8.3.25 – Bryan Eagle
“Inside the Sports-Obsessed, Cuss-Free World of Dude Perfect”
By Sarah Hepola, Bryan Eagle, Dallas Morning News
“Thank you for making something fun and clean.”
Excerpts from this article:
[*COMMENT FROM DONNA GARNER: Please be sure to read the last part of the article to find out what Duke Perfect does at the end of each live show.]
It’s a hot and sticky 5:45 p.m. on a Wednesday outside Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, and the kids are already swarming.
There are so many baseball caps — on the boys, on the girls, on moms and dads — that the uninitiated might mistake this for a baseball-cap convention.
A woman stands up from a sizzling cement bank where she’s been sitting and declares, “My bottom is hot!”
Actually, she doesn’t say “bottom”; she uses a naughty three-letter slur, but a little boy catches this slip and looks at his mother.
The woman catches herself and self-corrects. “I mean, my bottom is hot.”
The mother of the little boy smiles and says to her son in a special tone reflecting some sarcasm, “You’ve never heard that word – Not from Mom. Just from that lady.”
Welcome to Dude Perfect, the Frisco-based YouTube juggernaut that combines sports obsession, relentless silliness, sibling rivalry-style competition, feats of strength and daring so absurd they seem to have been crafted in a viral-sensation lab -- and a steady commitment to God and wholesome entertainment.
Warning: There will be no cussing.
The group of former Texas A&M University [College Station, Texas] students known for trick shots so slick that ESPN’s SportsCenter played them, Dude Perfect has expanded over 16 years into a kid-friendly variety show with skits and stunts and catchphrases of mysterious origins. (“Pound it,” “noggin,” for instance.)
Dude Perfect’s videos punch through a crowded internet with SEO-honed titles like “100 Person Airsoft Battle Royale” and “Tortoise vs. Hare — Who Wins?”
“The Dudes” are insanely popular with more than 60 million subscribers, and they are uniquely Texan.
This summer brings a 20-city tour, and this is the second of two nights in Fort Worth -- one more sold-out show and a bit of a homecoming.
At the center of this delirium are the five dudes themselves: Tyler, Garrett, Cody, Cory and Coby, a pack of millennial names practically engineered to trip up outsiders, given that Cory and Coby are twins…
MEET THE DUDES
In person, the dudes are exactly as they seem on YouTube: playful, respectful, funny, relentlessly upbeat.
If the coolest youth pastors from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes became YouTube sensations, they’d look a lot like Dude Perfect.
In the 21st-century entertainment landscape of Disney stars turned bad girls and classic fairy tales turned culture-war conflagration… Dude Perfect has entered the fray: five married guys who follow the teachings of Jesus and happen to enjoy sports, superheroes, and cracking each other up.
Says 38-year-old Cory Cotton (known as Twin #2, a guy with an easy smile): “This is the No. 1 thing we hear from parents: ‘Thank you for making something fun and clean.’”
“We wanted it to be aspirational,” says 36-year-old Tyler Toney (also known as Ty or TT and “the bearded guy in videos who does most of the talking.”)
“We wanted to make something kids could look up to the same way we looked up to sports stars and TV stars.”
Nineteen billion YouTube hits later, they did.
TEXAS A&M STUDENTS GO VIRAL
The dudes met at Texas A&M in a tale told so often we’ll make it quick.
There was a pickup basketball game; and, at some point, the twins [Cory and Coby] were practicing their “Soulja Boy” dance’ and maybe Cody was lying out by a pool; and he might have looked lonely. Anyway, they all became buds.
They filmed a video of trick shots, seemingly impossible basketball throws, in a College Station backyard.
In setting up the camera, Tyler asked how the shot looked.
“Dude, perfect,” said Sean Townsend, an A&M pal who became a doctor, though his claim to fame may have been at that moment when he named the group.
They posted the video to YouTube, and the internet did its thing.
