Within the gymnastics neighborhood Sunisa Lee is the athlete everybody thinks about when Auburn College is mentioned. However I wish to begin this text by speaking about essentially the most well-known athlete Auburn has produced up to now few many years, the soccer participant Cam Newton.
The primary time I ever heard of Cam Newton got here through the Summer season of 2010. On the time, Cam Newton was a former backup at Florida who had transferred out, and there actually wasn’t a lot cause to offer him critical consideration outdoors of simply one other routine roster change. However on all the school soccer boards, Auburn followers have been adamant that this was a reputation everybody ought to bear in mind. And that in just a few months’ time, he can be one of the well-known athletes in American sports activities.
Ultimately that prophecy got here true.
Cam Newton would turn into Auburn’s first Heisman Trophy winner since 1985, and led Auburn to its first Nationwide Championship since 1957. His 2010 season would go down as one of the memorable in faculty soccer historical past. However as a consequence of his unconventional profession trajectory the place Newton’s first three years have been spent in obscurity earlier than he arrived at Auburn, his fame for being one of the athletically gifted gamers the game had ever seen was primarily based fully on phrase of mouth and the school soccer insiders insisting his arrival at Auburn was something however routine.
Cam Newton-2010 jogs my memory a lot of Nadia Comaneci in 1973 and 1974 when she herself was an obscure determine to the bigger sports activities neighborhood, however the superfans and gymnastics insiders appeared to have the within scoop of what was to return in later years. If Cam Newton has parallels to a younger Nadia Comaneci, he’s the polar reverse of Sunisa Lee.
Cam Newton got here to Auburn as an obscure sports activities determine with the expectation of future greatness, however when Sunisa Lee got here to Auburn she was already a family title. Sunisa Lee belongs to one of many only a few Olympic sports activities the place athletes get hold of widescale recognition of their highschool years. And amongst these sports activities, the one one which receives sturdy media protection at each the Olympic and NCAA stage.
For elite-level athletes of ladies’s inventive gymnastics (WAG) seeking to transition to the NCAA ranks, they belong to a one-of-a-kind scenario the place they enter a well-liked NCAA league having already established their fame. When Cam Newton arrived at Auburn, he used the huge assets of Auburn’s fanbase and model to garner a big following for himself. That has not been Sunisa’s expertise at Auburn.
Earlier than she competed in even a single NCAA competitors, Sunisa Lee had already received the title of Sports activities Illustrated Athlete of the Yr. Sunisa was additionally a competitor on Dancing With the Stars, essentially the most prestigious tv present within the “movie star visitor competitors” style. Earlier than Sunisa Lee had saluted her first NCAA choose, she had already reached the head of gymnastics fame.
For Cam Newton, Auburn served because the launching level which propelled him to future greatness. If Auburn soccer made Cam Newton well-known, for Sunisa Lee the reverse is true. She is making Auburn gymnastics well-known.
The mixture of NCAA Gymnastics and extremely acclaimed elite stage gymnasts who can now wield the total energy of their manufacturers as a consequence of NIL has created a scenario that’s unprecedented elsewhere within the faculty sports activities world. In girls’s gymnastics, NCAA student-athletes are arguably extra high-profile, extra well-known, and have a bigger following than the very faculty applications they compete for.
Sunisa Lee not solely has a bigger social media following on Instagram than Auburn Gymnastics, however at 1.7 million followers, Sunisa Lee has extra Instagram followers than the following 20 largest girls’s gymnastics applications mixed (1.4 Million). To place that in perspective, the most important NCAA soccer applications, essentially the most precious sports activities groups in faculty sport sometimes obtain “solely” 500K followers, with the 2 largest being at 900K and 1.1 million respectively.
Sunisa Lee is under no circumstances an outlier on this regard. LSU Gymnastics has achieved an analogous profit due to Olivia Dunne, who leveraged her WAG profession to develop one of many largest social media followings of any athlete who’s presently lively within the NCAA ranks. Dunne presently sits at 1.6 million followers on Instagram, which is type of an afterthought in comparison with the 5.1 million followers she has on TikTok.
Even with out attaining Olympic success Olivia Dunne has confirmed greater than able to rising LSU’s base of help. LSU Gymnastics presently has the second largest social media following amongst all girls’s gymnastics applications with Olivia being a key cause for that progress. And like Sunisa Lee, Olivia Dunne achieved the majority of her fame previous to coming into the NCAA ranks.
