You can put me right there in the same boat as a lot of you.

A few weeks back, I was on the Southside, zipping down Abercorn back toward downtown Savannah when I saw the sign. Clear as day.

“Coach’s Southside”

I smiled, nodded and thought “Oh wow, check out John. Makin the move to build an empire.” I made a mental note to make a couple of calls and share the story here with you and went back to my audio book. Van Halen Rising by Greg Renoff, by the way. A great great story so far, but I digress.

For those that don’t know, Coach’s Corner is Savannah’s most popular sports bar. Located on Victory Drive in Thunderbolt, the crew has its finger on the pulse of the local community. It certainly belongs in the top 5 local watering holes in the county. Braves, Bulldogs and Falcons are the primary servings there, but you’ll also get a heaping helping of NASCAR in season as well.

Out back is a concert stage and venue that frequently hosts live music and a ton of tribute bands rolling through the area.

For years, it was run largely by John Henderson and his family.

Of course, seeing the sign up on Savannah’s Southside got my attention. Finding out, however, who or what was behind the apparent expansion wasn’t a priority.

That is, until I started fielding text messages from friends. Three in all. It wasn’t like it was switchboard central in here.

Apparently there was some buzz on social media offering conflicting reports on what exactly was going on with, soon to be, 2 Coach’s in Savannah.

So we made the call.

“Oh, no man.” John said “I took a big step back from everything a few years ago.”

“Five heart attacks and a bypass surgery later, I’m just around to help run things, but I’m not involved like I used to.”

“You need to talk to Vinny. He’s my brother in law.”

Thank you sir. Go Dawgs.

Vinny Cusanelli is John’s wife’s brother. Of course he is, John just told us that.

Vinny’s been in the trenches with John at Coach’s since the early 90’s, he says. I’m guessing back in the day when John decided to sleep in that teepee during the Atlanta Braves World Series run in whatever year that was (because he did), he needed someone to sling wings. Enter Vinny.

“I’ve been in Coach’s forever.” Vinny told me “A friend of mine, Chris was given the opportunity to take over the space on the Southside, so he called me.”

Chris is a veteran bar/restaurant owner in town. Barrelhouse South and Rogue Water downtown are on his resume. Seeing an opportunity to takeover the space formerly occupied by Tailgate Sports Bar, he jumped at it. And made the call to Vinny to help him get it going.

“We’ve been busy.” Vinny says “We added a new 50 foot bar, all new TVs and a new bathroom.”

Construction, as I write this, continues. Building the space is the hard part. Vinny tells me the menu? Fans of the food at Coach’s will be happy to hear that there will be a lot of copy and paste at Coach’s Southside.

“Same wings, same chicken fingers, same pizza” he says.

But quite possibly not the same vibe.

The plan right now is for Coach’s Southside to be open until 3:00am. I’ve not done a lick of research, but I’m guessing it will be the latest spot to get food-other than the breakfast spots-in town. That was a big appeal to Vinny.

“Victory Drive, man. They go to sleep at 9 o’clock.” he says.

I feel ya, Vinny. I feel ya.

There was no talk of music or entertainment at Coach’s Southside, but one would imagine there will be both if the plan is to stay open that late. We know there will be plenty of sports, but sometimes you need a little more, say, when the Dawgs wrapped up at 7:30pm.

But what about the name? Clearly that is the 600 pound gorilla in the room. Everyone made it clear that this isn’t an ‘expansion.’ Coach’s Corner and Coach’s Southside will be run entirely independent of each other. The name? They were OK with its use because they are keeping it in the family.

It sure got our attention, didn’t it?

Look for Coach’s Southside to open in roughly 5-6 weeks from Mid-August, give or take some inspections and red tape ballyhoo.

Meanwhile, toe meets leather on August 30th.

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