The next day the website for Sports Illustrated brayed, “Texas A&M students go viral with trickshot video.”
YouTube started in 2005, but nobody knew what to do with it.
…in 2007 the iPhone came out; and in 2010, those phones got a camera-swiveling selfie function.
Boom: We [the public] became the stars with our abilities to make our own videos.
The dudes were pioneers of this new global platform [videos, YouTube], but they didn’t know it yet.
They were college kids …They kept doing trick shot videos after they graduated, but they also got jobs…
The twins [Cory and Coby] moved to Austin; Tyler moved to Prosper; and Cody to the Plano area -- the hometowns where they’d grown up; but they kept doing videos.
It was hard to make each one better than the last.
“The Airplane Shot” in 2010 was followed by “World’s Largest Slingshot” in 2012, and then “The Blimp Shot” where Garrett Hilbert dropped a ball into a net from a passing Goodyear blimp.
The internet crackled with conspiracy.
How did they do it?
Giant magnets?
Fishing line?
(The Dudes say they don’t cheat.)
But what’s just as entertaining as these shots is watching them freak out when they make them: They drop to the ground and pound it, run in circles, body slam each other midair. Pure joy.
These elaborate stunts became so time-consuming that Cory developed Bell’s palsy from stress and lack of sleep.
Tyler’s boss chewed him out, a breaking point.
THE DUDES ALMOST QUIT
The pivot in the Dude Perfect story is the moment the dudes almost quit.
College was over; real life beckoned.
Now in their mid-20s, they all had girlfriends or were married.
(These days, they’re all married, with kids.)
They started to float the idea of leaving their gigs and going all-in, but they also consulted the women [their wives] in their lives.
“I remember texting all the wives, and I was like, ‘Your husband’s quitting their job, right? ‘Cause mine just quit ours,’” says Cody’s wife, Allison.
…“We had to decide as wives together to say ‘yes’ to this,” Tyler’s wife, Bethany…”Then we all went back to our husbands and said, ‘OK.’”
…Soon after that, they [Dude Perfect] signed their first deal with Nerf.
“THE WORLD’S GREATEST OFFICE”
The dudes opened a new headquarters earlier this year in the Dallas Cowboys enclave of Frisco -- a nondescript building on a street of similar buildings called Gateway Drive.
Inside is something else entirely, which you can see in a video called “We Built the World’s Greatest Office.”
The place is like a Barbie Dreamhouse for men, though it could also be called “the ultimate man-boy cave.”
Basketball court, golfing green, a slide running from the second floor to the first, a vending machine that opens like a Batcave into a wonderland of candy shelves filled with Skittles and Whoppers and M&Ms.
The dudes gathered in a conference room on the first floor, nicknamed the Avengers Room, because the table is circular and looks like a spot where you could scheme to save the world.
[For this interview] They were in the middle of shooting a video about pickleball, and Tyler came in stretching one arm.
Coby Cotton (aka Twin No. 1 -- the twin with the longer hair) arrived late only to be summoned back for filming before he’d spoken a word.
“Good to see you, Coby,” the dudes said. “Thanks a lot for your contribution.”
A lightning round with the dudes didn’t get much traction -- questions such as, “Who snores loudest?” “Cody” (aka “Tall Guy,” aka “the biggest dude”).
“Basically every question you ask, the answer is going to be Cody,” said Tyler, though he proved this wrong because the next question was, “Who is most likely to quit Dude Perfect and disappear to Africa?”
Tyler opened his mouth to say “Cody” but then paused on the word “Africa.”
Tyler has described himself as the dude “most likely to live in the woods,” so perhaps he was mentally scanning the trees-and-rivers situation of that continent.
…Tyler guessed he’d be the one.
Who’s the nicest person in the group?
That was easy. All together: “Coby,” (aka Twin No. 1, aka the only dude who was not in the room to receive this compliment).
