Digital superstar: Daleville’s Sanlnocencio enjoying his time in the NFL

Eric Sanlnocencio comes from humble beginnings as a graduate of Daleville High School, but now he is an award-winning Senior Director of Digital Media for the NFL’s Houston Texans.

In December, Sanlnocencio and his Houston Texans Digital Media team flew to New York City and were presented with the 2017 Shorty Social Good Award for the Texans Care Program, which was a social media program the Texans started with fans and players showing off their community service efforts.

“It was a pretty humbling experience,” Sanlnocencio said of winning the award. “I was humbled to be around people from Africa and Russia and all these other places and organizations that were using social media to do greater good, affecting world-wide change.”

Sanlnocencio said that “humbling” was the only word he could think of to describe the experience.

“It was a huge team effort from our organization and our community,” he said. “It really makes you proud of your organization and it really was a magical night.

“I’m just a Wiregrass boy and I was there thinking, ‘what am I doing in a ballroom in New York City winning an award?’ It was really humbling.”

Sanlnocencio was a baseball star at Daleville before going on to play for Montevallo. He interned with The Southeast Sun/Daleville Sun-Courier in high school, where he got his start in media, but it was his dream to play in the big leagues, not work in media.

“My first goal was to play on those grand stages (like the NFL or SEC),” he said. “I was at Daleville High School and I didn’t realize how much bigger the world was than that.

“When that dream didn’t happen, I kind of reverted back to what my goal in life has always been. My goal in life has always been really simple: find things that I want to do and find a way to have people pay me to do it.”

After graduating from Montevallo, Sanlnocencio began working at the University of Alabama-Birmingham as its Associate Media Relations Director, before moving on to work for the Gulf South Conference (GSC) as its Sports Information Director.

It was with the GSC that Sanlnocencio saw the landscape of sports media changing.

“Social media really started to emerge when I was at the GSC,” he said. “We were always fighting, as a smaller conference, to find a way to tell the stories of our kids in our league to a larger audience, and then social media came along and really changed things.”

Sanlnocencio then moved onto the Southeastern Conference as its Digital Media Manager.

“(Social media) made it so much easier for fans to connect with the teams and players they love,” he said. “Before social media you would have to go to a game or to an autograph signing to connect with a team or player.

“Now, you can interact with your favorite players and teams every single day and really knock down that wall between the fans and teams.”

Sanlnocencio said that connection between fans and the players and teams have always been his goal in digital media.

“The platforms are always changing,” he said. “How we post changes and how we connect changes but the singular goal is connecting the fans and giving them that behind-the-scenes look at the sports world and that will always be the goal.”

While Sanlnocencio enjoyed his time working in the SEC office, he began to want to connect more closely to the fans of a singular team.

“When I was at the SEC it became a dream of mine to work for an individual team,” he emphasized. “When you work at the league office it’s a lot different. You’re rooting for the entire conference, which is fun because you never lose but I always had that inkling of wanting to see what it would be like to follow the ebbs and flows of one particular team.”

In 2013 Sanlnocencio joined the Houston Texans organization as its new Digital Media Manager and eventually worked his way up to Senior Director of Digital Media.

“I oversee all of the social media channels, the website, the team’s app and really anything digitally with the team,” he said. “It’s been really exciting and I’ve gotten to experience so many things that I never thought I would.”

In his time with the Texans, Sanlnocencio has helped out with the Super Bowl, as the Houston Texans’ NRG Stadium hosted last year’s Super Bowl, as well as getting a chance to visit and work with all of the teams in the NFL.

“Just being a part of the larger landscape of the NFL has helped me become so much better at my job,” he said. “Being around the other teams and learning how creative they are has been hugely beneficial for me and I’m also just really having a lot of fun.

“Sometimes I have to pinch myself because I go to work everyday at a football stadium.”

Sanlnocencio credits the Daleville community for his mindset on connecting with the community and says he takes that mindset everywhere he goes.

“I think Daleville was the right environment for me at the time,” he said. “I think it allowed me to flourish as a person, an athlete and a student.

“I take from Daleville that small town connection of wanting to do what’s best and help your neighbor. I always joke that when I’m in Houston I always wave at people when I pass by in a car and most people look at me like I’m crazy, but that’s part of growing up in Daleville and having that Southern charm of wanting to connect with people. I try to take that everywhere I g