Noah Knigga

About

Noah Knigga is the name of a High School football athlete from the U.S. who went viral in early January 2024 after he started publicly going on recruiting trips before college. A 2023 All-State top underclassman athlete, Noah Knigga became a trending topic of discourse, media coverage and memes online shortly after a post about him visiting West Virginia went viral, leading to talks about his name and future in football.

Career

As a junior in High School, Noah Knigga has been awarded high-placing positions in stat sheets and college prospect rankings, leading to increased media presence on him leading into the start of 2024.^[6]

On January 4th, 2024, after announcing on X / Twitter^[7] that he was heading to West Virginia on a visit, as part of possibly being scouted for the college, the Facebook page NFL Memes^[1] uploaded the edited status with a comment and caption saying that it'll be impossible for the announcers to say his name in coverage during games (shown below). Noah Knigga's X post received over 29.7 million views and 4,300 likes in four days, while the NFL Memes repost received over 37,000 reactions and 18,000 shares in a similar timeframe.

Online Presence

As his tweet in early January 2024 spread online, Noah Knigga became increasingly discussed by both the media and internet users, largely reacting to his name.^[8] On January 4th, 2023, X user @limitedtime365^[2] replied to the original post by Noah, using a picture of Noah's X page and bio, creating a fill-in-the-blank joke using his name to finish the phrase, "Listen bro, I can't help u with this.. but I _____ who can," earning over 1,300 likes and 67,000 views in one day (shown below). This type of joke playing off his name would prove to be a common example of memes referencing the football player as he trended online.

After Noah Knigga started to go viral due to his name and his potential to enter into college football and possibly the NFL, many different responses started to appear on social media. For example, on January 5th, 2024, the ex-professional football player Robert Griffin III^[3] quote retweeted the post about visiting West Virginia while captioning it by saying, "That Naysayer built the arc," garnering over 3.4 million views in 10 hours (shown below).

Later that day, the Pat McAfee show on ESPN had a brief segment mentioning Noah Knigga. In the segment, they talked about his future prospects in playing football, his name and what that could mean for the future. Noah Knigga then uploaded that part of the segment to his personal X^[4] account, earning over 1.4 million views in four hours (shown below).

Pronunciation

Part of the viral spread of Noah Knigga in early 2024 came from people trying to pronounce his name, with some guessing as to the origin behind it.

On January 5th, 2024, Noah Knigga confirmed via direct messages with Know Your Meme that the family name has its roots in Poland, with traditional Polish names requiring the letters to be said rather than silent. This leads to a pronunciation similar to how many of the memes referencing it would expect it to be said.

Also on January 5th, X user @1ZetaBlu_^[5] uploaded part of an interview that was done with Noah's father, Ryan Knigga, explaining how you pronounce their last name. The interview snippet quickly went viral, gaining over 4 million views in four hours as people curious about how to say his name were trying to spread awareness (shown below).

Search Interest

External References