Social media influencers have flocked to big sports events for years now, but the trend has accelerated recently, in particular with tennis majors like the U.S. Open.
Last weekend showed that content creators have come to college football, too. Nowhere was that more evident than in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where LSU head coach Lane Kiffin walked into his debut rout of Clemson flanked by “seven or eight super high-level influencers,” as Kirk Herbstreit put it in an interview this week with Front Office Sports.
“It was almost like they were already there waiting. An LSU staffer had them in a car nearby, and as soon as he came off the bus with the team, boom, they were released, and they were right around him,” the College GameDay co-host said.
Herbstreit was on the ground in Death Valley for the program’s first show of the season. “They were yelling at the crowd, getting them going, and gathering content for themselves and gathering content for LSU football.”
College GameDay dedicated several cameos to Kiffin’s creator entourage, which included former LSU gymnast Livvy Dunne, Brooks Nader, and comedian and podcaster Theo Von—a trio with a combined 16 million Instagram followers. Herbstreit told FOS his reaction to the scene was largely positive, noting he has “a greater understanding and appreciation for how real content creation is” thanks to his four, twenty-something sons.
“That’s the world we’re in, right? I would be crazy to say, ‘Well, we, we didn’t used to do this.’ Or ‘This is silly,’” he continued. “This is how you stay relevant now, it’s how you connect with these young guys. It’s a world of content—good or bad—but as long as it’s content, that’s all that really matters.”
Digital analytics company Zoomph declared LSU “Week 1’s college football social media winner,” with all LSU football social media accounts receiving 4.8 million more video views and 650,000 more engagements than the next closest schools (Ohio State on video views, and Tennessee on engagement). One video of Kiffin walking in alongside his influencer brigade got over a million views on TikTok alone.)
While Herbstreit acknowledged Kiffin and LSU are particularly geared toward “creating a show,” they’re far from an outlier. Collegiate athletic programs across the country, big and small, have been increasing internal content-capture resources for years; turning to outside creators with established audiences to extend their reach appears to be the next frontier.
Still, the longtime broadcaster isn’t worried these shifts will impact his own high-profile sports media gigs any time soon. “I’ve never personally felt threatened by any part of this world,” he told FOS about content creators’ growing presence on and around the sidelines. “I’ve always tried to be a guy that has tried to learn it, tried to understand it, and just marvel at what they do.”
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