FAIRFIELD - When rumors first started swirling of the Los Angeles Clippers trading James Harden to the Cleveland Cavaliers, some sport fans wanted to confirm the rumors directly with a Fairfield Warde High School freshman. 

Chase Coburn, 15, said people messaged him on Instagram wondering if he'd have a take on the trade.

The teenager has amassed more than 100,000 followers on his Instagram account, chase_sports_news and almost 3,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel Chase's Sports News, where he has interviewed ESPN insiders, such as Adam Schefter and Mike Greenberg. 

"The fact that I have people reaching out to me to get their sports content, that's what I want," Coburn said. "I want that at an even more amplified level."

Coburn primarily covers professional sports, including the NFL and NBA, but has also covered college athletics, including the University of Connecticut Huskies' football team and the Fairfield University Stags. 

"I have so many people tell me, 'You're going nowhere, this is just a dumb thing, who is this kid?'" Coburn said. "I don't believe in that. I've tuned them out."

He said he wants to be "the go to figure" for sports information and to build "a sports media empire of my age." 

That dream began when he was 7 years old and watched Alex Ovechkin lead the Washington Capitals to win the Stanley Cup in 2018, the franchise's first. His father bought two tickets, but one seat was closer to the rink and the other was higher up in the stands. 

So Coburn sat on his father's lap near the Capital's bench during Game Three.  

"From that moment on, I just fell in love with sports," Coburn said. "I fell in love with the players, the stats. I really became obsessed with the game." 

Then in 2020, when he was in third grade, Coburn's mother signed him up for a three-week virtual sports broadcasting camp. 

He said he continues to be a part of those camps to "harden my craft." 

"I was going to talk about sports anyway, so it may as well just be work for a living," Coburn said. 

He started a podcast in June 2021 and "really started taking it seriously" in terms of content creation in summer 2024. Coburn said he manages all aspects of the content creation himself, whether it be editing, posting or helping it on search engines.

Fairfield residents may know him as the reporter behind Chasing the Stags, a video series for Fairfield University where Coburn asks Fairfield University athletes less-sports focused questions to learn about them personally. 

Some may also recognize him from his spots on News Nation, which he called "an awesome experience," and his appearance on the MakeShift Project, a podcast where Coburn named all 57 NBA Finals MVPs. That video, he said, got more than 40 million views across multiple platforms and was even reposted by ESPN. 

"A lot of people now refer to me as the Finals MVP kid now, so it's pretty funny," Coburn said. 

Coburn said his authenticity is his "most coveted trait" and something that helped build his following. He said he doesn't "change at all" when the cameras are on. 

He also said he's reached out to people of his own volition to build relationships and appear on shows or get guests on his own. Building that relationship with ESPN, he said, was what resulted in Schefter and Greenberg speaking with him. 

Coburn also said he studies some of the professional broadcasters, such as Stephen A. Smith and Rich Eisen, to "take some tactics from the best in the world and add my own creative flair."

"You need to have the takes, which does come from watching games and having knowledge, but more importantly, knowing how to articulate those thoughts at a high level," Coburn said. 

He said he wouldn't be broadcasting if it wasn't fun and that on days when it does get tough, his parents are his "backbone" and his biggest cheerleaders.

"My parents are the reason why I do this every single day," Coburn said. 

While Coburn loves to talk about sports, he also wants to use that growing community to "actually help people."

One of those organizations was Project ALS, a nonprofit with the goal of supporting research to develop treatments and a cure for ALS. Coburn's grandmother died from ALS. 

"That really is my end goal and if there's any way that I can help those who are really struggling, those who are really in need, that is most important to me," Coburn said. 

This article originally published at Over 100K followers get their sports news from this 15-year-old from Fairfield.