JUMBOS WHO?

In 1999, after a decade of losing seasons and just three combined wins in two years, the Jumbos of Tufts Lacrosse weren’t just having trouble winning—they had become completely irrelevant in the landscape of college lacrosse. They were considered so forgettable that in conference (NESCAC) powers Middlebury and Amherst dropped the Jumbos from their league schedules altogether. 

Then first-year, first-time head coach Mike Daly took stock and proudly branded his forgotten program: “nobodies from nowhere”.

What no one in lacrosse anticipated was that same program of nobodies would flip the script and become one of the most dominant and talked about programs in modern lacrosse—a juggernaut that now owns 13 NESCAC conference titles, 5 NCAA DIII National Championships (with 8 appearances and 13 Final Fours) and holds a 95% win percentage at home with only 9 losses in the last 15 years. 

How did the Jumbos of Tufts Lacrosse achieve one of the most remarkable turnarounds in college sports history and position itself so effectively to dominate the modern era? Strong leadership and coaching, elite culture, passionate players and alumni, and engaging publicity and storytelling driven by a long term commitment to brand building.

KEY CONTRIBUTIONS & METRICS

– led publicity and brand strategy that transformed the program into one of the most recognized and talked about in the sport

– directed, produced, photographed hundreds of long form and short form content pieces, generating millions of impressions across YouTube & Instagram

– averaged 12% engagement on Instagram—5x higher engagement than any peer program in the lacrosse category and 12x higher engagement than the platform average

– organic content strategy converted ~10k real (non-bot) followers every 4-6 months at peak growth, making Tufts Lacrosse the fastest growing channel in category (currently 60K on Instagram) and one of the most impactful

JMBLXTV: CREATING MEANING

In 2007, after playing for Tufts Lacrosse, Drew Innis founded JMBLXTV—a media imprint of the program built with the goal of helping Tufts Lacrosse “win the future.” The vision was to leverage storytelling and emerging distribution platforms like YouTube to create meaning, build national brand recognition and attract future talent.

Innis believed passionately in the program and the special culture Coach Mike Daly had built and wanted more people to care about its committed and hardworking teams.

His first film for the program would go on to surpass a quarter-million views online, reaching virtually every corner of lacrosse. Many future Jumbos later cited the film as the spark that compelled them to pursue Tufts.

Overnight, the film elevated Tufts Lacrosse from obscurity to the national stage. It didn’t just introduce the program—it gave people reasons to care about Tufts Lacrosse and talk about it with others.

This moment in time also marked the beginning of a broader shift in the sport. Legacy programs began losing their monopoly on attention, opening the door for new parity—and eventual dominance—by programs willing to challenge the status quo and invest long-term in self-generated publicity and winning in the attention economy.

Pre 2007 vs Post 2007 Win-Loss Record vs NESCAC Rivals

Opponent	Pre-2007 Record	Post-2007 Record	Transformation
Amherst	1-11 (.389)	15-4 (.789)	+.400
Middlebury	2-16 (.111)	23-5 (.821)	+.710
Wesleyan	8-10 (.444)	17-9 (.654)	+.210
Bowdoin	5-13 (.278)	19-3 (.864)	+.586
Williams	7-11 (.389)	20-4 (.833)	+.444
TOTALS	23-61 (.274)	94-25 (.789)	+.515

WINNING CULTURE

In 2010, Tufts captured its first NESCAC Championship and its first NCAA National Championship, finishing the season 20–1. The historic title run included dethroning Middlebury—defeating the longtime powerhouse three times in a single season. 

From the outside, the championship season looked like overnight success. Insiders knew it was years in the making. Still, even Coach Daly later acknowledged the speed of the ascent surprised him: “We skipped a few steps there…”

Innis produced a documentary chronicling the historic season, generating another quarter-million views and cementing Tufts Lacrosse as a championship program.

Between 2010 and 2019, Tufts firmly established itself as the dominant NESCAC program—winning 9 of 10 conference championships (including six straight) and appearing in five national title games, winning three. In just a single decade, Tufts captured more NESCAC championships than any program in league history, surpassing Middlebury.

During this period, Innis produced and directed:

– Three National Championship documentaries

– A four-part in-season web series

– Over 125 YouTube game highlights

– Hundreds of short-form content pieces

Collectively, this work helped build a brand synonymous with excellence and winning.

Innis’s work earned recognition from leaders such as PLL co-founder and CEO Paul Rabil and praise from sports insiders like Ty Xanders and Inside Lacrosse. 

PUBLICITY MACHINE: PUNCHING ABOVE WEIGHT CLASS

With the help of Innis’s vision and direction, the program has amassed the largest following in all of DIII athletics, with 60K on Instagram — a digital NFL-sized stadium with a voice louder than the entire NESCAC field combined and more impact than their closest Division I peers in the Ivy League.

