Yahoo Finance He’s a huge Carolina Panthers fan and podcaster. He’s also an inspiration
Cody Lachney couldn’t help but smile.
It was a perfect Saturday morning: hot but mercifully overcast, buzzing with excitement but not overcrowded. The Carolina Panthers were beginning another training camp practice on Wofford College’s campus, and Lachney, a diehard fan, was watching from the Gibbs Stadium concourse — talking about his favorite players on his favorite team with some of his favorite friends.
You see that throw Bryce just made?
What do you think of Burns’ new number?
Shaq!
“I feel like for a long time, that’s what the Panthers are,” Lachney offered at one point about Carolina’s new-look 3-4 defense. “And that’s an aggressive defense with an incredible pass rush.”
Part of the joy of training camp is the hope that accompanies it. The stakes are relatively low, and the energy is always high, and the chips on player’s shoulders are freshly cut. But if you’re Lachney himself — or if you are one of the many who have gotten to know him via his role in the C3 Panthers podcast — you don’t need training camp’s anything-is-possible reminder.
Lachney himself is a reminder, after all.
Lachney, 33, was born with spinal muscular atrophy type 2, a hereditary disease that kills nerve cells that control motor functions. He has gotten around in a wheelchair his whole life. On Saturday, decked out in jeans and Carolina blue Converses with flowy long hair, he explained his condition succinctly: “The doctors told my mother that I wouldn’t live past 2 years old,” he said. “So as you can see, I don’t like to do what I’m told, ya know?”
Lachney has become a well-known personality among the biggest Panthers fans. Tony Dunn, co-founder of the C3 Panthers podcast who is one of those diehard fans, knew he would when he first met him.
“His personality, what he gives to our show, I can’t even describe,” Dunn said. “We’ve become brothers, best friends, through this endeavor.”
The story of how Lachney became a Panthers fan — and subsequently met Dunn and joined his podcast — begins in Georgia.
Lachney grew up in Lawrenceville, a suburb of Atlanta. He wasn’t much of a football fan, he said. He preferred mixed martial arts. That preference turned into a fascination; he loved doing research into different disciplines and joining online forums that discussed the different sports and their nuances — the technique breakdowns of certain MMA fighters, the history of jiu-jitsu, the culture of boxing. (“I probably would’ve done it if I had the body that was able to do it,” he said.)
He and his mother, Rea, moved to Charlotte when he was 12, he said, and a few years after that, he pursued a degree in simulation game development from Central Piedmont Community College.
It was there, in 2011, where he fell in love with football.
“I was on the bus, going to class, and there was a radio show being played over the bus,” Lachney recalled. “I don’t think it was supposed to be playing, but it was, and they were talking about: Should the Carolina Panthers draft Cam Newton?”
Lachney hadn’t heard of Newton at the time, so he checked out some highlights from Auburn — where Newton played college football — once he got to his classroom. And he was amazed. He saw him run over linebackers and outrun safeties and win a national championship. He was so struck by Newton’s athleticism, his Superman-ness, that he made an ultimatum: If the Panthers draft him, I’m a diehard fan for life.
“And I’ve been a Panther fan ever since,” he said.
Just like his love for mixed martial arts, he went deep learning about football, too. One day, with his Panthers fandom fully realized, he found Carolina Cat Chronicles (also known as C3) — a podcast that disclaims that its hosts are “not football experts” but instead are “expert football fans.”
Sometime in 2018, he called into the show.
And not long after, he was invited to join the team.
Dunn credits Lachney for a lot of the show’s growth in the past five years. It now has approximately 5,500 subscribers on YouTube and more than 1.45 million total views. It hosted its first in-person live podcast among the four main guys — Lachney, Dunn, Greg Schlager and Cody Kelly — at Monster Subs and Grub near Wofford College earlier this week because the owner is a fan of the show.
“We’ve just been a family,” Dunn said. “We’ve been building a fan culture. But I can’t tell you how much this man right here has contributed to that. Like, it’s his personality. This dude’s a celebrity on the internet.”
Lachney is most thankful for the community he found and is giving back to.
“Because of the Carolina Panthers, so many doors have opened for me,” he said. “I do this podcast, and I dedicate so much time to it, and it’s centered around the Carolina Panthers. So whenever there’s news breaking, whenever there’s roster movement — I mean, we went through a whole coaching cycle, moved up in the draft to draft a QB No. 1 overall. All of that stuff is really important to me. And it’s really important to our community that we’re building as well.”
Before leaving the field on Saturday, Lachney and Dunn were approached by a fan of the C3 podcast on the concourse. His name is Dominique Bartell, and he greeted them with an enthusiastic smile and a whole bunch of compliments.
“Y’all are superstars,” he said. The three of them then struck up a conversation about their favorite team and got lost in the fun — living in the training camp dream that anything is possible.
