Growing up as a young black youth in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, I’ve always loved watching sports. I enjoyed playing sports as well, primarily baseball and football, but my joy came from just simply watching sports and seeing the stories unfold, just as much as being part of the stories myself. However, it wasn’t just the fact that I watched sports. It’s what stuck in my head better than anything. I could remember player’s names, player’s stats, the scores of a game and when they happened, in a way none of my peers could match. If you asked anyone who knew me from my Hawthorne Elementary, Heritage Middle School, and Westerville South High School days, they would have told you that Troy McDonald was going to “Stump the Schwab” and be on SportsCenter (though to be totally honest, Schwab was leagues ahead of me) If you asked Troy McDonald from 20 years ago, he would have told you that was the goal. I was going to be on SportsCenter!

Unfortunately, after a semester long stint at the University of Toledo. My dreams of being the next Stuart Scott on SportsCenter came to a screeching halt and eventually died. It wasn’t from a lack of effort. I went to class, I didn’t have bad grades, and I even wrote Facebook blogs on the side for my friends called “College Football Notes” to talk about my number one passion, which is watching college football. What killed my dream, was not having enough money to stay in school, even when I tried to apply for financial aid.

After my time at Toledo came to an end, I came back to Columbus, Ohio as a heartbroken and depressed 19 year old that needed to find a job. Though my time in Toledo was up, my hopes and dreams of becoming a sportswriter hadn’t truly died in my mind yet. I still wrote “College Football Notes” and even created a college football pick em game from it that I still run to this day. I would read the columns written by Pete Fiutak and Matt Zemek on collegefootballnews.com (where I got the name College Football Notes from haha). I also read the work of beat writers for the Florida Sun-Sentinel that my big brother, Dijon, would read to get news on his favorite sports team the Miami Hurricanes. However, finding a job was tough and depressing. It eventually led to my parents deciding that I needed to go to the Cleveland Job Corp Academy, a place generally reserved for inner city high school drop outs and not suburban college dropouts like myself, to learn a trade. I’m not trying to sound better than anyone, I still have good friends I made there. I’m just stating facts that even the GED teachers told me when I was there.

While my time at the Cleveland Job Corp Academy was overall pretty shitty, and I didn’t even end up getting a certification for the computer repair trade that I worked hard for, there were some really positive things I gained while I was there.

One positive I learned, was that I was really fucking smart! When I first got to the Cleveland Job Corps Academy, I took two tests called the “TABE tests”, one was a math test, while the other was a reading and comprehension test. If you passed both tests, you would earn $20 ($10 for each test passed). Not only was I the first one done with each test, I had the 2nd highest scores on the tests among the group of peers I came with (the only person that did better than me was Joshua Zinck, a friend of mine to this day). I helped tutor some of my friends that were there to help them get into the STNA and LPN programs. While doing so I discovered that some academic things that I knew by the 4th grade, my friends had never learned (which was more of a product of the quality of curriculum that I got going to Westerville City Schools, compared to that of the various inner city school districts throughout Ohio and Michigan where they had attended). However, the moment that told me I was really fucking smart, was while taking an aptitude test for the ITT Tech Cleveland Branch (which in hindsight, I should have gone there and learned how to code!), I scored the highest score their branch had ever seen! As a mere 3.0 GPA student who scored a 21 on the SAT and graduated in the middle of my graduating class, I honestly didn’t think I was that bright. My time at the Cleveland Job Corp Academy reminded me, not only was I not stupid, I was actually pretty fucking smart and capable!

