Overtime's sixth season of Draft House shows remarkable longevity and the importance of athlete relationships
Published about 10 hours agoΒ β’Β 3 min read
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Overtime's next Draft House features Carnell Tate, Caleb Downs, and Zachariah Branch
The NFL Draft is coming up fast (it will be held April 23-25), and that also means we're approaching the season of a lot of content around prospects. Many different outlets have tried various approaches to that over the years, but especially on the digital media side (which tends to have short lives for many series), there haven't been a lot of them used year-after-year. A notable exception there is Overtime's Draft House, though.
Overtime (known for operating football, basketball, and boxing leagues in addition to its content efforts) is set for its sixth season of the Draft House concept. (The sixth on the NFL side; they've also done this for years on the NBA side.) That series follows top prospects living together in a house in the approach to the draft, and has tended to air (as can be seen on the YouTube channel) both as individually-focused social-media-length clips, individually-focused episodes (usually 14-20 minutes in length), and even long movies (such as the almost-three-hour one for Season 5). This time around, they're featuring former Ohio State wide receiver Carnell Tate, former Ohio State safety Caleb Downs, and former Georgia wide receiver Zachariah Branch, as they announced in a trailer reveal Wednesday:
These are notable names, with Downs, Tate, and Branch projected to go seventh, 11th, and 41st overall respectively in ESPN's four-expert mock draft earlier this week. And they're just the latest big names from this show, as this season-by-season graphic illustrates:
Overtime's Draft House talent through the years.
Several things stand out about this project. First, there's its aforementioned longevity; it's rare to see anything in sports media make it six years these days, much less a digital show. There's also been notable continuity on the sponsorship side, with Rocket Mortgage presenting the first season and Ram Trucks presenting every season since then. And thirdly, there's the talent, with the figures for each season some of the most-notable and most-discussed athletes from each year's draft, giving this series at least the potential of providing something of interest to a lot of fans. For example, that had Overtime in position to get remarkable content from Sanders and his family during his draft slide:
Many companies would love to be working closely with draft picks of this caliber, but Overtime has been able to pull it off year after year. That might be at least somewhat about their relationships; many of these figures have long been connected with Overtime through leagues (for example, Tate played in the first season of the OT7 spring football league) or content efforts. And some of them have stayed connected to the company, with Season 1 Draft House figure Ja'Marr Chase recently joining the company for a Chasing No. 1 talk show:
NEW SHOW OTW π¨π Chasing No 1 with JaβMarr Chase coming this Spring π₯ @chasingno1 @Overtimeszn #breakingnews #jamarrchase #show #nfl #football
The total picture seems somewhat self-reinforcing. Overtime connects with top talent early, often at the high school level, building relationships that can then take fruit for particular top prospects with efforts like Draft House. Giving any media company this kind of access can be risky for players, and many of the most well-regarded prospects often go quite silent ahead of the draft, but the combination of Draft House's public record and Overtime's connections to these players in other ways probably helps alleviate concerns there. And getting and keeping good relationships with athletes matters to Overtime beyond even those players' time on shows like this, with players remaining connected with them through guest coaching in OT7 or doing shows like this new one with Chase.
The longevity factor matters considerably here as well. It's hard to establish anything in the media world these days, but Overtime's made its mark as a well-known brand both generally as a company and specifically with this Draft House effort. It's somewhat of a known quantity, especially with building those relationships with players early. And while it's very hard to get something like that started, once it's rolling, it keeps paying rewards. There's value to that kind of continuity and reputation, and Overtime is showing it off with the level of talent they're able to consistently attract to efforts like this.
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