97.5 The Fanatic host Bill Colarulo has a unique backstory, including working for the Eagles and Big Dom
Bill Colarulo spent years as a New Jersey lawyer before landing a part-time gig at The Fanatic. Now he's cohosting the station's new afternoon show.
If there’s one thing Bill Colarulo wants listeners to know, he’s not a lawyer doing sports talk — he’s a sports talker who happens to be a lawyer.
Colarulo, Mike Missanelli’s cohost at 97.5 The Fanatic for the better part of a year, is jumping to afternoons Monday to cohost a new show called Unfiltered alongside NBC Sports Philadelphia’s Ricky Bottalico and producer Sylvana Kelleher.
It’s been a fast rise for Colarulo, a South Jersey native and Temple grad who gave up a successful career as a lawyer running his own firm just three years ago to pursue his dream of talking about Philly sports for a living.
“I came home and I told my wife I really want to do this,” Colarulo said. “I don’t want to die with dreams. I want to die with memories. I want to do what I want to do. Life’s too short.”
The years Colarulo spent in the courtroom in front of juries certainly helped hone his ability to make concise and pointed arguments. But that experience also carried over to the broadcast booth in surprising ways, such as his ability to quickly build a strong relationship with the station’s listeners.
“When you’re talking to juries, you’re not talking to lawyers, you’re talking to people from all walks of life with different levels of education and from all different economic classes,” Colarulo said. “You’ve got to be able to relate to everybody on that jury, because they need to like you. They need to trust you.”
Despite his quick rise and unique path, Colarulo certainly seems built for today’s sports talk radio. Gone are the oversized personalities and sometimes outlandishly entertaining takes of Angelo Cataldi and Howard Eskin, and in are more measured hosts who direct their passion in a more honest way.
“I’m just trying to be myself and not do the hot take thing. I just find that to be lazy radio,” Colarulo said. “I know it may take longer to get attention by doing it this way, but I want people to know me for who I am and respect my opinions.”
Colarulo was a trial lawyer who sold his own firm
Even while attending high school at Bishop Eustace Prep in Pennsauken, Colarulo realized a career playing professional sports wasn’t in the cards. He did go on to play football and ice hockey at Gettysburg College, but chose becoming a lawyer as a safer path to prosperity than talking about sports for a living.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘That’s a really crowded field. I’m not going to be able to break in,’” Colarulo said.
After graduating from Temple Law, Colarulo worked for a couple different firms, where he went from doing legal work in an office to trying cases in front of a jury. After about six years working for other people, Colarulo decided to open his own law firm, but the sports talk bug was still nagging him.
So he started a podcast as a marketing tool for his business, a way to connect with clients a little differently and show a different side of his personality. His father, a former Philly cop who became Radnor’s police chief, came up with the show’s name — The Legal Hands to the Face podcast.
“I’m sure if I went back and listened to it now, I would think I was terrible,” Colarulo said. “We just turned the mic on and I went for like a half hour. When I’m done, the marketer there was like, ‘You’re really good at this.’”
So a few years later Colarulo sold the law firm — which had grown from three employees to over 30 — to his former partner and set about becoming a sports talker. He filmed clips and produced content daily in hopes of landing a gig — “It was a grind,” Colarulo said — but his first opportunity came in the form of an unpaid role with YouTube-based JAKIB Media.
That put him on The Fanatic’s radar, which hired him as a weekend host, a role he’s now transformed into cohosting the station’s most-popular time slot.
“We haven’t accomplished anything yet,” Colarulo said. “We got the opportunity, now we’ve got to grow something great.”
He worked for the Eagles and Big Dom as hired muscle
Even before he began practicing law, Colarulo’s passion for Philly sports found him working for the Eagles and the team’s head of security, Dom “Big Dom” DiSandro.
During Colarulo’s first year of law school at Temple, he was hired to provide personal player security, essentially hired muscle to make sure no one was messed with.
“This is when I was even bigger than I am now,” Colarulo joked. “Basically I would just hang in the locker room before the games, after the games, and I would be on the sidelines with the team.”
Colarulo worked for the Eagles for seven years, from the final seasons of Andy Reid’s tenure through Chip Kelly’s swift rise and fall. Being around Birds players in private moments stripped away some of Colarulo’s fandom, especially as some joked and smiled following a loss.
Though there was one player Colarulo said was the same in the locker room as he was in front of the cameras — Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins.
“He cared so much about the game,” Colarulo said, noting Dawkins would be in tears in the locker room following difficult losses.
“The emotion that he brought was so genuine and real,” Colarulo said. “And being able to see that, behind closed doors, made me respect Brian Dawkins even more. Because you didn’t always get that from a lot of players.”
Colarulo’s love of Sirianni became a running joke at The Fanatic
If you’re paid to offer an opinion, you’re bound to have a contrarian take or two. Colarulo is no exception to that rule, only his involves one of the most popular figures in Philly sports these days — Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni.
Coming off a Super Bowl victory and a contract extension, it seems hard to remember back to the beginning of last season, where many Eagles fans and pundits were ready to move on from Sirianni following 2023’s late-season collapse.
Even after last season’s slow start, Colarulo remained one of Sirianni’s biggest cheerleaders, defending the emotional coach’s role in getting the Eagles to their first Super Bowl against the Kansas City Chiefs in just his second season as head coach.
“The joke at the station started to be that I was related to Nick Sirianni because of how much I defended him,” Colarulo joked.
The mockery eventually morphed into Colarulo singing a song called “Sirianni Love” after every win, which as the season went on became a frequent feature on Mondays.
“It started out as a joke,” Colarulo said, “but it became kind of this tradition and good luck charm.”
Colarulo’s love of Sirianni doesn’t extend to the Phillies, where he remains concerned about manager Rob Thomson’s apparent lack of urgency and underperforming lineup full of stars.
“If [the Phillies] fall short this year, even though he’s had a lot of success, I think it could be time to make a move,” Colarulo said of Thomson. “Because they’ve taken a step back every single year now, in terms of how far they’ve gotten into the playoffs.”