Jonathan Gantt has Clemson on the cutting edge of sports social media

Perhaps the most memorable moment of the 2015 college football season – one of the top moments in sports, in fact – wasn’t a touchdown, an interception or a sack. Or even that 50-yard goal vs. Japan by the U.S. Women’s National soccer (“futbol”) team.

What it was, was six seconds from the Clemson locker room. If you haven’t seen it, how’s life in your cave?

After the Tigers’ last-second victory over Notre Dame on national TV, coach Dabo Swinney – perhaps auditioning for “Dancing with the Stars” – broke out his best celebratory moves while his players rocked along and roared approval. Before the night was done, video of that went viral, seen by millions on Vine and then other social media outlets.

It also showed Swinney and his team having big fun – exactly the message Jonathan Gantt hopes for.

“We already had attention because we won the game,” said Gantt, Clemson’s director of new and creative media, “but when we put (the clip) out that night, it spread like wildfire. It was picked up by the media and re-tweeted 5,000 times.”

And the hits kept coming. Said Gantt, laughing, “I heard from a sports writer every week after that, saying they were waiting to see the Clemson locker room after every win and what content would come out.”

If you’re reading this somewhere other than a newspaper – say, on the paper’s website – you know how rapidly media has changed in recent years, and how it shows no signs of slowing. If you’re looking for a leader in maximizing the impact – not just in college sports, but worldwide – check out Clemson.

Two weeks ago, the school athletics department was one of five finalists for “Best in Sports Social Media” at the Sports Business Awards, founded by SportsBusiness Journal and SportsBusiness Daily. Clemson is the only university nominated, joining the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks’ new media outlet; NASCAR’s Dale Earnhardt Jr.; the NBA; and the aforementioned U.S. women’s soccer team.

Clemson’s numbers, for those not versed in social media, are staggering. In 2015, the Tigers added 470,000 new followers while creating 108.1 million “organic impressions” on Twitter (with 400,000 re-tweets), 213 million impressions on Facebook, 102 million video “loops” on Vine and 26.9 million video views on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

For Gantt, a 30-year-old Lexington native in his third year at Clemson after stints in minor league baseball and with the Tampa Bay Rays, his personal second-best moment to “Dabo dabbing” came when he received an email from Manchester United, the English Premier League powerhouse and one of the world’s wealthiest sports franchises.

“(Man U social media manager Nick Coppack) said they loved what we were doing with our videos, wanted to see if we could connect and share ideas and practices,” Gantt said. Coppack also said he’d like his operation to be “a little more Clemson, if you will.”

That’s heady stuff for a program begun in 2013 by Joe Galbraith, Clemson’s associate athletics director for athletics communications. In Gantt, film specialist Nic Conklin and graphics designer Jeff Kallin, Galbraith has staffers with social media skills joining an already respected sports information department, headed by Tim Bourret. The result: a team of nine full-timers and countless student workers, dedicated to getting out the word about Clemson sports.

Besides fans and alumni, target audiences are current student-athletes and coaches, prospective fans and – the real focus – potential athletes, i.e. recruits. Indeed, the program’s goal, ahead of everything else, is to keep the stream of talent flowing into Tiger Town.

It didn’t hurt that Swinney’s team reached the College Football Playoffs final and was ranked No. 1 the second half of the season. Or that Swinney is “a marketing manager’s dream,” Gantt said. “He does all the heavy lifting.” The coaching staff, who see social media as a huge recruiting tool, are “all in” on what Gantt and Co. are doing, too.

“Recruiting is the driver: bringing the most talent to Clemson,” Gantt said. “We make content that’s engaging to (recruits), that showcases why Clemson is special.” And, in the case of the locker room video, how much fun it is to play for Swinney.

Though football is Clemson’s 300-pound gorilla, Gantt said his team seeks to highlight all 19 intercollegiate sports. “There are always people wanting to cover football and men’s basketball, but that’s not all we have going on,” he said. “Those ‘niche’ audiences are people we care about, too.”

Via a partnership with Adobe, Clemson has the social-media tools (video, the cloud, etc.) to get the word out, and to get students across campus involved – which brings us back to Dabo’s close-up.

When the coach broke into dance, it was Max Huggins, a junior communications studies major, who captured it with a GoPro camera. “He shot and edited that by himself,” Gantt said. “I knew (after the game) we were doing something special, but when the video went viral, now we had a spotlight on it.”

As a result, Huggins was invited by ESPN to help cover its “X Games” for Adobe, and is covering the Final Four this weekend for Vine. Talk about on-the-job training, and about an auspicious confluence of football success, a social-media-savvy coach – and the team, and technology, to show it to the world.

Gantt still marvels at how it’s all come together. “If Dabo doesn’t break out the towel to do the Whip,” he said, “Max isn’t at the X Games.” And – let’s face it – the world for Clemson fans this year would be a less exciting place.

This story was originally published April 1, 2016 at 5:32 PM with the headline "Jonathan Gantt has Clemson on the cutting edge of sports social media."