Kev Roché: An inside look at the man behind your favorite Cocky and ESPN cartoons

Growing up as an only child with a lot of downtime, Kev Roché needed to find ways to entertain himself. One time, his parents got him a “How to Draw Blitz Cartoons by Bruce Blitz” book, which led Roché down a rabbit hole of learning how to draw.

“Apparently, I was just kind of like on the floor drawing,” Roché recalled. “If I didn’t get the eyes right, I just crumpled up the whole paper and threw it away. So we might have ran through through some paper early. But I found a way to be a little more efficient as the years went on.”

As a big sports fan, Roché took a stab at drawing the iconic Chicago Bulls logo, which he’d draw repeatedly in his school notebooks.

But as he grew older, he knew this was something he could do for a living. To become a cartoonist. And he did.

Now, his passion for drawing cartoons has taken him to putting together funny sketches for ESPN and even designing logos for his alma mater, South Carolina.

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The beginning

While at home one afternoon, Roché made himself a turkey sandwich for lunch. At the same time, he was watching an episode of the Scott Van Pelt Show on ESPN, which began airing in 2009.

On the set of the show, there would be small frames of artwork. Roché described it as “some kids’ drawing of Van Pelt” and there were also turtle drawings, a nod to Van Pelt, who went to Maryland.

Being the artist that he was, Roché thought to himself, “I think I might be able to draw a little better than this crayon drawing of a Terrapin.”

“So I drew a poster of SVP and Russillo. I sent it in because that was when they had the hotline, and they actually responded to it right away,” he said. “Asked if they could use it on the show. I was like, of course. And then, (Ryen) Russillo sent me just like a real quick email, a follow up. Just five words like, ‘Love the pic. Thanks, man.’ Something real short. But after that, I had his email. So he kind of messed up there.”

With the ability to now email someone as big as Russillo was at ESPN, Roché took complete advantage of this opportunity. He’d go back and forth with him, even sending sketches of other ESPN personalities such as Todd McShay and Mel Kiper.

Eventually, he got an email back from Russillo with the chance to help out on a more permanent basis. Roché helped design cartoons and other artwork for the SVP and Russillo show, which led to him landing an even bigger job.

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Sunday Night Baseball

In 2015, Van Pelt made the decision to leave his show with Russillo to become a solo anchor for the late night edition of SportsCenter, a position he still holds to this day. Meanwhile, Russillo continued to work for ESPN and hosted the Ryen Russillo Show until 2017.

With the split between Van Pelt and Russillo, this left Roché in a spot without work to do. That was until he got lucky with another opportunity to help the company.

During a random ESPN meeting, all employees involved were required to bring some new ideas to the table to spice up their Major League Baseball coverage. One of the employees, a producer who also helped out with SVP and Russillo, remembered Roché and pitched an idea to have him design cartoons for Sunday Night Baseball broadcasts.

More than seven years later, Roché still creates cartoons for the weekly baseball broadcasts. His work has even captured the attention of future Hall of Famers like Miguel Cabrera, who had his picture taken with a drawing Roché made of him. It’s a photo that Roché now uses as his X (formerly Twitter) profile picture.

“That Miggy pic was real cool. It was a producer who sent that,” Roché said. “I think (Cabrera) was just up there (in the press box) taping some stuff. My work was on the backdrop behind in the booth. So he was just up there, and I guess he saw the backdrop and recreated the pic. I was like, ‘Yeah, that might be the profile pic for a while.'”

Roché’s work for Sunday Night Baseball even allowed him to do some personal work for players that wanted something drawn for themselves. The most notable of which to reach out was Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman.

“A representative for Freddie Freeman reached out. And I did a commission for Freddie’s 1000th hit. I think we’re going to do another one for his 2000th hit. So that’s been cool,” Roché said. “Any of that stuff where people in the industry are just like, ‘Oh, that’s nice. I’d actually like to get something similar.’ It’s a surreal moment. I mean, you grew up watching Freddie Freeman play baseball, and then he’s on your TV all the time. And he’s the one being like, ‘Hey, would you commemorate my 1000th hit with a cartoon?’ That’s kind of a cool moment.”

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Returning home

When Roché graduated from South Carolina in 2005, Twitter wasn’t around yet. In fact, it didn’t become a thing until 2006. Not having that tool at his disposal made it a lot harder for his work to gain some traction.

“It was kind of just like blind resumes you’re sending to all these different book publishing places to try to get noticed,” he said.

