Shanny takes you behind-the-scenes of working with your favorite NFL players

Photo Courtesy of Shannon Domingsil

Everyone follows their favorite brand's social media accounts, ones you think are probably run by a bunch of underpaid, underslept, underfed interns. What if I told you, however, that the girl behind the official NFL social media accounts is a 2020 Chapman broadcasting alum and a pop star?

Shannon Domingsil, whose stage name is Shanny, was born in Honolulu. With no professional teams or Division I college teams in her home state, high school football was always a big deal to her family. She would go to the games with her family to support friends, but barely knew what was going on at first, not understanding the points system or why everyone was cheering all the time. 

When she got to Chapman’s documentary program, now known as broadcast journalism and documentary, she thought she wanted to be an entertainment reporter. She worked for Chapman News, doing what she remembers as exactly two pieces on anything sports-related: something at Angels Stadium and something with a swimming athlete. This was to show some versatility in her reel – even though she had no interest in sports at the time.

Shanny attributes part of the reason she works for the NFL to her doom-scrolling on social media during the COVID-19 lockdown, watching NFL mic'd-up videos. 

Photo Courtesy of Shannon Domingsil

“It was so fun to know who the guys were, because, for football, you can’t really see their face,” Shanny told The Panther. “At least to my knowledge, in America, there’s no other sport where you only know someone based on the number they’re wearing on their back. Basketball, baseball, soccer, you see their face, you know what they look like. I just remember sitting in the dark, bringing up these mic'd up videos, wondering if the NFL is hiring. I looked up the NFL career site and they were hiring for a seasonal position, and I applied.”

This position was only supposed to be for seven months. It has been four years. Shanny has had the chance to work with multiple athletes, creators and people in the industry across her years with the organization.

When she first started working with the league, french soccer player Kylian Mbappé had made an impact. He had just won the World Cup at 18 years old and was the highest-paid player at the time. She got to capture content with him and Rams wide receiver Cooper Kupp, who had just won the Super Bowl.

A content creation dream of hers was to work with the NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, and that dream came true in the 2023 Draft in Kansas City, Missouri. 

“I came up with the idea of a ‘Welcome to my Crib’-style social piece that involved the commissioner basically walking us through the green room,” Shanny said. “Where the prospects or where the draftees sit and wait to be called on stage, he walked us through the green room, like where they wait with their families, and then on stage where he obviously announces the first-round picks. And that included a few influencers as well. So that was a really cool thing for me to work with him.”

Another cool experience for her was the NFLPA Rookie Premiere, a three-day event that brings a few rookies together to record a bunch of content — including a pass-the-phone video and a fist-bumps with the rookies video.

“The last day is always a field day where we're at the Coliseum, and those are the ones that I can get super silly with,” Shanny said. “They just became a part of a team, they're drafted, their dreams came true. It's the first time in their uniform, and all of those things. So I do a lot of silly videos with them that I love, just because I just think it's so fun to do those types of things with them, to show their personality, to make people a fan of them, because we don't know you know who they are.”

The Panther asked Shanny how she sees her work in social media changing the way that people see sports. She said that it is part of her job, in a way, to make sports content more easily accessible and entertaining for audiences who may not be familiar or interested. 

“I think with social media it just makes things a lot more digestible for people,” she said. “With TikTok especially, the way that I see content is because of the ‘For You’ page. So whenever I am thinking about content, I am thinking, ‘Okay, how am I going to make somebody who doesn’t care or doesn’t know about football care or want to watch this video that we are putting up?’ Once you get the basics of football down, you’re like, ‘Okay, I get it for the most part.’ So just opening that bridge for people who may not be a fan at all.”

Any journalist talking to the person behind the NFL social media accounts would ask about the iconic Taylor Swift videos, which have made a significant splash across social media and have introduced a whole new generation and demographic to football. Specifically, there was a video posted on Sept. 5 of Taylor Swift arriving at a game to watch her boyfriend, tight end Travis Kelce, play for the Kansas City Chiefs. A comment on that video said, “Can we get a football post.” The reply video made to that comment was a classic football post but with the caption, “Here, damn.” The comments were joyous, with replies like “lmfaooo whoever runs your socials needs a raise” and “I love this era of social media.”

