A select few individuals are described by their “aura.”
There’s Oklahoma City Thunder superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who’s lauded for his aura which emanates from his pregame outfits, flashy play and smooth talk in postgame interviews. There’s Washington Commanders rookie sensation Jayden Daniels and his slick touchdown celebrations after a nifty play. Even Deion Sanders’s unapologetic swagger from his playing days.
Amir Khan, a manager for McNeese’s men’s basketball team, was knighted for his own aura across social media after a pregame video surfaced where he rapped “In and Out” by Lud Foe word-for-word.
The walk-out started like any other for Khan—he leads McNeese out of the tunnel with a large boom box strapped around his shoulder each game. Usually, he doesn’t know the song the team has decided to play. But Saturday, the players got hype to one of his favorite songs, and a viral moment was born.
Never felt this much hype before a game—easily one of my all-time favorite filming moments😂🔥@McNeeseMBB x #BayouBandits pic.twitter.com/NSqphtjFlP
— “Who is PJ?” 🎞 (@Phil_UpOnMe) February 24, 2025
“I started doing it last year,” Khan said of McNeese’s pregame ritual in an interview with Sports Illustrated. “I started carrying the speaker as they were doing their tunnel walk and I usually don’t know the song. Over the last two years, I’m jamming to the song and I’m enjoying it but I usually don’t know it like that.
“But then before that game, on Saturday, I had heard the song and I was like ‘Oh, this is one of my songs.’ So I started rapping it, and then the players were hyping me up, so I just kept going.”
The Cowboys rolled after Khan hyped them up Saturday, defeating Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 73-57.
Meanwhile online, the video, originally shot and posted by McNeese’s assistant athletic director of creative media Phillip Mitchell Jr., caught steam once it was reposted by College Basketball Content (@CBBContent) on X. “Bro in the glasses has aura,” the post read.
Now, after 3.2 million views and 80,000 likes, a new aura-riddled star was born.
Khan’s page on McNeese’s athletics website quickly surfaced as the video went viral. Onlookers noticed a quote on the page, which deepened his quickly building lore.
“If they kept manager stats for rebounding and wiping up wet spots on the court, I’d put up Wilt Chamberlain numbers,” it reads.
He told SI that the managers got their own page on the website this year and each was allowed to pick their own quote. Although he didn’t know what to pick initially, he saw a meme focused on an old, absurd stat line Chamberlain put up. Once he saw that, the idea for the quote hit him.
Khan is from Lake Charles, La., where McNeese is located. He was supposed to go to a small community college, but he ended up at McNeese before his freshman year because his mom wanted him to attend the school. Three years later, he went to the Southland Conference tournament and watched his school win a couple games. Then, Will Wade, who coached LSU from 2017 to ’22, was hired as McNeese’s coach and Khan, a lifelong LSU fan, wanted to work for him.
“He provided an energy that I’ve never seen from a coach and it made me want to work for him,” Khan said. “So when he got hired down at McNeese, it was a no-brainer. I had to come work for him.”
Khan admitted he was nervous to talk Wade at first. But now, they have an amazing relationship.
“It doesn’t matter that [Wade] is the head coach and I’m a manager,” he said. “Whenever he talks to you, it’s two normal human beings and you’re all the same people. I can talk to him, I can joke around with him and stuff. I can talk to him like he’s truly a friend and like we’re equals, even though he’s very, very much on a higher status than me. But it doesn’t feel like that with him.”
Along with his fellow managers, Khan helps rebound for individual shooting workouts each morning. Then, he helps set up for practice, making sure everything runs smoothly. His daily manager duties wrap up with laundry, all around his slate of classes.
The highlight for Khan as a manager, though, is game days. McNeese played at Alabama and Mississippi State this season, environments he never thought he’d be on the court for. And he plays a big role for the Cowboys as the team’s hype man, outside of his traditional manager responsibilities.
His favorite artists are Drake and Lil Wayne. He used to listen to a lot of Lil Uzi Vert, who he’d also add to his top rap artists. But now, McNeese’s viral pregame moment brings the sounds of Chicago-based Lud Foe to ears far outside of Lake Charles. And all see Khan’s face rapping each word as he leads the Cowboys out of their tunnel.
He hopes to be a graduate assistant for a basketball program once he graduates, and eventually build a career as a coach. In the meantime, McNeese has their brimming-with-aura manager to help boost a potential run to the NCAA tournament. Currently, the Cowboys sit at 23-6, atop the Southland Conference.
With his newfound fame, Khan’s manager page was updated—Amir “Aura” Khan, it reads, complete with a new black-and-white photo of Khan holding up a paper sign that reads his name, mimicking Chamberlain’s famous photo after he scored 100 points in a game.
“The way I see aura is the energy you give off to other people,” he said over the phone.
And he does just that each time he grabs the speaker to lead McNeese into their next game.
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