The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football

by Jeff Benedict

  Two points for a defensive stop. Three for an interception.

  The only players on the teams were quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, linebackers and defensive backs. For those in the booming talent evaluation and ranking business it offered a bird’s-eye view of size, agility, arm strength and speed, the essence of prime-time college football.

  Because of its structure, 7-on-7 had blossomed across the country since 2007, teams springing up like wildflowers in talent-rich Florida, Texas and California and every high school football hothouse in between. By 2013 there were an estimated two hundred teams nationwide. On any given weekend there were dozens of tryouts, shoot-outs, camps, combines or tournaments built around the game.

  On the final weekend of June 2012 some of the very best 7-on-7 teams in the country had arrived in Bradenton, Florida, to compete in IMG’s Football National Championships held at the IMG Academy. The two-day event took place on six beautifully groomed grass fields on the back side of the academy’s 450-acre campus. Signs posted on the pebbled path leading to the competition made clear the organizer’s intentions: no agents, BOOSTERS, OR FBS COACHES BEYOND THIS POINT.

  At 8:00 a.m. on Saturday several hundred high school athletes, about 90 percent African-American, hung out in the brewing summer heat or under the Under Armour and Gatorade sponsor tents. Many of the players wore dark green skintight Spider-Man–like jerseys that showed off bodies sculpted by weights. Thumping house music played. There was even a tented Players Lounge. Hotel accommodations and some meals had been provided. The look and feel was of a special event.

  At 9:00 a.m., Chris Weinke, IMG’s director of football and a former Heisman Trophy–winning quarterback at Florida State, laid out the ground rules for coaches. The start of play was just a few minutes away.

  “I want the guys to have fun, I want you to have fun, but I want to do it the right way,” said Weinke. “I know it gets competitive. I understand emotions getting a little out of hand. But respect each other.”

  Twenty-five teams from as far away as California, Indiana, Michigan and Tennessee had qualified to play. The top-ranked travel team was Cam Newton’s All-Stars out of Georgia, followed by Team Tampa and South Florida Express Elite. A small army of writers working for scouting and recruiting Web sites and services devoted to the assessment of teenage talent were out in force—Rivals, Scout, 247sports.com, MaxPreps, Elite, ESPN.com, USA Today—along with hugely popular team sites like Warchant.com and BamaOnLine.com. They represented arguably the biggest—and, in many ways, most troubling—change in the high school recruiting game in the last five years: the explosive growth of the player evaluation business.

  Some of the players, like five-star linebacker Jaylon Smith of the AWP Sports Performance team out of Fort Wayne, Indiana, had already committed to schools. In the case of the six-foot-three, 225-pound Smith it was Notre Dame. For the majority of other players, however, like athletic Jacob Mays and quicksilver wide receiver Jared Murphy, it was a golden opportunity to strut their stuff on a grand stage.

  Mays, for one, caught eyes right away. He had one of those sculpted high school bodies that seemed impossible a decade ago—six feet two, two hundred pounds—with huge hands and the ability to find a seam. Tucked away in a losing season at a small high school in Georgia, he had received scant national attention. But then Mays made Newton’s all-star team. Coaches on the sideline watching his first IMG game could barely believe their eyes.

  “This kid is the real deal; he’s a football player,” said one.

  In many ways the 2012 IMG championship was a bit like Mays—an Off-Broadway actor getting a chance to shine on the Great White Way. Several times over the course of the weekend an IMG executive talked about the ten-thousand-seat, multipurpose stadium set to be built nearby. In the fall of 2013, IMG Academy would break new ground by fielding a high school football team. IMG was betting big on high school football and doubling down on 7-on-7. In five years the hope was seventy-five teams would participate in its national championship. The title game would be played—under the lights—inside the new stadium in prime time on cable television.

  “We saw an opportunity,” said Odis Lloyd, at the time the vice president of business development for IMG and a former starter at safety for Arkansas.

