GREELEY, Colorado — Northern Colorado sophomore guard Langston Reynolds knows how to throw it down!
He’s been doing it since his days at Denver East High School. You could say he’s a dunk specialist. Twice this season, Reynolds dunks have been featured on Sportscenter’s Top 10 best plays, “It’s kinda shocking honestly,” said Reynolds. “When I got my first one, I really didn’t believe it. But I see myself on the top 10, I’m like oh my god I’m on ESPN. It was just a really good moment for me.”
But when Reynolds isn’t busy dunking, he’s busy … modeling. Last year he signed an NIL deal with a Denver based company called ‘Llgndary,’ which strives to change hip hop culture and inspires others to create lasting social change, through clothing and music, “It just kind of went back to basketball and how I wanted to change the culture just for basketball. Just for kids in the area that I know. All the way from music to clothing, to just the way that you carry yourself. The rap music today is about drugs, getting money, treating women this type of way, but it’s not always like that. With the music, it kinda talks to you personally, like how you feel.”
With his NIL deal, Reynolds’ goal is to give people a different outlook on life, “It promotes a lot of different things. Life is hard, people go through ups and downs all the time, but just kinda giving you a little extra boost.”
Name, image, and likeness deals have completely taken over and changed college athletics. Student-athletes getting paid has come with criticism. Some say college athletes shouldn’t be able to get paid, “We don’t really have time to just go to work, or anything like that. Our jobs are literally school and basketball. Unless you’re a college athlete that’s been through it, you don’t really understand the struggle and how hard we actually work. You just kinda see the games, you don’t really see the preparation behind everything. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but I do think college athletes should be getting paid.”
Reynolds sole focus isn’t on the money. It’s about the words he wears and phrases he believes in, “I have written it literally on my mirror everyday: ‘change the culture’ and ‘be legendary.’ Those are really the biggest two things that we really look at and just try to spread to everybody.”