The Evolution of ThatsGoodSports: How Brandon Perna Became Football's Comedy Channel

Brandon Perna is a Denver native who turned a one-man Broncos recap channel into ThatsGoodSports, one of NFL YouTube's defining comedy institutions. Registered in 2012, focused from 2013, and now spanning solo desk shows, a live morning show with Tom Grossi, and mini-documentaries — all still written and hosted by one guy.

His Instagram bio says "fake sports anchor." That's the joke, and also the format that hundreds of thousands of football fans have decided is better than the real thing. Here's how it got built.

The apprenticeship nobody saw (2006–2012)

The short answer to "where did Perna come from" is: behind the camera. Before ThatsGoodSports existed, Perna was working in Los Angeles in YouTube's earliest professional era — the "Broadcast Yourself" years, long before Pat McAfee proved sports personalities could live on the platform. He helped develop pioneering shows like =3 and Tijuana Jackson, learning to write, shoot, and edit at the pace the platform demanded.

The turning point was a job he didn't take. Bleacher Report offered him a position; the move to New York didn't fit, and he declined — but the interview crystallized something. "I thought sports and comedy was maybe where I could do something," he told Awful Announcing years later. "There wasn't a lot of that on YouTube at the time."

He was right. There wasn't. So he turned the camera around.

The Broncos years (2013–2017)

ThatsGoodSports technically dates to 2012, but by Perna's own account it sat mostly idle at first: "I started the channel in 2012 and did a handful of videos, and then it kind of sat there for a while, then I started up again in 2013. That was really the first year I kind of focused on it."

The timing was perfect, because Peyton Manning had just arrived in Denver. When Manning threw seven touchdowns against the Ravens in Week 1 of 2013, Perna's recap of the game opened the floodgates — a Broncos fan in LA screaming joyfully into a camera, with editing chops nobody else in the fan-channel space had.

Life cooperated: a job opportunity for his wife brought the family back to Denver, and Perna kept building the channel between odd jobs in local sports media. The Broncos won a Super Bowl in that stretch, and ThatsGoodSports rode every high and — this being the Broncos — an increasingly rich supply of lows.

His plan was never to stay a team channel, though. His own site said it plainly: "So far, I have mostly focused on the Denver Broncos, but my goal is to expand and cover the NFL." The Broncos content eventually got its own home — a second channel, ThatsGoodBroncos, which its own description says "was birthed by Brandon Perna's first YouTube channel" — and the flagship went league-wide.

The fake sports desk (2018–2023)

What ThatsGoodSports became in its second act is best described by Perna's own management company: "if SportsCenter ate Weekend Update on SNL, and then regurgitated a football show for the internet." A suit-and-desk sports anchor delivering the week's NFL news, except the anchor is openly biased and the graphics are jokes.

The volume behind that format is the part that deserves more attention than it gets: the channel holds over 800 videos, and every one of them was written, hosted, and produced by Perna himself. For most of its life, ThatsGoodSports has been a one-person broadcast network with a staff of one.

The format also proved durable in a way pure recap channels aren't. Bad news is a renewable resource in the NFL, and a comedy anchor never runs out of material — least of all one whose own team spent the late 2010s supplying it weekly.

The two-man era (2024–present)

The newest chapter is the first one Perna hasn't done alone. The Grossi Perna Show — GPS — pairs him with Tom Grossi, the Packers-side comedy institution, for a live NFL morning show every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday during the season: news, recaps, power rankings, and two fanbases' worth of suffering. The podcast feed launched in 2024, and the show has become appointment viewing for the NFL YouTube audience. (We wrote about what makes that pairing work in our piece on the comedians of NFL YouTube.)

Behind the scenes, Perna has brought on writing and editing help for the first time, expanding into longform video and mini-documentaries — the one-man band finally hiring a band.

He's also been clear-eyed about why the moment is right. When YouTube acquired Sunday Ticket, Perna called it a "game-changer for football creators": more football fans on the platform, watching games, getting recommended football videos. After a decade of doing the work, the audience finally came to where he'd been standing the whole time.

Where to start

Three entry points, depending on your taste.

A current GPS episode — the fastest way to get the voice, the chemistry with Grossi, and the rhythm of the show. The most recent one marks the show's return for the 2026 season:

A recent solo desk show — the classic format, one anchor and a week of bad football news, here featuring his recurring Regression Police bit:

One of the new mini-documentaries — the longform lane, and the clearest sign of where the channel is headed:

And then subscribe, obviously: youtube.com/@thatsgoodsports

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