  Lloyd, now the co-owner of VTO Sports, a premier high school combine and college prep company based in Charlotte, North Carolina, believed that with such opportunity came responsibility. On that very day, in fact, IMG had announced the formation of the National 7v7 Football Association. The hope was to create sanctioned events governed by more consistent rules and regulations and structure, especially in terms of player safety, and a coaches’ code of conduct. It was a big reason Renee Gomila, the NCAA enforcement staff’s point person in Florida, was on the grounds keeping a close eye on things. In a private moment inside one of the management trailers, Gomila and Lloyd had tossed around ways to control the chaos without killing a wonderful showcase for kids. The key, they agreed, was bringing “stakeholders,” like the NCAA, the National Federation of State High School Associations and high school coaches, parents and sponsors into the decision-making process.

  “We felt if we could get them [the stakeholders] in one place, we could get some sort of system around it,” said Lloyd. “We’re never going to be able to stop handlers, aunts, uncles, we’re not going to stop that. But everybody knows if you come to this event, it’s not about that for us. It’s not the Wild, Wild West.”

  Throughout the weekend there were repeated references to that exact phrase—“Wild, Wild West”—but perhaps the most apt metaphor was the corrupt culture long associated with Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) summer league basketball. Back in the early 1990s, thanks to a massive influx of shoe company money, the AAU summer recruiting scene had turned into a cesspool of problems: under-the-table payoffs, street agents, “coaches” with nothing more than a tight connection to a star player selling him to the highest bidder. The world of 7-on-7 wasn’t at that level—at least not yet—but all the elements were unquestionably in place, including sponsor money, enormous pressure to win at the college level, a worrisome cast of characters and a troubling lack of transparency. And the lack of control and the seamy influences seemed to be growing by the day. By the summer of 2012—with a national football playoff on the way—an entirely new level of anxiety had set in.

  Jamie Newberg, a writer for Scout.com, summarized that feeling when he said, “It’s getting completely out of hand.”

  In the lobby of the Courtyard Marriott by the Sarasota airport, Brett Goetz sipped water and spoke in machine-gun bursts. It was nearly 10:00 on Saturday night. All around the lobby were members of his two South Florida Express teams—Elite and Pro—drained from five hours of pool play earlier that day. They had gone undefeated in five games but paid a price. One player was at the hospital being checked for a concussion; three others were nursing injuries. Dinner was about to arrive, and when it did, in the form of chicken wings and fries, about forty high school kids attacked like locusts, forcing Goetz into action.

  BACK UP!

  BACK UP!

  BACK UP!

  I SAID, BACK UP!!

  BACK UP!!

  Nobody moved. Not a single soul. Three hundred and seventy-five wings and several small mountains of fries packed onto serving trays evaporated in seconds. Goetz didn’t eat. Instead, he stepped back and left every last piece for his players, coaches and a guest. It felt like one of those old White Shadow episodes. A perfect example of why so much of South Florida’s frontline talent lined up each and every February to try out for Goetz’s teams, in the process making the forty-one-year-old investment adviser one of the most powerful, respected and—to a point—outspoken figures in the world of 7-on-7. Goetz had been hip-deep in the cesspool for going on five years.

  “There’s so much shit I’d love to tell you because it makes me sick, so much shit that I see,” he said. “I read the message boards. I go on message boards and see, o
h, Brett Goetz is a street agent. Anybody can hide behind a keyboard. It bothers me because I do really great things with really great people to help these kids.”

  He had grown up in the Philly area, a die-hard sports junkie with a mind for names and numbers. He spent two years at Temple University before transferring to the University of Florida. Later, after he got into the financial services business, Goetz became involved in charity work and youth sports programs funded by the North Shore–Nor-Isle Optimist Club down in Miami Beach.

  “Extremely rewarding,” he said.

  As often happens, one event for kids in need led to another. In 2001, Goetz proposed the idea of a weekend youth football camp, the forerunner to a league he wanted to start. The city fathers of Miami Beach were less than impressed. Forget it, they said, nobody’s going to come.

  “Two hundred kids showed up,” Goetz said. “I started the program, ran it, funded it through the [Optimist] club.”

  The football league eventually ran for about six years on city fields—with the city’s blessing. “It became more than football to me,” said Goetz. “We helped so many kids.” Toward the end, Goetz said he picked up a kid and, as he so often did, drove him to practice. The tenth grader told Goetz he dreamed of playing college football one day.

