by Joseph Back “It was all pretty quick,” Stanley Boyd alum and Class of 1996 graduate Charlie McCrackin said of a comedy sketch he did recently for the final episode of this season’s FOX NFL Sunday broadcast nationally before the NFC Championship on TV. “I was contacted about it last Tuesday,” he said.

The spot, which features a bumbling announcer in a voice recording studio, has Mc-Crackin flub some lines for comedic purposes.

“The script is right in front of you. We left room for you to improvise some lines,” the soundboard operator tells McCrackin’s character in the recording room, who then promptly fumbles his delivery: “It’s the Buffalo Bills against the Kansas City Chiefs and the Chiefs are going to win for sure,” McCrackin says, being interrupted by the soundboard operator.

“Yeah, we can’t say the Chiefs are going to win,” he says, to which McCrackin’s character says “gotcha,” than proceeds to flub some more lines.

“Buffalo heads to Kansas City and I’ve just been informed the Bills are going win for sure,” See TV SPOT, Page 9 S-B Alum Charlie McCrackin at the mic in an NFC Championship comedy sketch. The sketch, which is 45 seconds long, is called FOX 45, while another sketch twice as long is called FOX 90, McCrackin said.

McCrackin says while pretending that something has just come into his earpiece in the voice recording studio. The soundboard operator interrupts again.

“We actually don’t know who’s going to win,” he says, opting to try one more time. Mc-Crackin clears his throat with a laugh, then continues.

“Bills, Chiefs, no one knows who’s going to win,” McCrackin says, earning two thumbs up from the soundboard operator, before launching into a string of unrelated asides that makes the soundboard operator cover his face with his hands and re-interrupt.

“Uh, I think we got it,” he tells McCrackin’s character.

“Are you sure?” McCrackin asks. “I didn’t see the red ‘record’ light on.” Just then, the screen cuts back to a FOX 45 NFL logo while another voiceover says, “we got it.” Get it?

McCrackin said that after being contacted on Tuesday for the role he had to be tested for COVID in order to be cleared for work on Friday, after which the spot was edited for TV on Sunday. Lasting just seconds but taking “about four hours to shoot” due to the need to get many different camera angles and lines for editor options, the road to national prominence started, locally, where McCrackin attended Holy Family Catholic Elementary and was also co-captain

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of the 1995 football team that won the Division Four State Championship for Stanley-Boyd. Truth be told, Stanley had a “formative influence” on him, one that he’s carried into the here and now.

“I always wanted to be a writer and an actor,” he said, “and certainly Stanley had a huge, formative impact on my sense of humor and my life in general.” McCrackin and his wife even have a son named Stanley to honor his hometown. So what does the former S-B alum do these days? Turns out, he’s into acting.

“I am a television writer, actor and comedian known primarily for my work writing for and playing Coach Novak on the half-hour comedy A. P. Bio,” he says, which stars Glenn Howerton, Patton Oswalt, and Paula Pell, and is currently in the process of writing its fourth season. “Because A. P. Bio is set in a Midwest high school, I pull from my high school experience in Stanley every day in the writer’s room to make the characters and situation sound and feel authentic,” he said. “Stanley is a continuous source of inspiration.” With sister Bridget Brenner a teacher at Stanley-Boyd and her husband Nick the co-owner and operator of Breezy Acres auto body shop along with a niece in the area as well, it might be said that the McCrackin legacy is here to stay—as well as make it onto national television and streaming comedy.