With the summer coming to an end, it should be no surprise that a trio of football-focused podcasts were the Q3 2025 Blue Wire Excellence Award winners. Decided by Blue Wire staff and based on strides taken by individual creators, these awards shout out Blue Wire creators for doing a great job. This quarter's edition covers YouTube growth, crushing a content series, and launching a new show that found its audience immediately.

Big Blue Banter has been a staple in the New York Giants podcast scene for years now, and hosts Nick Falato and Dan Schneier are adding new viewers through their growing YouTube channel. Big Blue Banter reached 10,000 subscribers earlier this year, and continues to grow across platforms as Nick and Dan provide excellent coverage of the Giants.

Bootleg Football has NFL fans covered year-round. Brett Kollmann and E.J. Snyder’s love for football is clear through their constant coverage, from in-season breakdowns of key stories each week, to their acclaimed NFL Draft live streams, and in the “dead period” of the year Bootleg Football provides excellent previews for each and every NFL team. Those 32 episodes garnered more than 1.6 million views on YouTube this year, a testament to the work put in by Brett and E.J. to cover the entire league.

Launching a new podcast in 2025 isn’t easy, but The Bill and Doug Show hit the ground running immediately. Doug Lesmerises and Bill Landis’ combined three decades of Ohio State Buckeyes coverage shows through in their expertise covering The Ohio State University, and listeners have responded. Despite launching in late August just before college football’s kickoff weekend, The Bill and Doug Show has more than 5,000 YouTube subscribers and several thousand loyal listeners between audio and YouTube.

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