The stumper question turned out to be the sports hero they’d most like to collaborate with, though the collective answer was eventually “LeBron James” or “Wayne Gretzky.”
…Their current tour whisks them through the center of the country.
No shows in LA or New York City.
They’re hitting Reading, Pennsylvania, and Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Louisville, Kentucky.
…For online stars, they have a lot of derring-do, a lot of energy to burn, and many of their stunts are feats the kids CAN try at home.
Young fans [of Dude Perfect] have been known to log off the internet only to launch into action, honing their water-bottle flips or Nerf ball tosses, the lost art of playing outdoors, boys being boys, even if they happen to be girls (who also like Dude Perfect).
There are products, of course.
Dude Perfect apparel, basketballs, backpacks, fanny packs, a Splash Hoop 5-foot inflatable water tower.
They’re working on refining the old-fashioned basketball net: a digitized version and one with multiple hoops, including “impossible shots.”
A middle-grade book series is in the works.
“If you asked us back in 2009 who we thought our fans were, we thought it was other college students,” says Cody.
And maybe for a while that was true, but then those college students grew up and became parents.
Then YouTube turned into the channel of choice for kids, tucked away from parents’ prying eyes.
The dudes started to feel a responsibility to these little ones, especially as they had their own. (Among the five of them, they have 16 children.)
They turned down an alcohol sponsorship early on.
…There was no shortage of other sponsors: Columbia Sportswear, Nerf, Bass Pro Shops, Bodyarmor, Samsung, Google’s Gemini AI, the list goes on.
Frisco became their home base, a family-friendly suburb that happens to have major ties to a world-famous sports team owned by Jerry Jones.
Being landlocked in Texas came with downsides at first.
Most YouTubers were out in LA, partying in collab houses while Dude Perfect threw a thousand balls in North Texas, and their fellow influencers didn’t want to come to North Texas; Dude Perfect didn’t want to go to LA.
However, sports stars came to North Texas instead.
Local heroes like the Cowboys’ Dak Prescott, former Cowboys player Ezekiel Elliott, and Dallas Stars’ center Tyler Seguin.
A lot of sports stars have kids, and those kids worshipped Dude Perfect.
Steph Curry and Tom Brady and Russell Wilson showed up in videos.
It’s a bit surreal that players Dude Perfect once followed now follow them: Serena Williams, Odell Beckham Jr., Caitlin Clark; actors such as Paul Rudd and Jeff Goldblum; and country stars Luke Bryan and Tim McGraw.
…Dude Perfect kept targeting kids, and the good news is the world kept making new ones [kids].
“People come up and say, ‘Dude, you were my childhood,’” said Tyler, a sentiment that makes him feel old, even as it makes him feel good.
It’s an open question how long they can keep this up.
The dudes have a few tricks up their sleeves to connect with adults, mostly parents in their demographic who’ve become fans by default.
A podcast is in the works. They’re starting an outdoor channel.
THE DUDES, LIVE!
A Dude Perfect show technically starts at 7 p.m., but it actually starts earlier.
VIP ticket holders can play earlier at an interactive station where Cody shows up to flip water bottles flanked by kids pumping their fists, and other dudes wander the floor near the stage in disguise.
Backstage is hectic with Styrofoam blocks, basketballs in mesh netting, and random props, like a caramel-covered onion on a stick.
The team travels with 100 crew members, and each venue employs about 100 of their own staff.
There are props such as “Wheel Unfortunate,” a game-show gag with gross-out prizes like “lick-a-hamster” and “toenail sandwich.”
In the concourse outside the arena, kids and parents are taking selfies at Instagram stations, strolling along with funnel cake and souvenirs in clear plastic baggies.
… kids have favorites, and Tyler is an MVP – he is the one most prominent in videos, known for crowd favorites like “Rage Monster,” an Incredible Hulk-style riff, and the host of “Wheel Unfortunate,” a character named Ned Forrester in a shaggy brown coat and curly wig.
