Retro tweets:
Meet the creative mind behind the hilarious and irreverent Twitter account known as Super 70s Sports
Meet the man behind the creative Twitter account Super 70s Sports.
By day, Ricky Cobb teaches sociology at Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills. He’s married and has five daughters and two stepdaughters. He’s a 47year-old Kentucky native who moved to the Chicago area in 2003.
In his other life, Cobb is the man behind Super 70s Sports, a sometimes brash, frequently hilarious and always entertaining Twitter account that pokes fun at athletes, celebrities and no-names alike, taking followers back to an era when mullets and muscle cars, thick mustaches and funky clothes — not to mention sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll — ruled.
“It’s an irreverent look at a really interesting era,” Cobb said this week from his Elmhurst home. “I’m a smartass. I make fun of stuff. It’s tongue-in-cheek.”
What Cobb started in earnest in 2015 “to amuse myself and maybe some of my friends and a few other people” has developed into Super 70s Sports LLC, complete with a website, podcast, regular radio interviews, a monthly magazine column and the promotion of an apparel company — plus 231,000 Twitter followers and counting.
“Initially it was just a hobby/pastime that I was doing on the side, combining my love for sports with my love for the era and merging comedy into that too,” Cobb said. “I never anticipated that it would take off and become as popular as it has.”
Scroll through the Super 70s timeline and you quickly catch on to his shtick: A typical post includes a photo from yesteryear — usually (but not limited to) an unflattering, awkward or embarrassing one — with a whimsical caption attached.
“There are no sacred cows,” Cobb said. “We’ll poke fun at anybody and everybody, but unless they’ve really got it coming, most of the jokes are done with a wink.”
And a smile.
His money tweet, posted Aug. 19, 2017, includes a photo of legendary broadcaster Howard Cosell holding a microphone, flanked by O.J. Simpson on his left and Bruce Jenner on his right as the trio hosted the second season of “Battle of the Network Stars” in 1977. The accompanying caption — a pseudo-quote from Cosell — reads: “Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve looked into the future and you will not believe this (expletive).” It has nearly 116,000 likes and 53,000 retweets on Twitter and has been shared countless times on Facebook and other social media sites.
“That one stands atop for the sheer impact,” Cobb said. “It still circles around — without attribution some of the time.”
Most of his tweets don’t hit it that big, but few — if any — are misses.
To be clear: Super 70s isn’t for everyone. Some tweets are PG-13 and even R-rated because of language. But for his target audience — Generation Xers in general and sports and entertainment fans specifically — the tweets resonate.
“A certain percentage of what I do, if you were there and if you remember, it’s almost like you create instant friends,” Cobb said. “I poke fun. It’s a little profane. But at the same time, I think it’s good-hearted, and I hope that comes through too.”
He makes no apologies.
“The one thing I learned from doing this is I am just being me,” Cobb said. “I feel like if you try to appeal to everybody, you’re not going to really, truly hit the target for probably almost anybody. I do what I do, and for the people that like it, I think they really, really like it. And for the people that don’t like it, there’s other stuff out there.
“I try to be true to myself. When people have this to say about the cursing or whatever … if you knew me and you hung out with me and you were my friend, that’s how I talk. So that’s how I’m going to tweet. It’s real easy. I don’t have to remember who I’m trying to be that day. I’m just myself, and it makes it simple.”
It’s not that simple, though. Cobb is an assistant professor, after all, so between that and his family, time isn’t on his side. He estimates he puts 50 hours per week into the Super 70s brand, which now includes working to launch his own line of merchandise.
“When I’m not at my day job — which I still love — I’m probably very likely thinking about Super 70s Sports, thinking about new material to tweet,” Cobb said, adding that his wife, Amy, is “instrumental” in helping with the business side so he can focus on the creative side.
About those tweets: Between his encyclopedic knowledge of sports and entertainment trivia — “I can’t find my car keys, but if you want to know Tony Gwynn’s career batting average, I can tell you” — and becoming a master at finding oddball images via the internet — “I’ve learned some tricks that are useful, but in the end it’s like fishing: No matter how skilled you are, some days you catch a lot and some days you don’t” — he cranks out roughly 15 to 20 and sometimes as many as 40 per day.
To be fair, a decent number of his tweets steer clear of profanity or criticism. Some relive athletes’ and entertainers’ glory days or crowning moments. Others offer birthday shout-outs or RIPs. And Cobb’s passion for sports and memorabilia — gaming cards, uniforms, team logos — is prevalent.
Other tweets simply spark flashbacks to followers’ wonder years, a time of bell bottoms and cigarette ads, big sunglasses and Big Wheels, station wagons and Gremlins, Archie Bunker and “Charlie’s Angels,” Electric Football and Stretch Armstrong.
“It’s almost a sort of communal thing,” Cobb said. “If you’re of a certain age, I guarantee you that we’ve got a lot in common. People enjoy taking a walk through the past. People like to laugh. And we have these shared experiences. … I love doing it.”
And his followers love what he does. Among them are big names such as Dale Earnhardt Jr. and John Elway, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers. Earnhardt, Dave Parker and Curtis Strange have appeared on his podcast, as have actors Barry Williams (Greg from “The Brady Bunch”) and Rob Lowe.
Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson “liked” a tweet in which Cobb posted a photo from a scene in the 1988 slapstick comedy “The Naked Gun” of Jackson walking toward Queen Elizabeth, with his quote from the film: “I must kill … the queen.”
“Occasionally I’ll get a response from somebody and just be, like, ‘Wow,’ ” Cobb said. “I’ve gotten used to prominent people following me now, but occasionally you do get starstruck. Just the fact that Reggie Jackson saw the tweet and thought it was funny — my inner 10-year-old kind of geeked out. That one was pretty crazy.”
But with that popularity comes the need to produce — time and again. “It’s a challenge I really enjoy: to find fresh, comedic angles to take,” he said.
And, of course, he occasionally hears from readers who find a tweet offensive.
“I got an email a few weeks ago from a guy asking me sincerely, ‘Don’t you think you’d be just as funny if you didn’t (curse)?’ ” Cobb said. “I wrote him back nicely and said, ‘Hey, I’m doing me, and if it’s not for you, I respect that. It’s not going to be for everybody.’ ”
So something he started as a hobby/ pastime to amuse himself and friends has taken on a life of its own.
“I was the kid in high school who was reading the USA Today sports section and making bad grades back in the ’80s,” Cobb said. “And I’m quite sure when I was barely hanging on for my life, grade-wise, to graduate, probably nobody thought that all the time I was spending looking at box scores and reading the statistical leaders in the paper was ever going to come in handy. But it’s funny how things turn out.”
Funny, indeed.
“I poke fun. It’s a little profane. But I think it’s good-hearted.”
— Ricky Cobb, the man behind the tweets @Super70sSports