Notice: If it seems unimpressive that LSU has “solely” the 2nd largest social media following amongst NCAA applications, it’s as a result of UCLA occupies the #1 spot and has as many Instagram followers because the #2, #3, #4, and #5 largest NCAA gymnastics applications mixed due to the lasting success of Katelyn Ohashi. It’s a additional instance of how particular person superstars typically empower the applications they characterize.
If it sounds audacious to check the celebrity of an NCAA gymnast to a Blue Blood soccer program with their large fanbases, Olivia Dunne makes that comparability considerably justified. LSU has acknowledged the worth of Olivia Dunne and has emphasised her of their multi-sport model platforms, advertising and marketing, and recruiting pitches. As LSU sees it, to win over the following extremely acclaimed soccer or basketball recruit, they should reveal that LSU is a spot the place NCAA athletes can maximize their incomes potential within the type of NIL offers.
And what higher means to try this than pointing to the success of LSU’s very personal Olivia Dunne who has acquired large consideration not only for having a big social media base, however being one of many main gymnasts within the wave of NIL offers overtaking NCAA sports activities. It could be correct to say the following nice LSU soccer staff shall be constructed with assist from Olivia Dunne.
In a current interview with Charles Barkley, one of the well-known sports activities figures Auburn athletics has ever produced, he expressed shock and bewilderment over Sunisa’s fame. As Barkley accurately identified, it wasn’t till he was previous the midway level in his faculty profession earlier than he achieved vital fame for himself. Sunisa Lee achieved widespread fame at a far youthful age, in her freshman yr, and earlier than she had even produced a signature NCAA win.
Even the very existence of this interview is an instance of the bizarre pattern impacting NCAA girls’s gymnastics. The interview between Charles and Sunisa occurred on an NBA themed present, and printed to its YouTube channel with over a million subscribers. Via her look on Barkley’s present, Sunisa was selling NCAA gymnasts and Auburn College to a platform geared in direction of sports activities followers of a unique gender (Male vs. Feminine), a unique stage of play (Skilled vs NCAA), and a unique household of sports activities (Olympic vs. 4 Main Leagues).
Within the course of, Sunisa Lee was not solely socializing with a fellow Auburn legend and rising her platform, she was serving to to develop Auburn gymnastics as effectively.
It’s a scenario that’s merely unparalleled elsewhere within the faculty ranks. When future soccer and basketball stars arrive as freshmen to a significant NCAA program, regardless of all of the tens of millions of {dollars} they’re anticipated to make of their future NFL or NBA careers, they’re nonetheless unestablished athletes who want the instruments/assets of a significant NCAA program to jumpstart their careers. Ultimately, it was an NCAA program providing them their huge break and the chance to go on to turn into a well-known NBA or NFL famous person.
However in girls’s gymnastics it’s the different means round. It’s the athletes themselves who’re offering varied NCAA applications with the chance to empower themselves. The arrival of Sunisa Lee at Auburn and Jade Carey at Oregon State immediately propelled two mid-level applications to the highest of the NCAA gymnastics echelon. Having a pair of Olympic gold medalists of their lineup recent of their current success made these two applications immediately related. Their attendance swelled and so did media protection at each the native and nationwide stage.
Olivia Dunne, Sunisa Lee, and Jade Carey have energy that’s uncommon, if not utterly unprecedented in NCAA sports activities. They’re actually bigger than the applications they characterize and whereas Cam Newton wanted a robust SEC soccer program to launch himself to future NFL stardom, for Dunne, Lee, and Carey the stardom was already a given. These three gymnasts would have achieved success wherever they went and the media hoopla would have adopted no matter what program they selected to attend. Oregon State, Auburn, and LSU have been merely the applications fortunate sufficient to win the lottery by getting one in every of these famous person gymnasts.
NCAA girls’s gymnastics is basically totally different from most NCAA sports activities the place it’s normally this system empowering the athletes by giving mentioned athletes the chance to develop a big following for themselves. However because the careers of Sunisa Lee, Jade Carey, and Olivia Dunne reveal, it’s the famous person gymnasts who’re bringing their giant following to the NCAA and giving faculty applications a chance to develop a big following of their very own.
