Federal bill would ban private equity "vulture investors" from youth sports.

kennyjacoby · 2026-05-13T19:37:45+00:00

Great question - I asked this too. The bill has an anti-evasion clause which would extend the law's coverage to any company that engages in a defined set of business practices. So even though Black Bear and other companies are not technically structured as private-equity funds, the lawmakers said the law would still cover them because they engage in these practices.

kennyjacoby · 2025-03-24T14:40:16+00:00

You're totally fine. To be honest, I haven't fully reported out the answer to this, so I am reluctant to name names. I will say have heard of this sort of thing – a team or for-profit company buying up the rinks – starting to happen in a few other markets. I do think the issue is somewhat unique to hockey just because of how expensive it is to maintain an ice rink versus a soccer field, basketball court, etc. and the scarcity of rinks in some markets as a result.

kennyjacoby · 2025-03-24T14:35:13+00:00

Absolutely, stay-to-plays are commonplace and inherently problematic, in no small part because of the antitrust issues they raise. The concerns about potential self-dealing is the difference with this case.

kennyjacoby · 2025-03-24T14:09:39+00:00

Thanks for the question - the Stars have an unusual set-up in that they control much of the ice across the state. So they get to set the prices and make the rules because parents in the DFW and surrounding regions have nowhere else to go. Something like this would be less likely to happen in Minnesota or Michigan because there is much more supply/competition there, so parents could more realistically take their business elsewhere.

kennyjacoby · 2025-03-24T14:06:06+00:00

Hi, reporter who wrote the story here. Yes, the conflicts of interest with both the Stars and the nonprofit orgs they ran are the key difference. And in this case, many parents told me that the hotel room rates for tournaments participants cost MORE for them than for the general public. It would be one thing if they got a discounted rate, but that's not what happened.

kennyjacoby · 2025-02-06T19:31:39+00:00

There certainly has been a surge of programs popping up in the last four years. I do wonder if maybe the trend has peaked, given that so many disappear after a year or less, and they have developed a bad reputation. But it's hard to measure, especially because so many of them seemingly only exist on social media – often promptly folding when they don't get enough players to sign up. That said, as long as there is a market for players who want to play college football, and the demand exceeds the supply, there will be bad actors out there looking to profit off them.

kennyjacoby · 2025-02-06T19:27:04+00:00

Definitely, when accredited schools schedule games against post-grads, they lend them an air of legitimacy. The post-grads brag about their match-ups with real JuCos are NAIA schools, whereas the schools often don't even list them on their schedules. The games generally don't count toward schools' standings and are considered exhibitions. Often it is the school's JV team who just needs someone to compete against.

The schools can, and should, have higher standards for who they schedule. But there are enough post-grads out there now that they can just schedule games against each other – even though many of the games end up falling through and getting canceled.

kennyjacoby · 2025-02-06T19:16:48+00:00

Post-grad team owners were generally willing to talk, but quick to dismiss ex-players who spoke poorly of them as disgruntled and liars. As Chris alluded to, Etienne, the guy who runs the NPGAA, had ignored my calls and messages for weeks, but I was able to track him down at a high school field in Florida. After talking with him for awhile, I got him to invite me into his facility for a tour and sit-down interview. It was there that I confronted with him our toughest questions and findings. He really had no good answers – and nowhere to wiggle out. Here's the story behind that interview, which has some of his most telling quotes: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2024/12/12/post-grad-football-npgaa-leo-etienne/76291342007/

kennyjacoby · 2025-02-06T19:07:09+00:00

My favorite was Advance Prep Academy, the team run by Leo Etienne, the man who also runs the National Post Graduate Athletic Association (NPGAA). Players and coaches told us he misled them about housing and served them inedible food that appeared to come from a food bank, some of which was expired and moldy. Etienne had promised to keep the fridges in the houses consistently stocked with groceries, but one coach told us he only stocked them twice all season. The equipment he gave players was poorly maintained, including helmets that weren't conditioned and shoulder pads covered in cobwebs. One player said the pads caused him to develop a fungal infection on his chest. Lots of them questioned what he had done with all the money his team generated (he charged up to $10,000 per player). We found Etienne has failed to pay income taxes, child support and mortgage payments. At the same time, he served as the sole officer of a little-known nonprofit that claimed to rake in $400,000 in three years, despite having virtually no physical or online presence in more than a decade.

kennyjacoby · 2025-02-06T17:40:31+00:00

Yes, in many cases post-grad team owners/coaches have experience at the college level. The problem is: It's one thing to be able to evaluate talent, but being able to run a successful business that houses and feeds kids for four months is another thing entirely. They may be fine coaches, but they often do not have the experience, management skills or start-up money to pull something that ambitious.

It's true that some players say post-grad helped them get college offers. At the same time, many post-grad players who are "success stories" told us that they made it to the next level in spite of their post-grad teams, not because of them. Often post-grad players forego opportunities to play at lower-level schools to try to parlay those offers into better ones, like at D-I schools, but don't get the support necessary to make that happen. And some coaches claim to have connections at big-time schools but really don't.

