Inside the Black Market for High School Football Players

0:05It's well known nowadays that millions of dollars are flowing to college football players. Now that players are allowed to do endorsements Through name, image, and likeness deals Playing for a big college can mean big bucks But did you know that millions of dollars Are now flowing into high school football too? High school football is this kind of beloved And cherished institution in our country And we have a lot of warm feelings about it Like Friday Night Lights and all that That's our colleague Harriet Ryan She's an investigative reporter based in Los Angeles where high school football is a very big deal.

0:42Southern California is just a completely different beast. The competitive level, the number of D1 prospects, it's just, it rivals Florida or Georgia or Texas. Families come from all over the country to have their kids play in Orange County or L.A. And for a long time, Harriet's been hearing rumors that high school players there were getting paid under the table. There's a lot of great high school football teams here and I, you know, always got this, well, everybody knows it's dirty, but, you know, I'd never seen it proven. And when I started working on this story and I started seeing the amounts, I was very surprised.

1:19At its most elite levels, there is a very ugly side to it that, you know, basically turns the best players into commodities that can just be sold around like their assets. What I was hearing from agents and other people, you know, they said, look, when you're giving teenagers vast amounts of money, a lot of bad stuff happens.

1:46Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's Friday, January 16th.

1:59Coming up on the show, inside the black market for high school football players.

2:21This story is about a young man named Philip Bell III, whose situation came to light in court following an intense custody battle. Our colleague Harry was able to piece together Bell's story via court records and interviews with friends, relatives, and others who knew his family. Bell himself didn't comment for this story. Bell was a wide receiver, and he grew up in the Sacramento area. Bell's parents divorced when he was a baby, and he was raised with help from his grandparents. Pretty early on, it was clear that Bell was going to be a football phenom. Here's a clip from a highlight reel. The corner of the end zone has a man, got a beat as a receiver.

2:58And Philip Bell with the score. Nice pass by the baby. Bell was so good, he got his first D1 college scholarship offer when he was in eighth grade. He's an amazing player. And what one of his coaches, one of his youth coaches said, was that no matter who goes up with Phillip in the end zone to get a ball, Phillip comes down with the ball. You can double team him, he will still come down with the ball. Here's Bell in a Day in the Life video from YouTube. I feel like it's going to be a good game. I feel like if you're overly too excited for a game, that's where it messes you up. So I feel like every game day, be regular.

3:34By the time he was in high school, Bell got on the radar of scouts in Southern California. But not just scouts from colleges. Bell got on the radar of high school scouts, otherwise known as street agents. They sort of prowl parts of California and I'm sure other states looking for outsized talent that they can turn around and essentially sell to a booster at a school or a parent at a school. They make the deal. They make the connection. So there's some booster at a high school that'll pay someone for introductions to talented high school players that they may not have heard about. Yeah, I mean, I talked to a youth coach in Sacramento who said, look, I get calls from people from Southern California who are like, I'm looking for two wide receivers.

4:21I'm looking for an O-line guy, and they're willing to pay$20 ,000, and they have a lead on a job, or$50 ,000, and you get a house. He said the deals are structured. Sometimes this is for the rest of high school, and sometimes it's just this season we'll see how things go. The street agents don't work for the schools. They typically represent deep-pocketed alumni or parents who want to see their kids play with talented players. Through these agents, players and their families can get paid tens of thousands of dollars. And some are even offered rent money, cars, and jobs. Is this legal? It's against interscholastic rules in every state.

5:01You can't pay a player to play. But it doesn't violate any criminal laws that I know of, but it does violate the rules of sports. Right. The cops aren't going to show up, but you might get kicked off the team or something like that. But who is, is anybody out there enforcing that, though? So every state has like an association, a federation that's supposed to do this, but you know, like California Intersclassic Federation, it's not the FBI. They don't have like hundreds of agents. They're not going to, you know, subpoena your bank records. But for some families, the risk that their kid gets kicked off the team is worth taking.

