What we can learn from college sports' graphics gurus
When your craft is as inbound as these guys, you can dictate your own terms. Really.
Front Office Sports had a great profile over the weekend about two social media graphic design wizards who’ve taken college football and basketball recruiting by storm for On3 Sports. Joe Tipton (he of “Tipton Edits”) and his football counterpart Hayes Fawcett have become the sort-of notary publics for coveted high school stars’ recruiting journeys. When your announcement gets a Tipton Edits job, you’ve made it.
Back when I was high school editor of ESPNBoston, I’d work my ass off to develop rapport with not just a top high school recruit, but their parents, their high school coach, their AAU director, whomever, with the hope that I’m the first one that gets the call when they’re ready to announce a commitment. So, too, were dozens of other writers.
Back then, we had something they didn’t — amplified exposure from our media brands. Nowadays, these guys have something we didn’t: a cool graphic they could show off to everyone:
Growing up in Gurley, Ala., Tipton initially liked the idea of a career in graphic design. He’d pursued his interest by making casual photo edits, slapping Nike logos and inspirational quotes onto generic images of five-star athletes and sharing them on his own account. At the time, most high school athletes announced their college recruiting decisions by posting screenshots on their notes apps. But he realized he could provide them something flashier. As more players turned to social media to announce their potential collegiate destinations, they began contacting the 17-year-old.
“They were like, ‘I’m down to five schools, can you put the logos around me?’” Tipton says. “Then it just kind of bloomed because everyone else followed suit and no one else was making graphics.”
Tipton started out obliging Junior College and Division II athletes. Then, in 2016, he opened ESPN’s Top 100 high school players list and began soliciting stars with his free services, leading to collaborations with former college stars turned NBA players—Harry Giles III, Josh Jackson, and Miles Bridges. Tipton didn’t have a blueprint for building relationships and hadn’t taken any high school graphic design classes beyond the tutorials he’d found online. But he knew his service was catching on. “The whole idea of an edit in the high school and college space was not around when Hayes and I started,” he says. “That’s why we were able to kind of grow and progress. We were on the front lines.”
In the world these guys live in, it’s so rare to have your business be completely inbound. It’s precious-gem rare for a recruit to hit up Fawcett, say they’re committing to Power-4 school and want to announce that night, and him to ask to wait until the morning if he’s had a long day. And for the recruit to respect that!
But when you’re as inbound as these guys, you can dictate these kinds of terms. All the ESPN exposure in the world, all the fancy videos, and fawning press coverage can’t give them the Tipton Edits glow-up1.
If you’re any type of creative looking to build your brand in this world, there are two big lessons to take from the Tipton/Fawcett journey:
1. Learn the basics of graphic design
I can’t stress this enough. You don’t have to be an expert at it, but knowing the basics of Canva, Photoshop or even something like Adobe Express can make you stand out. There’s plenty of affordable (or free) editing software out there that you can produce high-quality content with if done right.
I saddle up the monthly dough for Canva Pro, and I can tell you it’s worth it. I’m by no means perfect as a professor teaching esports management at Endicott College, but there wasn’t a week that went by this spring where my students didn’t tell me how much better my lecture slides were than every other class they’d ever taken. And to think, I majored in journalism when I was their age.
2. Think honestly and deliberately about your “hook”
A lot of people misunderstand this one. Either they aren’t honest with themselves about their "hook," they’re too broad, too narrow, or double down on a niche with little growth potential.
A good hook should deliver a “challenge” to a convention about how things are done. In Tipton’s case, though he may not have realized it at first, his “challenge” was that, in a world that loves to throw follower count clout in everyone’s face, people's relationships with your content matter more than its reach.2 Look at Tipton’s follower count vs. college sports media heavyweights like Pete Thamel or Pat Forde if you disagree.
Most good hooks start with this question: What do you know to be true that most people disagree with? Answer that honestly, and you’re already off to a good start with building your brand.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that the article mentions Fawcett had an opportunity to join LSU’s recruiting staff, but it would’ve meant deleting his social media account and essentially ending his graphic-making. So instead he opted to go to Northwestern State on an academic scholarship. Let that sink in for all the Syracuse-or-bust types out there. It’s not always about the name on the piece of paper, folks!
I have a lot of thoughts about this idea that will probably guide the themes of a lot of future Substack entries. On one hand, I think it’s smart of Woj to send out pitch decks to potential sources showing how much his social media following dwarfs competitors, therefore amplifying their message that much more. On the other hand, brands are getting a lot smarter about their marketing spend, and mere impressions are no longer enough. Instagram’s algorithm is prioritizing shares more and more, for instance. There’s maybe a handful of companies that can get away with just mere impressions as their north star. Red Bull is one. The NFL is another. You get the idea. Immersions are the new impressions. More on that another time.