“Bussin’ With the Boys” podcast cohost Will Compton is having a major year — and it’s only April.
Not only did the former NFL linebacker and his podcast cohost, Taylor Lewan, sign a major deal with FanDuel after five years at Barstool Sports, but Compton, 35, is now using his voice to discuss the sports world’s biggest rivalries.
“I was ecstatic,” Compton told Us Weekly exclusively about being asked to narrate VICE TV’s docuseries The Grudge. “I was so fired up. … Just getting the opportunity to voice something over. I’ve always had a weird obsession, anytime a movie trailer comes on, trying to mimic the voice and have fun with my voice. Elevate it, bring it up, bring it down, play with it. The fact that they wanted me to be on their docuseries was all-time.”
Compton compared himself to “the voice of God” on The Grudge, which unpacks some major rivalries like Brett Favre vs. Aaron Rodgers, Colorado Avalanche vs. Detroit Red Wings and Conor McGregor vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov, to name a few.
As a former professional athlete, Compton — who played in the NFL from 2013 to 2021 — is no stranger to rivalries in the locker room. However, he was “most captivated” by voicing over the NHL Avalanche vs. Red Wings episode.
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Even as a successful podcast host, Compton “absolutely” hates hearing the sound of his own voice. He learned through the voiceovers, however, that he’s a skilled reader — which is also a testament to his 2-year-old daughter, Cerulean. (Compton and wife Charo Compton also share 4-month-old daughter Scottie.)
“I’ve learned that I am a better reader than I’ve given myself credit for. There’ll be times where I’m reading through the lines, and at the end, I’m thinking, ‘I should have read this before I did that,’” he joked. “That’s credit to my daughter Rue and having to read stories to her every night before bed.”
Compton also told Us that parting ways from Barstool Sports after five years has “1,000 percent” afforded him and Lewan, 33, more opportunities just like this.
“Going independent allows us to dive into other accesses. I don’t want to sit here and say that we weren’t able to do that in our last partnership, because we had a lot of freedom with Barstool and in our last partnership. But when you’re independent, you do have the ability to pick and choose the things you want to do,” he explained. “Now we get to look at a brand partnership and be like, ‘Hey, does this fit our model? Does this fit what we’re about?’ … We now don’t have to ask permission to do such a thing, we can just do it on our own. Going independent allows us so much more freedom and it’ll give us the ability to access these things with VICE TV, with the NFL, with NCAA on a deeper level that helps us bring the locker room to life even more, which has been our goal the entire time.”
Speculation about the future of “Bussin’ With the Boys” started swirling online when Compton and Lewan’s contracts were brought up on Surviving Barstool earlier this year. The news going viral did not surprise Compton in the slightest.
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“They have a very big and loyal audience that they built over time,” he explained. “We came from the school of Barstool, so knowing that we were going to leave, we knew it was a massive step for us. Even though we were very ecstatic and fired up about it, we understood that it was going to be a topic of conversation.”
Ultimately, it was a “no-brainer” for Compton and Lewan to partner “Bussin’ With the Boys” with FanDuel.
“At the end of the day, you want the ball in your hands,” Compton said. “You want to bet on yourself. You want to be the ones knowing, if we fail, if we succeed, whatever the case is, we know it’s on us. And that’s exactly where we want it to be.”
New episodes of The Grudge premiere via VICE TV Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT.
