are fixed.
Just before that year’s actual Super Bowl, Rogowsky saw the video’s metrics skyrocket. He called Janowitz. “Our numbers—something’s going on here,” he said. The video ultimately tallied more than 210,000 plays.
“Every time we would refresh, it would go up 10,000 views or something,” Janowitz said.
“For the time,” Rogowsky said, “it was like ‘Holy shit.’”
“This was pre-social media,” Janowitz explained, “and pre-the video boom.”
“It was our first video, too,” Rogowsky added. “I don’t know about you, but I had never uploaded to YouTube.”
As Allocca noted, “That first video in particular is emblematic of the early era of sketch comedy on YouTube. In the early years, you had a lot of young, but talented semi-pro sketch performers that were gaining fame/notoriety in the web video space, like Harvard Sailing Team and Derrick Comedy from NYU, which is how Donald Glover got his start.
“Some of these sketches would ‘go viral’ but not to the extent in which things did later, since the audiences were a lot smaller.”
It was truly nuts. And it was the most fun I’d ever had to that point.
The premise and early success of Super Bowl Writers Room caught the attention of Janowitz’s ESPN boss, who commissioned a weekly series for the next season. As they recall, the videos made very little money, were turned around in an unhealthily short timetable, and had strong editorial oversight. Rogowsky co-habitated in Janowtiz’s cubicle. Many Monday nights ended at 6 a.m. at the since-closed 24-hour diner Yaffa Cafe in the East Village. “It was truly nuts,” Rogowsky said. “And it was the most fun I’d ever had to that point.”
Rogowsky added, “What the hell was I doing? I was not interning any more. I don’t know what I was doing. I was pretty much just doing this, fooling myself into thinking this was a full-time job to make so little money. But, Neil, God bless him.”
Janowtiz said, “It was awesome. It was exactly what I wanted to be doing.”
Appearing in a handful of videos, including two episodes of NFL Writers Room, was Ariana Madix, now well known for her role in Vanderpump Rules. (Her IMDB page includes her 12 Angry Mascots cameos.) The mention of her name a decade later prompted Rogowsky to reach for his phone and check the status of her social media accounts.
“Ariana Madix has one million followers on Instagram,” he said.“That is insane. That is totally insane.”
Janowitz added, “Eight years ago, she was shooting—for free or maybe $50—NFL Writers Room in the ESPN office on Wednesday nights.”
Janowitz and Rogowsky spearheaded videos that featured comedians and actors like the Sklar Brothers and Jenn Sterger (who hosted 1-900-BALL-TLK, a sports chat line) as well as NASCAR driver Brad Keselowski, MLB players Axford, Granderson, and Heath Bell, and NFL players like Dhani Jones, Earl Thomas, and Devin McCourty.
The latter two were filmed in 2013 after Janowitz took a job with Sports Illustrated where he pitched the company on his sports comedy background. There, he helped produce a series of Geico-branded comedy videos called “Free Safety Advice” in which free safeties gave, well, free safety advice.
The Seahawks’ Earl Thomas walked around Seattle’s iconic Pike Place Market telling strangers to watch the curb, look both ways before crossing the street, and regularly change your email password.
The Patriots’ McCourty did the same on Boston Common, suggesting passersby regularly check their home’s carbon monoxide detectors, wear hats to block the sun, and don’t insert forks into electrical outlets. When one woman ignored him, McCourty quipped, “You did the smart thing. Don’t speak to strangers.”
You’ve had this laser focus on hosting that was easy to discredit, but you knew what you wanted and it paid off.
Janowitz went from SI to assistant managing editor of Entertainment Weekly’s website, where he oversaw video, and then to Vulture. He sees a clear link from 12 Angry Mascots’ videos to his current job, saying, “I would say it is largely responsible for where I am now.”
“So all that video experience …” Rogowsky mused.
“A one-to-one correlation,” Janowitz said.
Rogowsky path, meanwhile, didn’t share the same steady trajectory. Around the time he and Janowitz wound down 12 Angry Mascots in 2011, he launched a monthly live variety show, “Running Late with Scott Rogowsky.” He said he thrives on the feedback from a live audience. Since hosting HQ Trivia, Rogowsky has attracted such comedy and entertainment guests to “Running Late” as Jon Hamm, Paul Rudd, Sarah Silverman, Ali Wong, and Desus & Mero.
“My path wasn’t as clear or linear as Neil’s was,” Rogowsky said, “but …”
“I think it was,” Janowitz interrupted. “You’ve had this laser focus on hosting in a way that I think was easy to discredit, but you knew what you wanted to do and it paid off.”
“From 12 Angry Mascots is where I really fell in love with the idea of hosting talk shows,” Rogowsky said.
Four months after Rogowsky and Janowitz met, the new friends hosted their first show at Upright Citizens Bridge in September 2008. They billed 12 Angry Mascots as “New York City’s premier live sports-comedy variety-talk show,” a tout that was overly specific but incontrovertibly true.
“And it was,” Rogowsky said. “And there are none today.”
Janowitz added, “We delivered on the promise.”
The first sketch was a parody of Abbott & Costello’s famed “Who’s on First” bit with a fantasy baseball twist—in this case, the who, what, and why referred to Rogowsky’s hopelessly mediocre fantasy roster. The closing scene invoked a light-hitting shortstop.
“That was the big punchline: Yuniesky Betancourt,” Rogowsky said. “Probably the only time his name has ever been mentioned on a comedy stage.”
That was 12 Angry Mascots’ only show at UCB. They later moved around the city to The Cell Theater, Comix Comedy Club, Gotham Comedy Club, and The Pit. Their live show attracted celebrity cameos from NFL players such as Revis, Toomer, Ryan Grant, Jerricho Cotchery, and David Diehl as well as comedians Iliza Shlesinger (who has released four Netflix comedy specials) and Seth Reiss (now a writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers).
Years later, they still marvel at Cotchery’s performance in “J-Co the Ultimate Cotch,” a spoof of reality shows by NFL receivers Terrell Owens and Chad Ochocinco.
“Jerricho Cotchery prepared so well,” Janowitz said. “I don’t know if anybody memorized a script to his degree.”
Rogowsky dabbled in stunt videos, some of them accruing millions of views. But his passion remained hosting, which he has done monthly since 2011. Before HQ Trivia, he was living at home and on the verge of trying to restart his comedy career in Los Angeles. Since the show’s debut in August 2017, however, his fame skyrocketed. Now Rogowsky has an agent, a cult following, and a New York Times profile.
“It’s silly when you look at purely a numbers perspective—why would you put any effort into this?” Rogowsky said of his live show. “At the same time, it all led to HQ, and now I am talking to millions of people while hosting at the same time. It’s become this thing where the ‘twain have met in HQ.
“But I was lost for a while. For those years, I don’t know what I was doing. I truly can’t think of it. And I thought I was busy. What was I doing a year ago even, two years ago? I haven’t had a real job in a while.”
Following years of struggling, life is now moving at a suddenly dizzying pace. Upon arriving for this conversation at the midpoint of his work day, Rogowsky checked his Fitbit and saw he had already surpassed 10,000 steps.
“What did I do today?” he said, before adding with a pause: “I guess I did walk a lot today.”