Nathalie Jones
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
With the advent of name, image and likeness, college athletics is in a constantly changing state.
Now more than ever, programs around the nation need imagination and innovation in order to find success.
It’s a challenge that Mizzou men’s basketball tasked general manager Tim Fuller when the program brought him on board in 2025. He brought more than 25 years of experience in college hoops with him to Columbia, in an effort to keep up with college sports’ ever-shifting landscape.
Now, six months into his time at Mizzou, Fuller is doing more than just keeping up. He’s setting the standard.
“Dennis [Gates, MU men’s basketball coach] has kind of told me that the role doesn’t have parameters. Be who you are,” Fuller said.
Fuller’s diverse experiences in basketball is one of the qualities that Mizzou felt made him the perfect hire for the new role in Columbia. He has been an assistant coach at Louisville, MU and Providence College, as well as an executive at Nike. However, it was the time he spent building up the most recognizable high school basketball league in the world, that truly changed his perspective.
“I would say that from coaching to GM, there was one path in between there that started to separate me from just the idea of ‘just’ being a coach. That was my time at Overtime, Overtime Elite. Overtime being the media platform for Gen Z, really, embraced what it was to have creators, to have innovation,” Fuller said.
The professional high school basketball league grew from a platform with almost no followers to one that is now the face of innovation.
The folks at Overtime Elite have never been afraid to dip their toe into new areas of nontraditional media, from exploring TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, bringing everything back to each individual athlete’s personal brand. Now, Overtime Elite has 1.4 million followers on Instagram, 3.9 million followers on TikTok and nearly 1 million subscribers on YouTube, as the league continually draws in the top high-school-age talent from across the nation.
“I had never seen that done, before,” Fuller said.
Fuller hopes to bring those same ideals to Columbia. Upon his arrival to campus, the general manager highlighted two areas of focus for his first few months: Recruiting and branding. Nowadays, it’s clear, you can’t recruit, if you can’t brand your athletes. So, Fuller hit the ground running with a revolutionary idea.
“All I wanted to do was bring another perspective to Mizzou basketball, another audience to Mizzou basketball,” he said.
In October, Fuller and head coach Dennis Gates decided to hold a Pro Day, one that would include scouts and some of the top basketball content creators and trainers in the game. People who produced content for YouTube, TikTok and other platforms descended upon Columbia to give their audiences a behind-the-scenes look at Mizzou hoops.
Logistically and financially, in terms of getting the content creators to campus, it wasn’t too difficult for Fuller and company to set up.
“Because you have this nontraditional space, you have several people that, as content creators, they would take the opportunity and pay their own expenses, right? Because they’re like, ‘Hey, I’ve been invited into a space I’ve never been invited to before.’ Then you have others who say, ‘Hey, if you can get my hotel, I’ll make sure we end up there.’ Then you have others that say, ‘I need a flight. I’ll make sure I get there,'” Fuller said. “We had some sponsors for the day that really pitched in because they saw the vision and pretty much those sponsorships made sure that any expenses we had were offset. So, the day was a pretty much a cost-free day for the university.”
Thanks to the contacts that Fuller built up in his time with Overtime Elite, he wasn’t concerned about finding creators he trusted. His chief concern was making sure the event didn’t turn into a distraction for players.
“[Gates] was like, ‘Run with it.’ The day before the Pro day, he said ‘Now you’ve done a good job getting all of this lined up, but you got everybody around here stressing and I don’t like stress,'” Fuller said. “I was like, OK, let me make sure this day goes over well because there was so many people that poured their time into it.”
Pro Day went off without a hitch. In fact, it went so well that other content creators, who weren’t even invited on campus, highlighted on social media how impactful the event was for Mizzou’s recruiting strategy.
The idea of bringing in nontraditional media all boils down to one thing: Teenagers nowadays don’t watch traditional TV, especially their local news. The high-school-aged recruits that MU is targeting consume media through streaming services and social media.
Creators like Cullen Honohan, who runs a YouTube account called “AllHailBball,” commented on the changing media landscape.
“They [children] grow up on YouTube and that’s where they thrive, that’s where they watch. You know, they’re on their phone, mobile quick-hitting content, so if you can provide legitimate value and in a short amount of time, I think that’s where, you know, the younger demographic is going to be engaged,” Honohan said.
“You and I can sit down, we can have this interview, nobody would know it happened until you release it. The influencer, things are instant. And we live in a very instant society,” Fuller added.
Honohan is one of the creators Mizzou hoops decided to work with, outside of the Pro Day it held in October. In fact, Honohan was on campus with Gates, before that event had even happened.
“Missouri’s GM Tim Fuller reached out [to me],” Honohan said. “He’s done an incredible job understanding the importance of content creation within the sport, right now.”
In his visits to Columbia, Mizzou hoops allowed Honohan to be the “head coach” for a day and get a personal tour of the facilities and of campus from Gates. Honohan said that, of all the schools he’s visited, he believes Mizzou was the most open to the process.
“The more schools that kind of let you in and let you tell their story, the better a video is going to be,” Honohan said. “Missouri has done an incredible job at understanding that and opening up their doors and having willingness to let a content creator come in and make something super cool without, you know, a ton of super strict guidelines.”
While, Mizzou’s recruiting strategy may be effective in drawing in new talent, it can also be beneficial for the talent that’s already in Columbia. Fuller said it’s all about showing the world what Tiger basketball is all about and the athletes will benefit the most from that.
“There’s people now talking about [our players] that didn’t know who they were before. That was the goal. Right. We know that, you know, the Saint Louis Today knows [them], we know that the Kansas City Star knows [them], but now there’s, you know, [big creators] talking about Anthony Robinson,” he said.
Mizzou men’s basketball was intent on putting itself at the forefront of this new era of recruiting, as content creation will soon go hand-in-hand with college hoops. Fuller’s idea to turn to content creators spurred from the program’s top-rated recruiting class, which features a pair of five-star prospects and one four-star.
“They wanted to know, ‘how are you going to brand us? How are you going to bring things to light?'” Fuller said. “[At the time], it wasn’t something we had tangible answers to.”
Fuller found success with the Pro Day, but he said he’s always looking for ways to make things bigger and better. He already has the answer for what’s next. MU will be collaborating with Louis Vuitton and former Tiger basketball star Kobe Brown for an event during the NBA All-Star Break on Feb. 12.
“We’re going to have a bunch of the same content creators attend that event with Kobe [Brown] to show Mizzou basketball has connectivity to current athletes, but even the ones that have come through here. We’re still helping them to grow and build their brand and do special things, as well,” Fuller said.
The first day Gates arrived on campus, he had one clear goal for his time in Columbia: Cut down nets and hang up banners. As Tiger hoops still looks to do that on the court, Fuller said there’s an opportunity to do that in cyberspace, as well.
“In basketball, particularly, you have something that’s been known as the blue bloods,” Fuller said. “I want be the first cyber blood because even without winning a national championship, you can still hang a banner in cyberspace.”
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