5:37The money is just too good. As Philip Bell's high school career was kicking off, his mother, Samantha Barnes, was dealing with money issues. She'd recently married a man who, according to court records, had no full-time job, unpaid child support bills, and depended on her for living expenses. So when Bell got an offer to a school in L.A., Barnes took it. she was telling people, like, look, we're getting a deal down here, we're getting the equivalent of$15 ,000 a month, and this is like a deal I can't resist. Bell and his mother were also put up in a mansion that was formerly occupied by the rapper Soulja Boy.

6:14They got help on the lease from a parent whose son was the quarterback on Bell's team. According to Harriet's reporting, Barnes started telling her friends, quote, my son is going to be a millionaire.

6:28In the past, players couldn't become millionaires unless they made it to the NFL. But thanks to name, image, and likeness deals that are now legal in college and allow players to sign endorsement deals, players can become millionaires much sooner. And that money also flows to the people around the player, their families and their agents. You have agents who, you know, formerly represented NFL players who are now watching middle school practice. Middle school practice? Yeah. I mean, there's like, you know, there's travel teams and football. And, you know, these are under 13 kids. I mean, the thing is, if you can identify talent at a young age and get in, even if that kid can do nothing for you financially, by the time they're in college, they're going to be able to do a lot for you financially.

7:14And you want to build that relationship as soon as you can. I mean, I think the agents would also say, like, we're trying to get in there because if we're not in there, they're going to be getting bad advice from people that don't know what they're doing. But people are trying to form relationships with younger and younger athletes. It's sort of like all the money is just seeping down lower and lower. Like, college resisted it for a long time, but now it's there with these NIL deals. And now it's just seeping even further one layer down to high schools. I think that's right.

7:46By the end of Bell's sophomore year, his mother didn't appear to be satisfied with the amount of money her son was making. And she started shopping Bell around to different schools to see if she could get a better offer. Eventually, Bell's mother crossed paths with someone named Brett Stye, who's known around the L.A. football scene as the money man. Brett Stye owns fast food restaurants. He lives in L.A. He owns a tire shop. He made a lot of money, and he loves sports and betting on sports. And he just got really involved in supporting high school football. And he just said that, like, look, it's not illegal.

8:25It violates interscholastic rules for the kids, but it's not illegal. And I enjoy it. I enjoyed building a team. I enjoyed the competitive element to it. And he said that, you know, over a series of years, he paid millions of dollars to hundreds of families. Some of those kids he played, they're now adults playing in the NFL. According to Stuy, Bell's mother told a coach that she wanted a house and an allowance of$72 ,000 a year, which was too much even for Money Man. For his junior year, Bell ended up transferring to Mission Viejo, a school in Orange County, without the help of Money Man.

9:02But playing for high school teams isn't the only way for players like Bell to make money. Bell started playing in an elite 7-on-7 football league called OT7. OT7 is a no-tackle football league focused on passing and catching. It's backed by Jeff Bezos and private equity firms. Bell played on a team called Trillion Boys. It is the unstoppable, flashy Trillion Boys going head-to-head against a Heisman trophy. In OT7, players are permitted to make endorsement deals, but pay for play is forbidden. However, according to court testimony, Bell was paid$400 to$700 per game, but his stepfather allegedly kept the money.

9:42In a statement, one manager from OT7's parent company said that teams that don't follow the rules are, quote, in direct violation of their agreements with us and don't belong in OT7. According to Harry's reporting, all this football didn't leave much time for Bell to study, and his grades started to suffer. Up in Sacramento, Bell's grandparents and father started to worry. Philip had always been like an A and B student, according to his dad and court records. And he got to L.A. and he was failing all of his classes. And there are text messages he sends to his grandma where he's just like, oh, my gosh, like, I'm failing everything.