But kids choose different favorites: The twins are beloved by twins, of course; and Garrett is the “Purple Hoser” (a reference to the old SCTV sketch show), the clean-freak who loves the color purple, while Cody is the big goofball known for wearing pink, which is a tip of the hat to Pink Power Ranger.
DUDE PERFECT LIVE SHOWS
A Dude Perfect live show has stunts — e.g. bungee jumping from a high perch while lobbing balls in a feat that looks like American Gladiators crossed with David Letterman’s “Stupid Human Tricks.”
Also featured is a game called “Cool or Not Cool” where the dudes tout wacky products which are then deemed, “cool” or “not cool.”
…The finale comes courtesy of Coby Cotton, aka Twin No. 1.
He’s wearing a Cooper Flagg Dallas Mavericks jersey, while his twin Cory rocks an L.A. Lakers jersey with Luka Doncic’s name…
Coby pulls out a giant cannon that blows smoke rings. Slight misfire at first, the contraption puffs into the faces of kids in the front row like an enormous spray of baby powder.
He tries it again, and the cannon shoots out a shivering cloudlike ring that hovers mid-arena as Tyler hurls a football through the center (kind of). Eighty-one percent cool, not bad.
The show lasted more than two hours.
The live show features a trivia game, a ranking of superheroes, a stunt where the dudes took to the upper balconies and tried to throw a Nerf ball into a mesh net on the stage…
The orange missile ended up sailing over audience heads and swished into the net.
The kids lose their minds! The energy generated by a Dude Perfect show could power the sun…
A MORE OLD-FASHIONED AMERICA
…There are serious moments.
“We truly believe God has given us this platform to do things that are much bigger than YouTube videos,” says Coby in a promo video for the charity Compassion International.
The dudes ask us to remember the Texas flood victims to whom the Dude Perfect organization donated $50,000.
They also encourage the crowd to shout out to first responders and the military.
Near the end of the show, a chant starts in the audience. “U-S-A! U-S-A!.”
Confetti flutters from the ceiling and blasts up from the floor. Confetti, everywhere.
A Dude Perfect America is a more old-fashioned America, the kind where kids screamed like maniacs outdoors but behaved themselves at church…
BUT THERE’S ONE MORE THING
“We came up with a really special tradition,” says Cory (aka Lakers jersey].
“It ended up being our personal favorite part of the entire show. If you guys just have three minutes.”
Tyler expounds on the reason for this:
“I know there’s kids in this audience who probably look up to one of these five guys on this stage.
My only ask would be that anything you admire about us, you also need to recognize that we are five imperfect humans who adamantly admit our need for a Savior, and that’s Jesus.”
The crowd roars.
“To the not-believers in our audience, you are loved and you have a purpose,” Tyler continues.
Coby leads the audience in a short prayer; when he’s done, the crowd of thousands says, “Amen” as confetti continues to rain from the rafters.
It’s close to 10 p.m. when the crowd files out, though 200 or so lucky VIP ticket holders wander upstairs for a private meet-and-greet.
The dudes, with water bottles and slices of pizza, sit down at a long table where they will smile and fist bump and take pictures with a series of giddy children.
Just how every weary YouTube star wants to cap a big sold-out show: more performing.
But the fans — and really, the kids — make this magic possible, so the dudes aren’t close to flagging.
They do this after each live show for an hour to 90 minutes -- however long it takes.
A little boy poses in front of the dudes and then whips around and points at Cory, Twin No. 2.
“I like you!” he shouts playfully.
Cory smiles and points back at him. “I like you, too!”
MORE INFORMATION
THE OFFICIALWEB SITE OF DUDE PERFECT -- https://dudeperfect.com/
ESPN documentary – “Dude Perfect – A Very Long Shot” -- https://www.espn.com/watch/catalog/8802c819-d112-4cd3-ae80-31729bd03cef/dude-perfect-a-very-long-shot