The other positive about going to Cleveland Job Corp Academy, was that I discovered my other passion in life… anime! Prior to going to Job Corp, I had only watched the anime that most people had watched. I saw the anime that were broadcast on Toonami and Adult Swim on Saturday nights. Classics such as DragonBall Z, YuYu Hakusho, bits and pieces of Full Metal Alchemist, Death Note, and Ghost in Shell. While I was a huge Pokemon fan and I did like anime, it wasn’t until I met my friend Clark Thomas (that I lost contact with, but still love him like a brother) that I grew to LOVE anime! Somehow, someway, Clark would find ways to pirate torrent on our slow ass Job Corp computers. In our dorm room, me, Clark, and our two other roommates would watch anime together on the laptop he stored the pirated anime on. Clark hipped me to some anime I had never even heard of at the time, but the two that stood out to me the most were “Tsukihime”, and “Fate Stay Night”. Clark opened the door to all of what anime had to offer, and then I walked through the door when Dijon and I watched Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and Azumanga Daioh together on YouTube. The floodgates to my anime fandom had burst WIDE OPEN!

I wasn’t just a sports fanatic anymore… I was now an anime otaku.

After I left Job Corp, eventually got a job, and got an apartment with my brother. My love for anime went to a whole new level. We had this subscription through our cable (shoutout to Insight Communications) called Anime Network on Demand, and it provided access to all the Sentai Network licensed anime, that I would watch daily and stay up to date with (little did I know at the time, I was essentially keeping up with seasonal anime). I watched everything Anime Network on Demand threw at me! I watched idol anime, mecha anime, ecchi anime (this was the first time I had ever seen uncensored anime titties and I was like WHAT?!), dark anime, rom-coms, mature josei anime, you name it! I even watched this anime called Tokyo Magnitude 8.0. which was the first anime to make me break down and cry. I loved everything about anime! I loved how cute it could be, yet it could also be dark. I loved how silly it could be, yet it could also be mature. It could be mindless, but then it could fill you with all kinds of emotion. It allowed me to peer through a lens and get a glimpse of the beautiful country called Japan, that was futuristic yet steeped in history at the same time! Anime became everything to me, and became something that stood equally next to the love and passion that sports had held alone for most of my life.

But could they coexist? Could I really love both sports and anime together?

Although sports anime is a thing that exists (and most of them are really fucking good), the dichotomy of being a sports fan and an anime fan was pretty rigid, despite both of them ironically being pretty much the same (in a certain way) from a fan experience perspective. (I will explain, haha!). It was the sports jocks that were the accepted group, while they stuffed the anime nerds in a locker. But after some thought I realized that, during my childhood, I got ostracized by my peers for liking sports so much and “not having a life”. Now as an adult who loves anime, I’m told I’m weird for liking cartoons so much and “not having a life”. No matter which one I gave up I was never going to have a life in the eyes of the masses and was going to be a weirdo for liking something so much. So I did what any smart person should do…

I embraced both of my passions and brought sports and anime together!

My college football pick em that I had derived from the “College Football Notes” of my college and Job Corps days, is now Panda’s College Football Pick Em. In the updated version, all 134 FBS teams (and some FCS teams) have an anime character representative that aesthetically represents each team (I also have an NFL Pick Em that uses Pokemon character reps). I rock rom-com anime t-shirts with Jordan’s and Cinnamoroll hats (because I love Hello Kitty and Sanrio too). And every now and then, I put on some Sailor Moon on a College Football Saturday while I watch some games. (the perks of my infamous 3 tv setup!!!)

My days of being a sports junkie whose goal was to “Stump the Schwab” and make it to SportsCenter are gone and my dream is dead.

But a new goal has been born, and is still quite attainable, and I plan on attaining it.

My goal is to type a blog post like this, make videos on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and whatever other social media platforms I can, along with livestreams. I want to share my love and passion for both sports and anime in a way that no one else can, because no one else loves both of these things like I do!

There are people who may like sports more than me, and know sports better than me. There are people who may like anime more than me, and know anime better than me. But there is no person on this planet that knows, likes, and can bring sports and anime together in perfect harmony like I can!

My name is Troy McDonald, but you can call me “Troy the Panda” (because I am half man, half panda bear)… and I will be the greatest sports and anime otaku that has ever lived!

In time, your kids will have to Google me like Curt Cignetti! Believe it!

But don’t mind me… I’m just talkin!