10:20And she's like, look, we're going to get you a tutor. We can get a relative to tutor you. And, you know, let me come get you this weekend. And he's like, I got to go on 7-7 tournament. Like, his life just became about football. He just kept telling relatives that he really wanted to come home, that he was really unhappy, that, you know, he felt like he couldn't leave because his mother had so much financially on the line with him being there, but he desperately wanted to leave. After he sent all these panicked and upset messages to his relatives in Northern California, unannounced, five of them from both sides of the family drove down and went to his school.

11:00And when he saw them outside, he said, you guys are going to get me in trouble. and they went to a restaurant, and they talked, and he just said, like, I can't go back with you. I can't go back with you. And he had a lot of concerns about the amount of money his mom was making. He was concerned about her health. She had diabetes. He didn't want her to work too much. Or, you know, he said she was having trouble. And he just, you know, said he was going to stay down there. Eventually, his father sued for full custody, and he wanted to bring Bell back to Sacramento. His father and his grandparents were worried about the mental and physical state of his mother.

11:39And from interviews and court records, I can tell you that they had really deep concerns about what kind of state of mind she was in and her situation. She was having bad money problems, and they believed she was using drugs. And they were concerned about that.

11:57Bell's mother said those allegations were false, and she told the judge that her son wouldn't be where he was without her. She noted that 37 colleges had offered him scholarships. Ultimately, the court ruled in favor of Bell's father. The judge said Bell should return to Sacramento, but also ruled that Bell could finish out his junior football season at Mission Viejo. But Bell never went back to Sacramento. money in the black market shattered his family.

12:30That's next.

12:46By his junior year, Philip Bell had become a hot prospect in the Southern California football scene. In 2023, he helped Mission Viejo win the state championship. Bell caught two touchdowns in that game. Tudor's pass is complete to Philip Bell for a four-yard Mission Viejo touchdown. But his mother and stepfather's money trouble persisted. So what happened is in the spring of his junior year, his family is living in an apartment near a school, and they're not paying their rent, and they haven't paid in a long time. And so their landlord keeps asking for the money, and they're not paying. And finally, the landlord just locks the doors.

13:23Like, they can't get in. You're done. So on that day, when the landlord locked the doors, word goes out through the football community in Southern California, Philip Bell's senior year is for sale. When Brett Stye, L.A.'s money man, got word, he decided to put in an offer. Money man says, like, look, I can come up with$24 ,000 a year for his senior season, but that's it. And so he's about to do that deal. and then he realizes that it's just not going to look good. The school that he's buying kids for at that point is a poor-ish public school in L.A., like not in a good area. And he's like, how am I going to explain that the star player is spending his senior year playing for this team?

14:04So he's like, I'm not going to do it. Money Man was out. As Bell was still being shopped to boosters, according to texts reviewed by the Journal, he embarked on a series of college visits.

14:19Over the summer, Bell and his mom, Samantha Barnes, went to visit colleges where he could make big money playing football. They toured the University of Washington, Penn State, and Ohio State. In a text to a friend after the Washington visit, Barnes said, quote, Good news, they offered P350K. The University of Washington spokesman declined to comment. Later that summer, Bell's mother and stepfather went on a trip to Las Vegas. According to a police report, Barnes drank heavily and used cocaine. She was diabetic, she needed to take insulin, and she was found dead in her bed with a lot of cocaine in her system and with a condition that was caused by a lack of insulin.

15:01A coroner ruled her death an accident caused by diabetic ketoacidosis, a condition resulting from a lack of insulin, with acute cocaine toxicity as another significant condition.

15:18After Barnes died, Bell's father wanted to bring his son back to Northern California. So he visited Bell's high school in Mission Viejo. His father tries to find him at football practice and runs into the coach, in which the dad is just like, his mom just died. He needs therapy. His head is all over the place. I just want to talk to him. This is not natural. And the coach essentially says, like, I cannot force him to talk to you. So, you know, it's his decision, kind of. Why didn't he want to talk to his dad? And also, didn't his dad win that court case that said he had to go back and live with him?

