Former La Salle guard Brandon Dwyer has amassed a large social media following at Florida Gulf Coast

For Florida Gulf Coast’s Brandon Dwyer, his experience during basketball games is a little different than his teammates’. As a walk-on, he has logged three collegiate minutes, but he’s easily the most recognizable player on the roster.

When the team comes out for warmups, he’s constantly met with cheers, heckling, and everything in between. While he’s on the bench, the opposing team’s student section and band chant his name or ask if he prefers Skittles or M&Ms.

All of this is because Dwyer is one of the most famous walk-ons in all of college athletics. A social media influencer who has blown up over the last year-and-a-half, Dwyer has approximately 918,900 TikTok followers; 378,000 on Instagram; 143,700 on Snapchat; and 105,000 subscribers on YouTube. Most of his content relates to basketball, but he doesn’t act like a big-shot hooper.

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He knows who he is and doesn’t shy away from it. In a recent Instagram post celebrating his graduation, he captioned it “degrees > points,” referencing his scoreless college basketball career thus far.

“I think on social media, the two things I really try to pride myself on is I try to be who I am,” Dwyer said. “I try to be my personality, just put that on the screen. … And, two, just be real. Like, ‘Hey, I’m not Zion Williamson when he was at Duke. I’m Brandon Dwyer at FGCU.’ I’m going to be me. I’m going to be who I am. And, obviously, being a walk-on, you’ve got to accept what comes with being a walk-on.”

A native of Newark, Del., Dwyer is a Sanford School lifer. He started there in kindergarten and didn’t leave until he graduated from high school.

Although he has rarely seen the floor in college, Dwyer certainly can hoop. He made varsity as an eighth grader under legendary coach Stan Waterman (now the coach at Delaware State) and won two state titles as a key contributor. As a junior, he won the City of Palms three-point contest, and, in his senior year, he was named honorable mention all-state and first-team all-conference.

When it came time to make his college decision, he had Division II and III interest, but had always dreamed of playing Division I. He had other walk-on opportunities farther away, but he wasn’t ready to leave the area.

He settled on La Salle, which was coached by Ashley Howard at the time.

“At the time, I had no idea what a walk-on was,” Dwyer said. “I was described to it as I do the exact same as a scholarship player, the only difference is I’m not on athletic scholarship, I would be on academic scholarship. And I was like, ‘All right, sounds good to me.’”

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As a walk-on, Dwyer’s biggest days come on the practice court. His job is to prepare the team for game days. In preparation for those practices, Dwyer improved his conditioning by running on the treadmill. Explorers associate head coach Kyle Griffin ran at the same time as Dwyer, and that’s where their relationship began.

On game days at the beginning of the 2021-22 season, Dwyer sat at the end of the bench near assistant coach Pat Chambers. Dwyer helped Chambers track stats and other parts of the game, allowing the pair to develop a relationship.

After Dwyer’s freshman season, Howard was fired and replaced by Fran Dunphy. Dwyer had multiple conversations with Dunphy, who advised him to enter the transfer portal to see what else was out there. He assured Dwyer that he would be welcomed back at La Salle if nothing panned out.

“[That] gave me a lot of confidence to enter the portal because, one, entering the portal is terrifying,” Dwyer said. “Two, entering the portal as a walk-on that was a freshman that had no game film outside of two minutes was even more terrifying.”

Chambers later took the head-coaching job at FGCU, followed by Griffin, who became the associate head coach. Griffin approached Dwyer about joining the program as a walk-on.

“I heard Florida, I heard Coach Kyle Griffin, I heard Coach Chambers and basketball,” Dwyer said. “That was all I needed. I was ready to go.”

Making social media videos wasn’t on Dwyer’s radar when he initially transferred to FGCU.

Living down South, Dwyer was basically the only person in his entire family who didn’t reside in the Northeast. Life in Florida was much different, and Dwyer would try to explain all the crazy things that would occur.

“I felt like they weren’t getting the picture,” Dwyer said. “They weren’t really understanding just because it was such a foreign concept of living [in] Delaware vs. Fort Myers, Fla. … I was like, ‘Let me just do a POV, walk around with my phone like this, film what I’m doing, do a couple of clips, and I’ll just do a day in my life [video].’

“I posted that on Aug. 25, 2022. That was the first, like, real social media video I ever posted, and I loved it. I fell in love with it immediately.”

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Dwyer continued to make day-in-the-life videos, and, on the fourth day, he used a trending sound, which got him around 25,000 views.

“From that day, I was like, ‘Yep, I’m doing this,’” he said. “I love this. This is fun. I’m able to build a community, and I’m able to show my family and my close friends how awesome it is down here.”

His stardom has steadily grown. Now, he gets stopped regularly. When he was at Disney Springs in Orlando, he said he posed for upward of 50 pictures.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of it just because I think it’s more cool than anything,” Dwyer said. “… But if I go to Wawa, and I’m ordering my sub, and some kid taps me on the shoulder and asks for a picture, I’m going to take that picture every single time. I’ll never turn down a picture. I’ll never turn down an autograph or anything like that because I’m so thankful to be down here and to be given the opportunity to be down here that, how could I get mad?”

Right now, Dwyer is sticking with social media as long as he can. He completed his undergraduate degree in business management and is getting his master’s in finance. He redshirted this past season, so he has two more years of eligibility.

His current goal is to reach 1 million followers each on TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram before he earns his next degree. With the increase in name, image, and likeness across college athletics, Dwyer has landed some brand deals with companies like SunnyD, Ritz crackers, and G FUEL.

Dwyer says he might get into coaching or the business world. But, if possible, he would love to stick with social media.

“In order for that to be a realistic goal for me,” he said, “I’ve got to be able to confidently say once I’m done playing basketball, can this still translate to when I’m no longer on a team and have a jersey?

“I have no idea if I’m going to be able to do that or not just because my life has changed so much in the last year-and-a-half. And the fact that I have two years more to do on top of this, I have no idea where I’m going to be. And I think that’s cool.”