Shanny couldn’t say much on the topic, but she did share how much the responses to this new style of content meant to her. 

“The thing that I love the most is seeing comments of ‘my daughter never watched football,’” Shanny said, “‘and now we sit together on Sundays to watch it. My friends would never come and watch football with me, but now we all go out and watch football together. I can’t thank this enough for having my daughter be interested in something, and now it’s a tradition that we do.’ It’s (a) community, like you’re bringing people together, and you’re allowing more people to enjoy this sport and the team that you love, the players that you like. That’s what I love about this, is being able to see and read those positive things that come from ‘Wow, now I get to enjoy this sport that I love with the people that I love when that wasn’t the case before.’”

Working for the NFL’s marketing team may not be the first job you think of a film student going into after college. Shanny made a video starting with the question, “What are you even gonna do with that film degree?” Her response was, “Work with some of your favorite NFL players,” and she included videos of some iconic athletes that she has worked with in her career thus far. Shanny knows people who didn’t graduate from college with majors in marketing or communications, and even people who didn’t go to college at all, who are working for the NFL. It was their experiences that got them the job.

“I'm not going to say your degree doesn't matter, but for the most part, it's always your experience that tops anything else,” Shanny told The Panther. “I had zero, not one sports internship, not one like, not even a reel long enough to be like ‘I know sports.’ 

She continued: “And then on the other end, for film students, I mean, film isn't everything, and socials especially, is such a huge aspect of media nowadays. There's just so many lanes and aspects that people can go into again, regardless of their degree, as long as they kind of have the experience that goes along with it.”

Shanny said that at the end of the day, you are going to do what you want to do. She also said it is very typical for immigrant parents like her own to not see entertainment as a path forward for their children, or a means to make money. Thankfully now, her parents are both extremely proud of their daughter. Her mother now is always asking to share her videos on Facebook.

“I get it, because as parents, they're obviously so worried,” Shanny said. “Like, ‘Oh my god, what if it doesn't work out?’ or whatever the case is. But also, at the end of the day, if you want to do something, you're gonna do it.”

Photo Courtesy of Shannon Domingsil

Shanny is not just the girl who runs the NFL's social media, however — she is also a pop star. Ever since she was little, she has been singing. Not knowing where to start to become a singer,she put that path on the backburner. Over time, she developed her one voice and met people in the music scene. Just two years ago, she started taking voice lessons again. 

“It just felt like a calling at that time,” she said. “Because not to say that I'm not happy, like I have probably one of the best jobs ever, and I'm so, so, so grateful and thankful for the job that I have and the team that I'm on and the stuff that I get to do. But I always knew that singing and performing is my number one passion. It's my gift. It's the gift that God gave me, that I know I want to pursue.”

Shanny knew that she had to give the dream a shot, now or never. 

“I think it's just (that) so many things were put in my path of music, singing and performing,” she said. “I just had a sort of epiphany of, ‘If you don't do this now, it's never gonna happen. But at least if you tried, you know that you did, and you put your all into it’ and all those things. Because my one thing is like, I never want to live with any type of regret.”

When The Panther asked her what she wanted to do next, she said to continue being a pop star. Her first song ever, Running Back, is out now wherever you listen to music, and the Chapman alum is currently working on more.

“The other thing about me is if I want to do something, I'm very much determined to do it,” Shanny said. “It's tiring and I get frustrated and I get burnt out, but we do it still. I fully wrote this song by myself, I literally sat on my couch right here and I wrote. I just know my calling and God's plan for me, with the gift that He has given me, is to be a pop star, have my music reach people all over the world and just connect with people through my songs or through music.” 

Shanny’s song Running Back is out now wherever you listen to music. You can follow along with her work on @nfl and @shannydomingsil on Instagram and TikTok.