Ethan Khoza argues that viral highlight channels like Overtime and Ballislife push players to chase flashy plays instead of the fundamentals coaches actually want: defense, charges, and being a good teammate. Questionable social media content can tank your recruiting chances. Clean music and professionalism in your highlight reel matter.
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That same question, actually, he had asked me, oh, you know, should I send my highlights or my game film to slam or overtime? And, you know, I hope. I hope that this isn't, like, a common thought, because it's. I'm gonna go into a little bit of why I don't like those. Those channels. Slam. I actually do like Slam. Okay. Slam, for the most part, is good, but. But, you know, companies like overtime and ball is life to it to an extent, I'm not a fan of them because I feel like today's. Today's age is just too much. We're just like. It's too much with the highlights. To me, it's like, anybody can post highlights. It doesn't mean that you're good. Now, I'm not trying to dog anybody who post highlights themselves. That's cool and everything. I get it. But at the same time, it's like the thing with overtime and slam in balls live is that they make it cool to look cool. The guys, the main thing, if you want to play in college, like, you got to stop trying to look cool. You got to be willing to take charges. You got to be willing to play good defense. Stuff that doesn't get put on mixtapes, like, forget about mixtapes. Forget about. Again, they're cool. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with mixtapes, but I'm saying focusing on them and being like, oh, I want to have a mixtape. I want Slam to come see me. That doesn't matter, guys. What matters is, are you a player that a coach wants to have on his. On his team and kind of going along with that when you're making your highlight video? Because I recommend you do have a highlight video. I'm just. I just am saying you don't need to have a mixtape, but when you do have your highlights, the one thing I'm gonna say, guys, is you want to give a good impression of yourself, okay? So don't be a person who's. Who's putting a bunch of, you know, you're putting, you know, Lil Baby, and you're putting, you know, whatever. Like, you're putting all these rap. These rap songs in your. In your mixtapes. If you're gonna do that, use the clean version of it, all right? Like, give yourself that good first impression with that coach. And again, that might not seem like a big deal to you. Like, who cares? Like, everyone listens to it. I understand that. But you give yourself a certain impression, okay? Coaches might not want to listen to that. And like I said, there's so much competition out there. Why would you put yourself in that position? The coach doesn't know you. Okay? The other thing that goes along with that is you gotta check your social media. Are you a person who has a bunch of questionable things on your social media? If a coach were to look at that, if a coach would look at that, make a split decision about who you are, is it going to be good, a good decision or a bad one? You got to ask this to yourself because again, coaches don't want players who are going to be headaches for them. That's my other issue with, with these, with these mixtape channels, is that, you know, I'm going to. There's a specific kid I'm thinking of who I believe is senior this year. And, you know, I'm not gonna say his name, but he is frequently on these channels and frequently his highlights are. Are showing to me. And I. I saw a video earlier this year of him, like, fighting the entire student section of a school after they lost by, like, 50. And I'm like, why would you post that? Like, I think it was. I think it was overtime posted it. But I'm like, now a college coach is going to look up this kid. He's going to Google this kid's name, and that's the first thing that's going to come up. He's going to see this kid fighting an entire student section. So he's going to say, oh, no, thank you. Don't want this kid. Like, to me, it's like, these guys are hurting players. They're actually hurting players chances of playing at the college level. And I don't think this kid has any D1 offers. So goes to show you, these channels are not always a good thing, okay? And if there's one thing I can say to you, it's stop trying to look cool. Play great defense, take charges, be a good teammate. Okay? These are. These are not things that anybody glorifies anymore, but they're super important. If you want to be a winner, you want to be in a winning team. Coaches recruit guys who are winners, okay? And if you. If you aren't a winning player, if you have a bad attitude, if all you care about is your highlights and posting pictures for Instagram, like, you're not going to succeed down the line. Even if you make it to the college level by the time you get there, you actually have to work. And it's not just all, you know, all getting to post pics with your boys with your jerseys on. It's like, oh, I actually have to work at this. I actually have to be a good teammate if I want to get in the court. You're just, you're going to quit, you're going to flame out. And that, that's, that's essentially how it is. So that, that's kind of one of my things with, with those channels.
