Purdue Killed The Aura Kid, McNeese Cowboys & Amir Khan's Legendary Student Manager Run Comes to an End

I'm struggling to come up with the right word for it, but Amir Khan is the quintessential example of... something. The perfect example of somebody who was in the right place at the right time and rose to fame on the internet in the blink of an eye. Falling ass backwards into allegedly hundreds of thousands of dollars in NIL money. It's all perfectly 2025. Not that he doesn't work hard at what he does. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say there are other student managers in college basketball who are putting in the same amount, if not more work. There might even be some other student managers who know rap lyrics. I'm not saying Amir Khan doesn't deserve this any more or less than other managers. But he was undeniably lucky to catch the perfect storm of events (McNeese making the tournament, Will Wade's NC State job drawing some attention to the program, McNeese upsetting Clemson, the rest of the NCAA tournament being relatively uneventful, etc.) that lead to him becoming one of, if not the #1 story of March Madness. 

Then of course, as quickly as America can fall in love with a kid, they can just as quickly drag him down. I'm sure Amir Khan's "haters" seem far more prevalent to me, or anybody who spends time on Twitter. A majority of the world sees ESPN or CBS Sports run a story on the kid, they see he made some NIL money, they watch him lead McNeese out of the tunnel, and think "Oh wow that's fun!". Then they move on with their lives. But if you're chronically online. Or even mildly online. You notice how quickly the world can beat a good thing into the ground. To the point that it's hard not to think, "Can we fucking relax with the Aura Khan stuff a bit?"

Amir Khan was always going to inevitably fall victim to the same narrative that surrounded Sister Jean. He went viral and became the face of a small school. A team who even most college basketball fans couldn't give you the name a single player of. McNesse doesn't necessarily have one big star, or an exceptionally "marketable" player. It's not like the media has a Ja Morant at Murray State to latch on to. So in order to drum up interest, the ESPN's, CBS's, and Barstool Sports' of the world push the Amir Khan angle instead of focusing on the players. That's what gets clicks. That's what casual fans are attracted to. So inevitably, people will eventually start to say, "He's taking all the attention from the players… it shouldn't be about him… we should be talking about the team… I actually think this this aura stuff is annoying as shit." 

It's not Amir's fault. Mostly not at least. I will say, it's a little bold to show up to your team's round of 32 game with a personalized Aura jumpsuit. 

But in his defense, he's in a bit of a tough spot. Not that anybody should feel bad for him. I'd imagine Underarmor paid him a stupid amount of money to wear that. At the end of the day, you gotta look out for yourself and capitalize on your moment. And at the same time, ever since Amir Khan's videos of him leading McNeese with a boom box went viral, McNeese kept winning. They won their conference tournament. They had a huge upset over Clemson. Whatever thing McNeese had going with Amir "Aura" Khan leading the way seemed to be working. You could even make the argument that taking the spotlight off the players is a helpful thing. That it allows the team to focus more on basketball. Regardless, at the end of the day, McNeese overachieved this season. I'm sure they would have preferred to not get their doors blown off in the second round by Purdue. But as a whole, McNeese had a great year. 

In some ways, McNeese being eliminated in the second round may have been the best thing for him. Overall, it was only a small groundswell of people on the internet who were complaining about him. But had he made it to next weekend… if we had another full week of Amir "Aura" Khan content. The anti-Amir sentiment would have gone mainstream. They would have given him the full Sister Jean treatment. But he was in the spotlight for just the right amount of time. He was the story of the tournament for a couple of days, signed a shocking amount of NIL deals, and got out of there beofre anybody dug up the old tweets (just kidding, if he had old tweets they would have been found days ago).

Like a thief in the night. I'm happy for the kid. I'd be lying if I said I didn't roll my eyes at a couple of things. But overall, I could never begrudge a student manager for taking his moment by the balls and making the most of it. Who knows what's next for him. No way he stays at McNeese right? Will he follow Will Wade to NC State? Will he legitimately be fielding phone calls from schools across the country begging him to come be their student manager? Will he declare for the NBA Draft? Or tomorrow will a different team be led out of the locker room by a dog with cancer, and it'll be like Aura Khan never existed.

Great season from McNeese. Shoutout Amir. And shoutout the players! Hell of a run boys. You'll get 'em next year (at NC State).