New 'Boomer & Carton' Beer To Help Veterans Afford Education

Next week, Boomer Esiason and Craig Carton will make their annual trip to the Super Bowl host city, But this trip to Houston is different. The New York radio hosts bear gifts for their fellow sports media brethren.

The duo unveiled its own beer Tuesday night in Manhattan. "Smithwick's Blond Ale With Boomer & Carton" is now a limited-edition beer distributed in the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut tri-state Area. All proceeds go to the Veterans Education Challenge, a charity that helps veterans attend college by providing scholarships not covered by the G.I. Bill. "No one is making any money off this," both say.

Esiason first linked up with Smithwick's in Ireland and brought the hops to Carton.

"I like the ale taste," Esiason says. "I wanted something blonde. I went through about six or seven formulations before I found something that I liked, but Numnuts had to like it too.

"Since we do have the most powerful microphones in tri-state radio, the power is significant. We wanted to make sure we did it right. That's why it took two and a half years to get to this point."

Broadcasting on New York's WFAN, Boomer & Carton will run from 5 a.m-9 a.m. Houston local time next week. Esiason, a four-time Pro Bowl quarterback, has a series of other gigs with CBS Sports and Westwood One. But Carton just has the WFAN.

"I don't really like Houston," Carton says. "Conceptually, I think it's a bad place to have a Super Bowl. I'm gonna take [the beer] to Houston and I'm gonna bring it into Houston bars. Boomer has a lot of other stuff to do, but my day starts at 9:01 a.m. You're going to find this beer at at least 20 bars, clubs, pubs in Houston. Houston will know of this beer within a week."

Esiason jokes about bringing the ale into the stadium on game day.

"If I can get Tom Brady to stand on the Super Bowl dais with it, that would be awesome," he says. "The way he eats and sleeps now, I can't see him doing that. But he'd be the guy I'd try to put it in his hand after winning his fifth Super Bowl."

Carton does not have specific people in Houston that he wants to give the beer to. He just wants to sprinkle it around town. Back in New York, he has three recipients in mind.

"I would take it to Carmelo Anthony and tell him it's the magic to help him make game-winning shots," Carton says. "I would take a case to the New York Jets organization and hopefully have them drink nine beers and have them realize all the wrongs they've committed to us Jets fans and hopefully hire a better coach and a real quarterback. I'd take another case and leave it on Mike Francesa's front doorstep just because."

Asked if he thought other WFAN hosts would promote the product, Carton said, "No. I have no expectation of anyone else at The FAN promoting it, which is their loss because this is a great cause and great beer."

With a January release, the hosts and Smithwick's believe the beer will last through St. Patrick's Day. If it sells out before then, even better for the foundation and those involved.

Boomer & Carton listeners will hear a healthy dose of promotion for the beer through Esiason and Carton in the coming weeks. Esiason notes that since the duo will not make a profit off the product, they can "organically" banter about it as much as they want, while Carton says he will be "respectful" to the fact listeners do not want to only hear about beer.

"We didn't want to attach it to our foundations," Esiason says. "We wanted to do this for someone else."

Carton says, "You believe in the product, you believe in the cause, and then you believe egotistically in your ability to sell it, and we can't do that without talking about it and tweeting about it.

"Soldiers come home older than the average college graduate. They may have spouses, kids, mortgages and bills and they want to go get an education because they want to be successful in life beyond their military experience and the G.I. Bill only covers so much. If you're a kid who comes back from Afghanistan and you want to go to Harvard, you're still $40,000 short. We went to college because your supposed to go to college after high school. These people take four or five years out of their life and then they want to go to college. I want to support them."

While Carton is mostly happy with the finished product, he expected the label on his first beer to look different. Esiason, who is 6-5, towers over Carton.

"I said that I wanted to be more handsome and a bigger presence and they said, 'Well, that would be fraudulent,' so we're going to give it to the American people the way it is. Sadly, this is the way it is."

Jokes aside, these two guys have created a product for a good cause that should fit the audience in their backyard. But just in case, they are taking the beer to Super Bowl to show the world (even the knuckleheads).

-- Follow Jeff Eisenband on Twitter @JeffEisenband. Like Jeff Eisenband on Facebook.