Dr. Phillips High alum, YouTube sensation Scooter Magruder talks online success

ORLANDO  If you’ve seen videos floating around social media with titles such as “Things ___ fans say,” it’s likely that it came from Orlando resident Cameron “Scooter” Magruder.

Magruder, a 2007 Dr. Phillips High graduate, is a self-proclaimed sports fan and comedian. In fact, he likes to say during his football career at Dr. Phillips, he was “the best receiver at Dr. Phillips who could not catch.” 

And with more than 140,000 subscribers and millions of views on his videos, he’s also a prominent YouTube personality. 

He’s always been a comedian of sorts — he earned his nickname in the sixth grade.

“A teacher asked us what you wanted to be called, and sort of as a last-minute dare, I told the person next to me I was gonna say Scooter, and he said, ‘You won’t do it,’” Magruder said. “The teacher came around and I was like, ‘My name’s Cameron but everyone calls me Scooter.’ It’s sixth grade, so no one knows your name anyway, and people have thought it was my real name ever since then. It’s catchy.”

But he didn’t discover his affinity for film until he was 14 and a participant on the reality show “Endurance 2.” After getting to see the filming process and camerawork from behind the scenes, his interest in creating videos was planted.

A few years went by, but after graduating from the University of Florida with a degree in film production, he finally brought his channel to fruition. At the time, videos like “Top 100 things __ say” were popular, and he merged the trend with his love of sports.

“I do a lot of sports comedy. … That was when I started doing stuff Gator fans, Magic fans and Noles fans say, during that era,” Magruder said. “That’s when my sports comedy was born, out of that meme. Basically, I’ve never stopped, and I’ve been doing variations of that since then. I would do other comedic videos, and that’s when I got on the Today Show. 

“Recently, I’ve been focusing on doing sports videos, because thats the niche that hasn’t been explored,” he said. “There’s only a small handful of people doing sports comedy.”

He built his subscriber base over time and has won multiple awards from YouTube. In summer of 2012, he was named one of 16 of YouTube’s “Next Vloggers,” through which he received $5,000 of equipment, $10,000 in YouTube promotional advertisement and mentoring from other top vloggers.

Another competition he won sent him out to Los Angeles for two weeks of collaboration with other content creators at the YouTube Space.

Currently, he is doing a season-long partnership with Dallas Cowboys and AT&T, and is being sponsored by Taco Bell for a year. For this, he is focusing on sports reaction videos, which are humorous re-enactments of fan reactions to a game.

For the next few years, Magruder hopes to continue drawing out and building his brand while dabbling more in his ever-growing list of video ideas. It’s rewarding for him to meet people from all over the world who watch and enjoy his videos now.

“I love interacting with my community,” he said. “I just love seeing people from all over the world (saying things like), ‘Oh, I’m from Africa, and I like your stuff,’ or ‘I’m from England, and I watch your stuff.’ It’s the coolest.”