Passion to Profession: Employee No. 12 — Building Overtime and Its Trading Cards with Sam Gordon
Sam Gordon, VP of Programming and Head of YouTube at Overtime, discusses his unconventional career path from Wall Street to joining Overtime as employee #12, the company's explosive growth through unique content strategies, and his work creating basketball card sets with Topps featuring high school prospects.
Summary
Sam Gordon recounts his decision to leave a Wall Street job offer to join Overtime in 2017 when the company had only a few months of operating funds remaining. He emphasizes that he joined based on the quality of people at the company rather than the industry itself, and was motivated by equity ownership. Overtime's early competitive advantage centered on two insights: high school athletes were more popular than NBA players and could be filmed for free, and audiences didn't require high production value—they wanted speed and authenticity. The company grew by posting clips in real-time through a network of paid filmers, often beating traditional media outlets like ESPN to breaking content.
Gordon details how testing and unconventional thinking shaped Overtime's strategy. Rather than copying larger competitors, the team focused on finding what small creators were doing successfully and adapting those concepts. He explains their decision to respond to audience comments as a brand-building tool and shares examples of successful format experiments, from the viral 'random person on street reports news' concept to production choices like hiring streamers as announcers instead of traditional sports broadcasters.
The conversation moves to Overtime's expansion into building its own basketball league (OT), which emerged from recognizing gaps in the high school basketball system regarding nutrition, facility access, and player development. The league now features state-of-the-art facilities in Atlanta and has produced NBA draft picks including the Thompson twins (4th and 5th picks), Alex Sarr (2nd pick), and Rob Dillingham (8th pick).
Regarding the Topps card partnership, Gordon explains the opportunity to create pre-professional trading cards of OT prospects mirrored baseball's Bowman Chrome rookie card appeal. He details his collector's perspective on negotiating non-negotiable terms including on-card autographs (no stickers), no redemptions, and having card bios written in Overtime's voice rather than typical sports card language. He acknowledges the production realities that sometimes forced compromises, such as unavoidable redemptions and sticker autographs when tight deadlines made on-card alternatives impossible. Gordon highlights his personal collection includes red refractor versions of Amen Thompson and Asser Thompson cards, which he views as undervalued given their quality and the players' NBA success.
About this episode
<p>Sam Gordon had accepted a job on Wall Street.</p><p>Two weeks before he was set to start, he walked away and joined Overtime as its 12th employee. The company had a few months of funding left.</p><p>Today, Sam serves as VP of Programming and Head of YouTube at Overtime.</p><p>Sam shares how $15 videos of Zion Williamson reached SportsCenter, why Overtime chose speed over production quality, and how the company grew from a social media account into a sports league.</p><p>We also get the collector’s view of building the Topps OTE card products.</p><p>Sam explains the push for on-card autographs, rookie logos, card backs written in Overtime’s voice, and the production demands that led to stickers and redemptions.</p><p>He also tells the story of turning a Lionel Messi Superfractor autograph pulled from a box at work into his favorite card, a 1999 Michael Jordan Final Floor autograph.</p><p>This is a conversation about trusting people, testing ideas, building with ownership, and creating sports cards from the collector’s seat.</p><p>Passion to Profession is presented by eBay.</p><p><br />Sign up for <a href="https://stackingslabs.substack.com/p/coming-soon?r=hjr6d&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy">Hobby Jobs and The Weekly Rip</a> for free</p><p>A special thank you to <a href="https://www.ebay.com/">eBay</a> for sponsoring <em>Passion to Profession</em>. The biggest and best marketplace to buy your next favorite trading card.</p><p>Get exclusive content, promote your cards, and connect with other collectors who listen to the pod today by joining the Patreon: <a href="https://patreon.com/StackingSlabs?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=join_link">Join Stacking Slabs Podcast Patreon</a></p> <strong> <a href="https://www.patreon.com/c/StackingSlabs" rel="payment" title="★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★">★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★</a> </strong>
Key Insights
- Sam Gordon was advised by Overtime's co-founder Zach that he owed no loyalty to his future Wall Street employer, and that once a job stops adding to a company's bottom line, they would immediately replace him—this reframing convinced him to leave the secure job for an uncertain startup.
- Overtime's early growth relied on paying high school filmers small amounts to capture basketball games in real-time and text clips within seconds, allowing them to beat established media outlets posting highlights hours later—proving that speed and authenticity mattered more than production quality.
- Sam Gordon argues that joining a company should be based primarily on the quality of people you'll work with rather than the industry itself, as working with people you trust and enjoy can overcome almost any other challenge.
- Overtime discovered through testing that viral basketball content rarely comes from highlight plays alone—instead, sideline moments, disrespectful plays, and exceptional audio (particularly streamer commentary) drive engagement more than athletic feats.
- The decision to build Overtime's own basketball league stemmed from direct athlete feedback about systemic failures in high school basketball, including poor nutrition, restricted facility access at night, and lack of professional-level resources for top prospects.
- Sam Gordon maintains that producing sports card sets requires understanding production timelines months in advance, as card designs and content must be finalized before printing begins, making late changes impossible—this sometimes forces compromises like redemptions or sticker autographs despite collector preferences.
- Gordon notes that first-year OT Chrome cards of the Thompson twins and other NBA draft picks are currently undervalued relative to their quality as on-card Topps Chrome refractors with rookie logos, despite the players' NBA success validating the prospects.
- Overtime's approach to audience engagement—responding to comments and DMs—costs the company minimal time but creates disproportionately high brand loyalty because a single response from a large brand significantly impacts individual fans.
Topics
Transcript
Welcome back. Passion to Profession brought to you by my good friends at eBay here on the Stacking Slabs Network. It is that time of the week where we dig into the entrepreneurial and operational journeys of people building cool things in the sports card industry. Excited for today's conversation, I got a chance to meet Sam Gordon, VP of Programming, head of YouTube at Overtime at The National. He shared some pickups. We kept in touch after the fact, and I thought, man, you have a real cool story, and I think it deserves some airtime here on Passion and Profession. We get into Sam's collecting. We talk about his work at overtime and how he ended up releasing…
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