‘Popeyes Meme Kid’ Dieunerst Collin Playing College Football, Nabs Popeyes NIL Deal

Dieunerst Collin, likely known to you and yours as the Popeyes meme kid, is now a freshman playing football for Lake Erie College. And the 19-year-old fittingly just secured a deal with Popeyes.

As reported by Front Office Sports, and confirmed to Complex by Collin, he’s signed an NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) deal with the chicken chain.

In a how it started/how it’s going–style IG post this week (above), Collin wrote, “I need everyone to repost this and tag @popeyes I just wanna talk [business].”

He shared a similar version on Twitter, which Popeyes retweeted Tuesday night, adding, “Let’s get this bread(ing)✍️.”

The deal was preceded by people online calling for this exact result in the last couple days.

Lake Erie, a D-II school, enlisted Collin as an offensive lineman. In December 2021, Collin’s East Orange High School football team won the New Jersey state championship.

For an interview with Dieunerst the same month, Complex’s Zion Olojede recalled in his intro, “In a clip that went viral on Vine in 2013, a 9-year-old Collin, wearing a yellow T-shirt, side eyes the camera as he stands in a Popeyes restaurant. The video was played nearly 20 million times on the platform and became one of the most recognizable memes of the internet era.”