But once Twitter took off, it made Roché’s life that much easier. Being able to use that platform helped him get noticed by his alma mater, specifically by Langston Moore and Preston Thorne.

Moore and Thorne, who played together on South Carolina’s defensive line in the early 2000s, joined forces again to work on a series of children’s books that had a Gamecock-centric feel to them. In need of someone to help illustrate and bring their stories to life, they reached out to Roché for help.

“I guess if you just tweet enough Carolina stuff, somebody will find you,” Roché said.

That wouldn’t be the last time Roché worked on any South Carolina-related projects, though. Eric Nichols, the Deputy Athletics Director/External Operations at South Carolina at the time, got in contact with the cartoonist. And the ball began to roll from there. Roché was officially set to work with the university.

The main task South Carolina assigned to Roché was the Cocky redesign project. He had to draw six different cartoon versions of the university’s beloved mascot, which would be put to use for various events and sports teams.

But it wasn’t as simple as picking up a pencil and doodling away. There was a list of requirements that came along with bringing Cocky to life.

“Obviously, Cocky, the mascot, is pretty specific,” Roché said. “You can’t shy away from big things. I got a big list of them still wanting the big yellow feet. We need him flapping the beak. So no major changes. I just think they were looking for like a little different style to it. Maybe a little more personality.”

When his designs were all set and done, Roché said the different Cocky cartoons have appeared on promotional merchandise. He even got to draw the Cocky logo that can be seen worn by the golf teams. But there was one design he was shocked to see appear on a certain uniform.

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An unexpected scroll through his phone led to…

On the afternoon of Nov. 16, Roché was scrolling through some of the apps on his phone. When he clicked on X, he saw something that immediately caught his eye.

The South Carolina women’s basketball team posted a teaser video to showcase a new uniform that would be worn for its matchup against Clemson that night. The warmup shirts featured a new-looking design of Cocky’s face. On the belt portion of the white shorts that featured garnet and gold trimmings on the side, the same Cocky face appeared.

It was one of the many cartoons created by Roché. And he had no idea this was going to happen.

“Just to see the face pop up with the thick eyebrows, I don’t know if you call it like a signature, but that’s kind of how it’s easy to distinguish,” he said. “Once I saw that and saw it in the actual stitching of the jersey and on a screen printed shirt, which of course is cool, but to have it on the actual jersey, that was kind of neat.”

Rivalry game = new 🧵 pic.twitter.com/wljUQerLu3

— South Carolina Women's Basketball (@GamecockWBB) November 16, 2023

It was one of those moments that was a blur for Roché. Too surreal to even think about what he just saw. The next thing he did was copy the link to the video and send it to his family and friends.

“I’ll take opening the phone and seeing that on the timeline any day,” Roché said.

According to Ari Moore, the team’s director of operations, the idea and process of getting these special uniforms together began in June 2022.

“Every couple of years, we try to think of an outside-the-box type of uniform. So it used to be just your pink uniform. And that’s what most teams had as their additional uniform. And then, it became more of like how football and other sports like the NBA have their city series (jerseys). It kind of became like, what can this uniform add storytelling and recruiting wise?” Moore said.

At first, there were more than two different concepts of what the Cocky uniform might look like. Moore said the jersey was supposed to feature a Cocky logo on the front, but Under Armour forced them to go back to the traditional block C that is synonymous with the university. So they settled to have the Cocky design on other items like the warmup shirts and shorts belt.

When the players caught wind of what the uniforms would look like, they were a little hesitant at first because of how much yellow was included. But that changed once they put them on.

“The first one to see it was Ashlyn (Watkins) because we did the promo video with her. And when she saw it, Ashlyn was like, huh? But when she put it on, she was like, ‘No, I really liked this. This is really cool,'” Moore said.

“Anytime you do something different and new, it takes a little bit of adjusting because you’re unsure of what the response will be. But I think once they realized that number one, we won in them, because that was the most important thing. We had to win. I think it just cemented them as cool, dope uniforms that will probably get a little bit more playing time in the near future.”

After beating Clemson 109-40 in the new-look uniforms the first time, South Carolina will wear them again on Sunday when it faces No. 11 Utah.

What was once just something fun for him to do as a kid turned into something much bigger than Roché ever could’ve imagined.

“That was pretty surreal,” he said. “I grew up here, this is the school I went to. I’ve always been a big fan. To be able to work for any school on a logo project is cool. But when it’s your alma mater and the team you root for, it adds a couple levels to it. So yeah, it’s always a cool moment.”

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