Success With Honor Show features Penn State athletes, John Brenkus

John Brenkus put 60 seconds on the clock, giving Penn State women’s basketball player Anna Camden one minute to try to complete the water bottle flip challenge. “It’s perfectly filled to the level that I like,” Camden said, laughing, as she grabbed a water bottle from off-camera, 700-some miles away from Brenkus.

She needed just five tosses and 13 seconds to get the bottle to land upright, as both the host and his athlete guest celebrated with their arms raised. Brenkus joked that it was one of the more memorable shots she has made.

“Maybe,” Camden said, smiling and shrugging her shoulders. “We’ll give it a top-five.”

The scene is part of Wednesday night’s debut episode of the official Success With Honor Show, a variety show co-produced by the NIL collective Success With Honor and Brenkus, the former “Sport Science” host who has since launched the platform Brinx.TV. The show premiered on Success With Honor’s Twitter account and Brinx.TV.

Success with Honor, Ep 1: Anna Camden, Zane Durant & Max Dean https://t.co/P6NjgOAWfK

— Success With Honor (@success_w_honor) September 28, 2022

Success With Honor partners with Brinx.TV

Brinx.TV is designed to help NIL collectives, athletes and fans create network-quality programming. Penn State’s Camden, reigning national champion wrestler in the 197-pound weight class Max Dean and freshman defensive tackle Zane Durant are featured in the show’s premiere.

“All of those student-athletes who are going to be involved with that show really are going to be developing a skill set that’s translatable beyond college, beyond athletics, to really forge a career,” Brenkus told On3.

Brenkus quizzed Dean on classic rock, his favored music genre, and the former “Sport Science” host challenged Durant to name as many video games titles as he could in 30 seconds.

Brenkus has a massive home studio in his basement in greater Atlanta that includes multiple nearly floor-to-ceiling screens and a green screen. The Penn State athletes filmed their end of the show at the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State.

“They can produce a ESPN-quality-type show literally anywhere in the world, essentially,” Jason Belzer, the CEO and co-founder of the agency Student Athlete NIL (SANIL), which powers Success With Honor and other NIL collectives, told On3. “It’s pretty mind-blowing. What you saw is just like the tip of the iceberg in terms of their capabilities that you would only imagine you would be able to do at, like, a studio at ESPN or a major sports network.”

John Brenkus is ‘the master’ of engaging content

In the NCAA’s NIL era, there is competition — that’s typically unspoken — with regard to content creation. Athletes are often told their personal brand, marketability and earning potential is tied to their follower counts on social media. NIL collectives and clubs often offer donors and subscribers access to exclusive digital content and in-person events, which range from podcasts to meet and greets.

Numerous schools have even launched their own streaming service, which are available at a cost, like other popular streaming platforms, such as Netflix or Hulu. Brinx.TV is also involved in the halftime show for Arkansas‘ Hogs+ streaming service.

The goal of the official Success With Honor Show, which had a raw cut for its debut episode that ran about 25 minutes, is to combine a veteran, recognizable host in Brenkus with high-quality production in an environment that’s intended to show the natural, off-the-field side of Penn State athletes.

“I mean John is the master of creating engaging content,” Belzer said. “We all watched ‘Sport Science’ and he built an empire, so he gets it.”

Brenkus said there hasn’t been a major competitor to “Sport Science” because “we got the world’s greatest athletes to do crazy stunts and crazy things. When Ray Lewis shows up and you say, ‘Hey, run through that door,’ there aren’t a lot of people who can convince him to actually do it.”

Brenkus said building a connection with athletes, and the commercial success that comes from that, hinges on being authentic.

Focus on fan, athlete engagement

Throughout the show, viewers can answer trivia questions at Brinx.TV, often while a Penn State athlete is doing the same on the show.

“We want to make sure that both our guests and the audience really are engaged and locked in, and want to feel like they are a part of the overall experience,” Brenkus said. “Just because you’re an audience member doesn’t mean that it’s passioned.”

Brenkus quizzed Dean about The Beatles’ song “Come Together,” the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Stevie Wonder. Camden explained her approach to TikTok, including topics from mental health to makeup. Brenkus asked about Durant’s track record as a prankster.

“We thought about what the best way would be to deliver content for these student-athletes and we weren’t going to sit there and interview them about Xs and Os, right?” Belzer said. “That’s not the nature of this show. If you’re going to create a consistent media platform, you’re going to want people to tune in and so we want to be able to have fans see a side of the student-athletes that maybe they usually wouldn’t and so we said, ‘Let’s go create a variety show where we can talk about things and have student-athletes just be themselves.’

“We think that that’s a sustainable model. My intention is not to ever charge for this type of content but to hopefully have it ad-driven, partnership-driven with some of the partnerships that we’re developing.”

The official Success With Honor Show will typically feature athletes from a variety of athletic programs. Some episodes might even feature multiple athletes from the same team.

Given Success With Honor’s experience and relationships in the Penn State ecosystem, SANIL employees know which athletes will likely be the most engaging guests on the new show. Those athletes will be on the short list for the show’s first round of guests.

“We know who’s dynamic, who’s fun, who’s good in front of a camera, who’s good at doing an interview or public speaking,” Belzer said.

Understandably, some younger athletes might not have the same experience with media or comfortability speaking on camera, but that can improve with time, especially when they see the evolution of the show.

Success With Honor is focused on brand awareness

Success With Honor publicly launched in March 2022 and through August, it had reached NIL agreements with more than 150 Penn State athletes across the university’s 22 athletic programs. In June, a large contingent of Penn State athletes traveled to Atlanta for the inaugural NIL Summit, which SANIL hosted and the content and compliance software platform INFLCR sponsored.

Penn State athletes are now supported by three NIL collectives — two of which either exclusively or primarily support football players and only recently launched or relaunched — after an admittedly slow start to the university’s NIL infrastructure.

Success With Honor’s breadth and depth are the deepest among them, thanks in part to a partnership with the Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County.

Athletics are often referred to as the front porch of a university, particularly with regard to a football program, and the official Success With Honor Show could serve a similar purpose for the collective. Belzer said that, who knows, maybe someday some of the show’s episodes could be placed behind a paywall — like so many other collectives’ and NIL clubs’ content — but that’s not the goal upon the show’s launch.

“The goal is to be able to build brand awareness,” Belzer said, “to let people know what Success With Honor is in this case and get individuals to want to support it and want to support student-athletes in the process.”