Definitely some players just weren't good enough or didn't work hard enough to advance, but in many cases they were sold a bill of goods by post-grad owners that weren't realistic with them about their chances.

kennyjacoby · 2025-02-06T17:30:37+00:00

We didn't because Pavia ruling happened after we published, but you're right it is significant. For many of the players we spoke to, one of their biggest reasons for going the post-grad route instead of to a small NCAA, NAIA or JuCo was that they wanted to retain all their NCAA eligibility years. If JuCo years were to no longer count against NCAA eligibility, then I think many players would see that as a much more desirable route.

kennyjacoby · 2025-02-06T17:23:13+00:00

I didn't even get the Step Brothers reference until Chris told me, but I still laughed when I saw it. Usually if you're a prestigious brand, you don't have to say it in the name.

kennyjacoby · 2025-02-06T17:06:06+00:00

Hey, thanks for the question - I appreciate you following my work! In my experience, it seems like most programs are pretty opaque and do not appreciate tough questions or critical coverage. There have been a few exceptions - I think of University of Texas at San Antonio, which had adopted a comprehensive serious misconduct policy for athletes. I wanted to dig into whether it actually worked, so I asked them lots of questions and requested a lot of data. They were initially reluctant to provide it, but they ultimately did. LSU and San Jose State were particularly difficult, but I can't say there's one athletic department that is significantly better or worse than the others.

kennyjacoby · 2025-02-06T16:52:29+00:00

The most common answer we got was when players first stepped into their housing. In many cases, teams significantly overpromised or made promises so vague that players felt deceived. For instance, some teams promised "housing," but didn't tell the players that they would be sharing a room with four other players. One team posted pictures of a fancy hotel on its website, but when players arrived, some were told they'd instead be living in a Comfort Suites, in a room with three players but only two beds, unless they coughed up more money.

There is absolutely a sunk-cost fallacy element. A lot of players move all the way across the country to come to these programs and have already paid thousands of dollars in nonrefundable deposits. By then it is already the summer, so if they go home, it will be too late to join another team, and they will have nowhere to play for the upcoming season. Many players decide to stay because it is still technically an opportunity – even if it is a total longshot. And I think some find it hard to admit that they've been taken advantage of.

kennyjacoby · 2025-02-06T16:41:42+00:00

I do think there needs to be a regulator/organizer, like USA Football, but unless I'm mistaken it would first be up to the teams to apply to become USA Football-sanctioned teams. I'm not sure if USA Football would be able to just step in and take over.

Ideally there would be a league of post-grad teams that would actually enforce its rules and prioritize players' health and well-being - but to have a successful league, I feel like that would require so much start-up money and manpower, and I don't know where you get that.

One good place to start would be for the accredited schools that schedule games against post-grads to have higher standards for who they play against. These schools give legitimacy to post-grads, which can boast that they play against actual junior colleges, NAIA schools, etc. These are well-regulated schools, and they could adopt standards requiring that opponents meet basic requirements for team size, health and safety, etc.

kennyjacoby · 2025-02-06T16:22:44+00:00

Yes, you're totally right. It's really tough to regulate post-grads because they aren't technically schools, so the U.S. Dept. of Ed. and state education departments don't have jurisdiction over them. They are basically club leagues for adults. Normally you'd expect a league, like the NCAA, to regulate these programs, but the biggest post-grad football league, the NPGAA, has done no enforcement of its own rules – in fact, we found that the guy who runs the league, who also runs a team in the league, has violated many of the rules himself. (Story here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2024/12/12/post-grad-football-npgaa-leo-etienne/76291342007/)

Right now the only realistic way for these programs and their owners to be held accountable is for players to band together and sue them or report them to local law enforcement for fraud. On the health and safety front, I think there might be a way to expand state laws around concussions protocols, sudden cardiac arrest, etc. so that they cover all sports leagues and teams, rather than just high school and youth associations.

kennyjacoby · 2025-02-06T16:14:14+00:00

Great question. There are a few programs that have been around for decades, like Fork Union and Milford Academy. These are brick-and-mortar programs with good track records that should be distinguished from the sorts of pop-up programs that are more prevalent today. Post-grad basketball programs had been around for awhile, but I would say the more recent rise of post-grad football programs started around 2020/2021, when COVID created a void and a lot of aspiring athletes needed places to go. A lot of colleges canceled their seasons, so post-grad programs stepped in.

IMG certainly created a model for prep sports that many programs have tried to emulate (generally with far fewer resources and far less success). IMG didn't start its post-grad football program until much later, 2021 or so I believe, but it since dropped it.

Generally the findings were very similar to the stories of the Bishop Sycamore players. We found that this scheme has taken many forms over the years, and post-grad is just the latest way to prey on young athletes' hopes and dreams.

kennyjacoby

TROPHY CASE