  “I’ll call some schools,” Goetz told him. “I’ll make it happen.”

  So he called Duke. Out of the blue. He looked up the name of the linebacker coach at Ohio State. Called him, too. Got the coach on the phone.

  “Hey, I got a great kid for you,” Goetz said.

  The old names-and-numbers guy, who could list the starting five of Arkansas’s 1992 national championship basketball team off the top of his head, started poring over recruiting Web sites and scouting services looking for the names of college recruiters. He got them on the phone. Talked up his player.

  A Duke assistant finally looked at some film and a combine report Goetz had sent on the kid from Dr. Michael M. Krop High School in North Miami Beach who one day dreamed of playing college football. He offered a scholarship.

  “Now,” said Goetz, “I start calling the big boys.”

  Notre Dame, Ohio State, Florida. Writers from Rivals, Scout, ESPN and MaxPreps reached out for information, to swap stories. Goetz began to build a network of writers and recruiters. Then, in 2008, Ohio State offered a scholarship to the Dr. Krop kid with a dream. His name was Etienne Sabino. He would go on to become a starting linebacker and defensive star at Ohio State.

  “It was unbelievable,” said Goetz. “I said, ‘I can make this thing happen for kids.’ ”

  But in a world of ego and influence, of loud winners and sore losers, something else happened as well, the same sad story line so often heard in summer league hoops.

  “I start hearing, when a coach didn’t get a kid, ‘Oh, Brett pushes kids to Ohio State.’ I heard everything in the world.”

  Goetz was making a name for himself. In 2008, somebody from Scout.com asked if he wanted to bring an all-star team to a 7-on-7 tournament in Tampa. Goetz checked around. Invited thirty kids to come try out. Forty showed up. He took twenty-four. Then he rolled out what turned out to be a superstar South Florida Express team. Geno Smith, who went on to star for West Virginia and was drafted by the New York Jets, was Goetz’s quarterback. His team finished second. Afterward, several of his South Florida kids received scholarship offers to schools like Florida and the University of South Florida. Coaches and parents and recruiting writers began to take notice.

  In 2009, Goetz said more than a hundred kids showed up at his tryout. The next year the number doubled. The Miami Beach boys and a few good friends were still funding the team, with Goetz kicking in the rest out of his own pocket. In 2010 the South Florida Express won a national championship in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. By the time the 2011 tryout rolled around, 250 kids were waiting at Hallandale High School.

  Goetz quickly lost control of his own tryout. Guys he had never seen in his life were all of a sudden walking around in the middle of drills eyeballing the talent and asking for phone numbers. The 7-on-7 meat market had officially opened.

  “I never saw so many shady fucking people in my life,” Goetz said. “I was sick about it. My name was tied to this. I see people involved in the process I didn’t like the way they looked. It really hit me hard in the fact I didn’t realize this was the monster I created.”

  By February 2013 the number of prospective kids wanting to play for the South Florida Express had jumped to three hundred. By now, the drain of making a living and raising a family had pushed Goetz out of the day-to-day operations of his teams. He still raised the funds—about $25,000 for fees and travel that year—but deeded full-time coaching and managing responsibilities to former NFL stars Sam Madison and Patrick Surtain, ex–All-Pro cornerbacks for the Miami Dolphins.

  “It’s a great showcase, it really is,” said Goetz of 7-on-7. “The kids get better, they compete, and it gets them off the streets. It gets them looks by schools.” He let out a long, deep sigh. “I think it’s a great concept, I really do.”

  If there was one individual at the IMG event who raised the most questions, it was unquestionably Jimmy D. Smith.

  The thirty-one-year-old coach of the Louisiana-based Bootleggers didn’t help himself in the first-impression department. He was late to the coaches’ meeting. And while some coaches mouthed off to referees and questioned calls as the stakes rose, Smith appeared to be the only coach who openly bad-mouthed his own players.

  On Sunday morning the Bootleggers added to the head shaking when they barely avoided a forfeit in an elimination game against Cam Newton’s All-Stars by showing up five minutes into the ten-minute grace period. They quickly found themselves down 15–0. But then a team chock-full of Division I talent got loose, and their long, languid Louisiana athleticism took over. A series of explosive plays put them up by nine, 24–15, with about three minutes left to play.

