This is the best, and worst, prep highlight reel you’ve ever seen
You’ve seen the best highlight reels, both at Rivals.com and here at Prep Rally. You’ve seen all their imitators littered across YouTube and other prep sites like Hudl. Now see the worst highlight reel of all-time, or the best if one considers the sense of humor expressed by the reel’s subject a badge of valor (which Prep Rally certainly does).
The player in the video above, who happens to be its film editor as well, is Dominion (Va.) High senior Rich Tran. In his only season of high school football, Tran lined up as a tight end and linebacker. The critical term in that prior sentence is “line up,” since Tran was barely on the field long enough for him to even know what his true position was.
Of course, that’s precisely why Tran cobbling together a highlight reel is almost sublimely funny. The senior claims he had to comb through an entire season of Dominion game footage just to cobble together enough footage of himself in the viewfinder. According to the Washington Post, it took Tran an hour to splice those shots together, set them to a nasty backbeat track, all with himself circled brightly in each shot … even when he’s standing on the sideline.
“I spent a lot more time working on it than it looks,” Tran told the Post. “Roughly an hour, I’d say. And actually, I made another video first, but I accidentally exited out of it before saving, so I had to do it again. So maybe two hours total.
“Really, the plays in the video were the only ones that I was on the field for this season. But overall, I had a lot of fun.”
That clearly shows. Of course, what Tran may not have anticipated was the viral success his humble endeavor has become. After submitting his video to B.J. Kouraboulis, a former Washington Post high school reporter who now runs his own video production company that serves the Post and other clients, Tran also posted his video on Hudl and shared it with friends.
Within days it had circulated around the Post, and has since landed on Deadspin and, now, here on Yahoo!.
Fittingly, Tran isn’t content with that exposure alone. The Post reported that he has also sent his clip to frequent ESPN contributor Woody Paige and the ESPN morning show Mike & Mike in the Morning. Oh, and one college football program in particular.
Which one? Alabama. Hey, if you’ve got the self-titled “Best Highlight Reel Ever,” Nick Saban ought to know about it, right?
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