Brandon Chubb was an All-ACC linebacker at Wake Forest. The brother of NFL star and ACC great Bradley Chubb, who used North Carolina State as a launching pad for a pro career, faced the challenges of being a collegiate athlete. He now wants to pass along his wisdom and expertise to today’s college athletes.
Matt Brown — @MattBrownEP on Twitter — is the author of the excellent college sports newsletter Extra Points. If you value good independent journalism, I highly recommend you subscribe and support Matt’s work.
Matt recently talked to Brandon Chubb about the new world college athletes will soon face, a realm in which Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) will provide a combination of opportunities and difficulties:
Brandon Chubb is currently the Head of Athlete Growth for HEARTLENT Group. You might remember him as a former team captain, All-ACC honoree and tackling machine at Wake Forest. Chubb played in the NFL for a few years, but he was more productive, and arguably more famous, as a college athlete. Now, he’s reaching out to current athletes and working to help them build their brands.
So that’s exactly what I asked him. What is a college athlete even supposed to be doing, besides, you know, tweeting?
“Now is a good time to step back and really take the time to learn about yourself. What are you passionate about? What are your hobbies? What do you really like? Then start talking about that. You don’t have to wake up and tweet ‘hey, I just had a burger’.”
“Part of my brand…when people think about me, they think of me as a Renaissance man that wants to live on Pluto. I was always sharing and tweeting about astronaut stuff in college. And then I woke up, and when something big happened in my life, people started sending me the rocket ship emoji. That’s when I really realized I had a brand.”
Cultivating outside interests isn’t just part of Chubb’s Brand now, it’s part of his life. He learned to play the piano over the last few months. He plays a lot of chess. He’s leveraged his economic background into becoming a Managing Partner at an early-stage VC firm. If somebody like him is preaching the importance of being more than an athlete, well, he’s walked that walk.
There’s a lot more to this story, but it gives you a taste of how athletes can begin to think about themselves and the value their work possesses. In the new NIL world which will soon define college sports, it’s not too early to think big… and to also reach out to former athletes to gain insights from them.
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