Who is Omari Peggy Collins?
It depends on who you ask. He would say just a kid from the east side of Charlotte. His fans clamored about Peggy. Literally, they all wondered who this hilarious off-camera voice was. I see a guy who never really wanted the fame, but it came to him anyway. Whoever Omari is, it all really started at North Carolina Central University.
“When I hit college, I really started walking into who I was gon’ be.”
He came from a family of educators, his grandparents were teachers, his mother a teacher as well. His dad was an activist, and the president of the Charlotte chapter of the NAACP and the Black Caucus. So him excelling at NCCU wasn’t a surprise. He was super active in college, even starting the school’s first campus web series, who would’ve known he would end up doing that for Allen Iverson of the NFL.
“That’s where I met Cam (Newton), he just pulled up at lunch counter at training camp, he pulled up on my computer asking for some footage, him and Thomas Davis.”
Cam Newton just needed the footage to prove a point to a teammate, but that moment birthed a new friendship and partnership. Omari already had an extensive background in digital. He oversaw digital content for the Carolina Panthers. He shot Super Bowls, National Championships, and everything in between. Cam was just starting his new media company, so the partnership was really perfect timing. Cam would eventually wind up in New England playing for the Patriots and that’s where Funky Friday was birthed.
“We used to drive an hour to New England, about two hours in the car every day, and Cam was like I just want to talk about something, get it off my chest, and I wanna keep it funky,” said Peggy. “Funky Friday started literally in the backseat of a car.”
Funky Friday was just the beginning. It started on Instagram, but they kept being consistent with it and Funky Friday started to blow up. When Cam Newton stopped playing, they dove full into content creation and Omari was overseeing all of it. Of course, it didn’t take long for another hit to be born in 4th & 1. And not too long after the beginning of that podcast, they made national headlines.
“First I was thankful, that ESPN and First Take was willing to clip it,” Omari Peggy Collins said. “But it really showed the power that we had, that the mic is loud.”
From that point on 4th And 1 was off to the races as one of the trendiest sports podcasts out. Yes, it had the legendary Cam Newton, but there was this off-camera voice that kept the energy fresh and offered a needed perspective to Cam’s bravado. It didn’t take long for fans to start asking about this Peggy character who Cam constantly mentions on the show, even interrupting Cam’s workouts at the gym to question him about Peggy’s whereabouts. The producers eventually gave him a go pro camera to make occasional appearances and Omari ran with it. He became the voice of the people on the show and an authentic one at that.
“The world knows me as Peggy, but I want the world to know Omari.”
The world will know who this creative is because of the type of man he is. He loves to pour life into people and that’s his favorite part about his journey. Whether it’s a random fan who wants to chop it up with Peggy on his birthday or speaking with kids at Usher’s New Look; he wants to motivate, spread love and spread God’s word.
“I wanna be the voice of myself, but also the voice of the people.”