  “We’re on fire right now,” Smith yelled to his team.

  Thanks to a timely interception, the All-Stars roared back to tie the game up, 26 all, and then won it, 28–26, with a big two-point defensive stop with just seconds to go.

  “Mistakes killed us,” Smith told his team in a haphazard postgame huddle. “We were the best team out here. Every loss we had, we gave it to them. Stay in touch with each other. If you need help with anything, let me know. Love you on three.”

  He didn’t bother to stick around for the team picture.

  A few minutes later Smith plopped down in the shade of a VIP-media hospitality tent. He wore a wrinkled gray polo shirt and matching shorts. He said he had grown up playing high school sports in New Orleans before finding some entry-level player evaluation and data entry work with Max Emfinger, a former Dallas Cowboys scout and the first person to establish a national ranking system for high school football players back in 1980.

  Between 2009 and 2011, Smith said he worked part-time for the Dallas area–based New Level Athletics, founded by former University of New Hampshire all-American and 7-on-7 power broker Baron Flenory, and wrote scouting reports on North Florida/South Georgia kids for Fort Lauderdale–based Elite Scouting Services, owned by Charles Fishbein.

  During that three-year period both New Level and Elite would come under the watchful eye of NCAA investigators attempting to get a handle on the fast-moving world of 7-on-7 and rapidly expanding outposts of player evaluations, rankings and combines. Investigators eventually homed in on Will Lyles, a Houston-based talent evaluator who worked for both New Level and Elite. Of particular interest to the NCAA were Lyles’s dealings with then University of Oregon head coach Chip Kelly, now the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, and the $25,000 fee Oregon had paid in 2010 to a fledgling company started by Lyles, Complete Scouting Services, for recruiting profiles written, it turned out, in invisible ink.

  Lyles eventually told Yahoo! Sports, which broke the story, that Oregon paid him not as a traditional scout but rather for his influence with top Texas recr
uits and his ability to navigate prospects through the signing and eligibility process.

  In March 2011, Fox Sports labeled Lyles “the most dangerous” street agent in college football. Lyles would deny any wrongdoing and call such charges “unequivocally false.”

  “When I started working at Elite, Will had just got there,” said Smith when asked about his connection to Lyles, New Level and Elite. “He was supposed to be running the Louisiana and Texas database. And my first time getting on the Web site and checking our database, we [Elite] have nothing on Texas. But yet we advertise and bill people for it.

  “I knew there was a lot I didn’t know,” Smith added. “Here I am working for one company, New Level, that was getting hammered all over the Internet. And then they’ve got the Will Lyles thing going on with Elite. I was working for both companies at the same time. Every investigator came at me right away, thinking I may be the common link.”

  Smith said he had met with at least four NCAA investigators probing New Level, Elite and Lyles. And while Smith said he willingly provided certain information—texts, phone records, checking account—he said he stopped short of spilling the whole story. But he did inform Fishbein, the owner of Elite, that the NCAA bloodhounds were sniffing around.

  Smith originally said Fishbein fired him on the spot. Later he said they had “parted ways.” In an interview Fishbein said Smith’s departure was by “mutual” agreement. He knew Smith had worked for Flenory at New Level Athletics and now he was talking with the NCAA.

  “I said to him, ‘Who are you? And why are they asking you these questions?’ ” said Fishbein. “ ‘Are you working for the NCAA? Are you some kind of double agent? What’s your deal?’ I didn’t know whether he was clean or dirty.”

  In April 2013, the University of Oregon released 515 pages of documents relative to the NCAA’s recruiting investigation. Both the school and the NCAA agreed “major” recruiting infractions had occurred tied to the football team’s improper use of Elite, New Level and Lyles’s Complete Scouting Services. In particular, the NCAA cited the fact that Lyles, whom it called a “talent scout,” had provided oral reports for his $25,000 fee rather than written quarterly reports as required. In June 2013, the NCAA Committee on Infractions placed Oregon’s football team on three years’ probation and levied a number of penalties, including the disassociation of Lyles from the program. Due in large measure to its cooperation in the investigation, the school avoided major scholarship reductions and a postseason bowl ban.