15:52Well, yeah. I mean, it's unclear why the court order wasn't enforced. But I've been told that it was a bruising custody hearing proceedings for his mother. And she was furious with how her family had handled things and had sided with, you know, her ex-husband. And she said, I forbid you from ever talking to those people again. And he was very close with his mother, and so... Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's very clear that if you just look at pictures of them, I mean, she loved him a lot and was so proud of him, and I'm sure I wanted the absolute best for him in her way. In a statement, Bell's father said, quote, Decisions were made about my son's life, his schooling, and his future without my consent or involvement.

16:36Adding, quote, My family has been torn apart by adults who should have protected us. and now I'm left trying to pick up the pieces. His grandmother added that they wanted him to be, quote, safe, loved, thriving, and surrounded by people who truly have his best interests at heart. Bell's father and grandparents also sued Mission Viejo's school district, which has denied wrongdoing. The case is ongoing. Bell's stepfather, Isaiah Sandoval, didn't respond to requests for comment. In a letter to a judge in one of the court cases, Sandoval wrote, I love Philip with all of me and would do anything under the sun for him.

17:13So what happened to Philip Bell for his senior year? I mean, this message went out that his senior year was for sale. After his mother died, it appears that he was taken off the market. You know, I've seen messages with people talking about, like, his senior year up until she died and then not talking about it anymore. He ended up moving in with a family that he knew from down there. In 2024, Bell started his senior season at Mission Viejo as one of the top wide receivers in the country. And it was time for him to make a decision about where to go to college. I'll be taking my next step on my journey to the Ohio State University.

17:51Oh, yeah. The Ohio State University, one of the best football programs in the country. On his signing day, Bell announced his decision on a national sports network. He was on a boat, sitting in front of an illustration of his mother, who on her back had the wings of an angel. I'm just continuing an offer because she wanted me to keep going, so that's what I'm going to keep doing. Someone I talked to was deeply enmeshed in this world. When I told him I was writing about Philip Bell, he just kind of shrugged, and I was like, what? And he goes, there's thousands of Philip Bells. I mean, the only reason we know about it is because there was this rift in the family and because his mother died.

18:35So, I don't know, that made me really sad. I mean, it also just makes me think about how, you know, the college was one thing with all the money that was circulating, but even there, there's still adults. With the money that's sloshing around high school, these are minors, and there are parents who hopefully have their best interests but also can get, like, drawn in to the lure of money. And that's, like, a whole different factor. And like, you know, they're kids that are dealing with this stuff and they don't really know how to navigate it themselves. Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, anytime there's a lot of money, a lot of things can go wrong.

19:13I think that, you know, as you said earlier, the money is just kind of dripping down to lower and lower levels. And yeah, at the end of the day, a college student, in most cases, is an adult. And they're responsible for their decisions. But you can't really, a 14-year-old, a 15-year-old. And I mean, they're not. With all the agents and the hype and the money, for some of the people Harriet spoke to, youth football is no longer just a game. I was listening to, I was a football coach who was speaking to a group I was with recently. And he just said, like, make sure you love football. If you don't love football, you're not going to be able to do this.

19:54And I thought that was such a weird thing to say. but it was clear that, you know, it's become about a lot more than just loving football.

20:14That's all for today. Friday, January 16th. The show's made by Catherine Brewer, Pia Gedkari, Isabella Jappal, Sophie Codner, Matt Kwong, Colin McNulty, Jessica Mendoza Annie Minoff Laura Morris Enrique Perez De La Rosa Sarah Platt Alan Rodriguez Espinosa Heather Rogers Pierce Singhi Jivika Verma Lisa Wang Catherine Whalen Tatiana Zamis and me, Ryan Knudson Our engineers are Griffin Tanner Nathan Singapak and Peter Leonard Our theme music is by So Wiley Additional music this week from Catherine Anderson Peter Leonard Bobby Lord Emma Munger Nathan Singapak So Wiley Griffin Tanner and Epidemic Sound.

20:58Fact-checking this week by Mary Mathis.

21:09Thanks for listening. See you Monday.