Since launching the channel in 2017, Innis directed admins to actively curate the audience, removing bots and inactive accounts to maximize engagement and reach. The result: one of the best performing and most impactful channels in lacrosse regardless of division or follower count. 

When Tufts Lacrosse posts, the lacrosse world talks about it, their stories end up on ESPN’s Sports Center and their clips capture hundreds of thousands of views and days of watch hours.  Features on a Tufts player photographed by Innis get more reach and engagement than college lacrosse’s #1 star recruit at a blue blood Division I program.

STX BATTLE OF THE BUCKETS: ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Battle of the Buckets was a competition held from 2018-20 by lacrosse’s premiere equipment manufacturer STX to crown the best team helmet in college lacrosse. Determined by fan votes on Instagram, it could be argued the competition functioned as a proxy for “most liked” program/brand on social media.

Tufts Lacrosse not only won the competition every year, but did it competing against Syracuse, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Princeton, Duke and UNC—a collection of the most storied and well established programs in lacrosse history (a program from that group of teams either won or played in virtually every NCAA Division I National Championship game from 1971 to 2018).

To say it was a David vs Goliath matchup is an understatement. The outcome was so unexpected, that many dismissed it as meaningless social media competition with some commenters even suggesting it was rigged. 

But was a most popular brand competition really meaningless in the context of the modern attention economy? One that has no bearing on future on-field success? 

Since 2007, Tufts Lacrosse’s win percentage has trended upward with remarkably low volatility (despite multiple coaching staff changes). Meanwhile, legacy Division I programs have experienced declining dominance and increasing inconsistency.

While those programs relied on legacy exposure, television contracts and facilities investments to market their programs, Tufts Lacrosse leveraged homegrown creative talent, forward-thinking strategy and self-generated publicity.

It’s no coincidence that today Tufts regularly attracts recruits who turn down multiple Division I offers. Playing for Tufts Lacrosse today carries more meaning and can be a more compelling experience than many Division I programs.

Prior to STX’s Battle of the Buckets competition, lacrosse’s most influential publication Inside Lacrosse published a poll tracking where high school recruits were most interested to play college lacrosse. Tufts Lacrosse was not only the sole Division III program to make the list, they finished #1 in the poll, beating out every major Division I program from the ACC, Ivy League and BigTen. 

REAL WORLD MEANING & VALUE

In today’s attention economy, brand and publicity matters. Innis’s work, direction and long-term vision has helped not only create important meaning and value for past, current and future Jumbos, but has created durable advantages for Tufts Lacrosse that are difficult to replicate.

Personal Storytelling

College careers are short. Having the experience captured and memorialized in an earnest way is meaningful long after players’ careers have ended.

Sponsorships

Tufts Lacrosse is the only Division III program sponsored by lacrosse’s premiere equipment manufacturer STX and maintains a long-term strategic partnership with Nike.

Camps

Tufts Lacrosse is one of the few programs that has the draw to sell out its own fall, winter, and summer prospect camps—attracting talent directly to campus for streamlined evaluations and generating additional revenue for coaching staff.

Recruiting

Strong brand equity allows Tufts Lacrosse to recruit more effectively with less labor input and expense—freeing staff to focus on team/player development and what is most important to Tufts Lacrosse: winning lacrosse games.

Communication Speed & Authenticity

Most programs have multiple intermediaries between them and their audience creating high communication costs, friction to media creation and a voice that lacks authenticity. Tufts Lacrosse’s fluid media mechanics today allows Head Coach Casey D’Annolfo to seamlessly manage day to day media production, craft posts himself and speak directly to the audience with unrivaled speed, efficiency and authenticity.

WINNING THE FUTURE

Despite multiple coaching staff changes, including the departure of modern founding head coach Mike Daly (departed for Brown in 2016) and a full staff replacement in 2017 with a group of young alums who had never coached a single college lacrosse game, Tufts Lacrosse has only become more dominant. 

Under Head Coach Casey D’Annolfo ’05, the program has now won two straight NCAA National Championships, appeared in three consecutive title games, and completed a historic undefeated season (23–0) in 2025, culminating in a 25–8 championship victory at Gillette Stadium—the largest margin of victory in NCAA title history. 

In an era where many athletics programs are sinking huge sums of capital into stadiums and lacrosse facilities and willfully under investing in creative, publicity and brand building, Tufts Lacrosse continues to dominate playing in one of the most humble stadiums in college lacrosse. Despite less frills, it regularly proves it can compete and defeat its Division I neighbors when given the opportunity and is considered in the lacrosse world to be a top 20 caliber Division I team.

Once “Nobodies From Nowhere”, Tufts Lacrosse is not only one of the most talked about programs in lacrosse today, it’s driving the conversation forward and has been positioned to win the future.