Paris Alston: This is GBH’s Morning Edition. Tomorrow, a carnivorous 4th of July tradition returns to Coney Island: Nathan’s famous hot dog eating contest.

Unidentified announcer: Are you ready to sip from the volcano? Are you ready to make love to the dragon, Brooklyn? The count it down with me: From 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Go.

Alston: Every year, contestants line up behind folding tables and dive in, consuming as many hotdogs and buns as possible in just 10 minutes, maybe using some water for dunking for a little assistance. This year, 16-time champion Joey Chestnut, who’s arguably the biggest name in hot dog eating, will not be on the stage. He’s disqualified after signing a sponsorship deal with Impossible Foods. But his absence makes room for a new hopeful champion. Enter Geoffrey Esper of Oxford.

Geoffrey Esper: Yeah, I’m a high school teacher by, that’s my full time job, so.

Alston: Esper teaches electronics at Bay Path Vocational High School in Charlton. He got into competitive eating on a smaller scale and worked his way up, bite by bite, to Nathan’s.

Esper: I started off doing those, you know, there was man versus food restaurant challenges that used to be really popular a few years ago that when the TV show was popular. I started off doing those and then I started doing, like, some smaller, you know, like a bar might have a contest where they had a taco eating contest, something like that. I went to a few of those, and I started doing better and better.

Alston: He says one of his favorite contests was local.

Esper: At the Big E in here in Massachusetts, we had a cheeseburger eating contest. Those were delicious. Those was so good. The White Hut cheeseburgers, man. That was probably one of my favorites.

Alston: Esper got so good that this year he is the odds-on favorite on the sports betting site DraftKings. He says his success is at least part natural talent.

Esper: When I was younger, I always had a pretty good appetite. And I could eat a lot. I could eat more than most of my friends. And then, after we ate, like, after you’d go to an all-you-can-eat buffet, you know, as kids, and you can really pick out the buffet, I wouldn’t be, like, rolling around on the ground where all my friends would be, like, in the car, and they couldn’t move. And I was I was fine with it. So, I think I have a predisposition to it. But you don’t get to this level just on pure natural ability. You have the practice and I put a lot of practice in.

Alston: And that practice is twofold.

Esper: We have to be fast. You have to be able to get it in. And then the other part is you have to have room for it. So you have to make sure that you have the capacity to hold it. Otherwise you’re, you know, minute seven, you’re going to be done and you’re not going to be able eat anymore. And then hot dogs are kind of a unique contest where it’s both the speed, there’s some technique involved, and then there’s also capacity.

Alston: But one may wonder: After eating somewhere in the ballpark of 75 hot dogs in 10 minutes, does he ever get sick of the food?

Esper: I don’t get sick of the food that we’ve eaten. I’d probably say the only thing I probably wouldn’t eat again is we had a contest where they had Spam. It was a Spam eating contest. And what they did is they took the opened up the cans of Spam, they plopped them on the plates, and that was it. So we had to eat these big block, and they sat out in the sun for about a half an hour, so they got all dried up. It was not appealing.

Alston: Well, tomorrow it’ll be around 80 degrees at Coney Island, and all eyes will be on Esper. And we’ll be cheering him on as he hopes to take home the $10,000 prize money for a first-place finish and bring another trophy to Titletown.

Music: Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggety dog Now we got ears, it’s time for cheers Hot dog, hot dog, the problem’s solved Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggety dog.

Alston: You’re listening to GBH News.

Every July 4, contestants line up behind folding tables at Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island and dive in to eat as many hotdogs and buns as possible in just 10 minutes.

This year, 16-time champion Joey Chestnut, who’s arguably the biggest name in hot dog eating, will not be on the stage. He was disqualified after signing a sponsorship deal with Impossible Foods.

But his absence makes room for a new hopeful champion.

Enter Geoffrey Esper of Oxford, Massachusetts.

By day, he teaches electronics at Bay Path Vocational High School in Charlton. He got into competitive eating on a smaller scale and worked his way up, bite by bite, to Nathan’s.

“There were man-versus-food restaurant challenges that used to be really popular a few years ago that when the TV show was popular,” Esper said. “I started off doing those and then I started doing some smaller — you know, like a bar might have a contest where they had a taco eating contest, something like that. I went to a few of those, and I started doing better and better.”

Esper got so good that this year he is the odds-on favorite to win Nathan’s on the sports betting site DraftKings. He hopes to take home the $10,000 prize money for a first-place finish and bring another trophy to Titletown.

Though he’s now competing on a national stage, he said one of his favorite contests was a local one: The White Hut World Cheeseburg Eating Championship at The Big E.

“Those were delicious,” he said.

He says his success is at least part natural talent.

Growing up, he’d leave all-you-can-eat buffets feeling fine when all his friends had to roll to the car feeling like they couldn’t move, he said.

“I think I have a predisposition to it. But you don’t get to this level just on pure natural ability,” he said. “You have the practice and I put a lot of practice in.”

And that practice is twofold.

“We have to be fast,” Esper said. “You have to be able to get it in. And then the other part is you have to have room for it. So you have to make sure that you have the capacity to hold it. Otherwise you’re, you know, minute seven, you’re going to be done and you’re not going to be able eat anymore.”

Hot dogs, he said, are a bit of a unique contest.

“It’s both the speed, there’s some technique involved, and then there’s also capacity,” Esper said.

But one may wonder: After eating somewhere in the ballpark of 75 hot dogs in 10 minutes, does he ever get sick of the food?

“I don’t get sick of the food that we’ve eaten,” he said. “I’d probably say the only thing I probably wouldn’t eat again is we had a contest where they had Spam. It was a Spam eating contest. And what they did is they took the opened up the cans of Spam, they plopped them on the plates, and that was it. So we had to eat these big block, and they sat out in the sun for about a half an hour, so they got all dried up. It was not appealing.”