A MAJOR AWARD

The Coalition for Excellence in Intercollegiate Athletics Podcasting (CEIAP) has released the 2025 nominees for its annual College Sports Podcaster of the Year award, and J. Adam Lucas is among the list of contenders.

Lucas has been a co-host of the Carolina Insider podcast on the Varsity Podcast Network since 2016. For some of the podcast’s history, he sat alongside “G College” as his podcasting partner, but in recent years he has worked with 2025 ESPN College Sportscaster of the Year, Jones Angell.

In general, the Carolina Insider podcast is released on Mondays and Fridays (a recent change from its previous common schedule of Tuesday/Friday). It is believed that there have been 673 episodes of the Pod–including 666 numbered episodes and 7 rapid, emergency, preview, or otherwise special, unnumbered episodes–spanning a total runtime of 1,031 hours, 44 minutes, and 50 seconds. There has however been some debate over how standalone interviews released on the podcast feed but not as actual “episodes” of the podcast should (or should not) count in those statistics.

Among the many roles and responsibilities Lucas has on the podcast, he is perhaps most leaned on for booking interviews with guests. His dedication to this task leads him to schedule these discussions at any time that the guest can make work, even if it means he has to record on New Year’s Eve. In addition to this off-the-air commitment, he also leads a beloved on-air segment cleverly named “Adam’s List.”

Rumors of Lucas’ retirement have been swirling for years, as co-host Jones Angell frequently tells listeners that he had to drag Adam into the studio to record. And while Lucas did briefly make a Michael Jordanesque transition from UNC sports podcasting to Eric Church column writing (a period of his life he refers to as “summer camp”), and occasionally still moonlights as a chronicler of Church’s concerts, he has continued to be a lovable presence on the show for nearly a decade.

While as of yet he has not actually won an award, this is already a dream come true for Lucas, who on a recent episode of the podcast issued a plea: “I would just like to be nominated.” Lucas currently resides in Wake County, NC, surrounded by Wolfpack fans who constantly harass him, going as far as to write “Go Pack” on his dinner receipts. This has given him an well-earned disdain for all things NC State, which he mentions often on the podcast.