Post-grad football teams: hope for unsigned after National Signing Day? Or boondoggle?

Posted by author February 6, 2025 Football

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National Signing Day has come and gone, which means thousands of young men are still searching for a college football team to call home. Many will try to walk onto teams or accept that their football careers are over. Others will be lured into post-grad football, where players pay thousands of dollars to pursue their college football dreams.

A recent USA TODAY investigation, however, found that post-grad football teams often fail to deliver on their promises while endangering players and pocketing their money. Housing and meals fall through, leaving players hungry and sometimes homeless. Injuries happen frequently and can be made worse by a lack of athletic trainers and safety protocols. Few players leave with the college offers they’re seeking.

The investigation spanned months and featured more than 100 interviews with young men who have played for post-grad teams, their parents, coaches, program directors as well as medical and regulatory experts. Part one of the series examined the post-grad landscape across the country and the harms many players experienced. Part two highlighted Leo Etienne, head of the National Post Graduate Athletic Association, who built a post-grad empire on broken promises and left many players, coaches and team owners questioning how he had spent their money.

In an AMA on the r/CFB subreddit, USA TODAY investigative reporters Chris Quintana and Kenny Jacoby answered questions about the two-part investigation, including the genesis of the project, ideas for regulating post-grads, and even the movie Step Brothers. Here’s a recap of the AMA, edited for length and clarity.

Here are some highlights from the discussion:

Q: Were (you) guys able to relatively pinpoint when the rise of the for-profit non-school post grad programs started?

Jacoby: 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.

Q: How did you first hear about this, and what made you realize it was a large enough story you could pursue it?

Quintana: I actually first got a tip about one of these programs back in 2022 when I was a higher education beat reporter. I was juggling a lot of stories back then, but thought this deserved more attention, so I kinda stuck it in my back pocket and worked on it when I could. As for knowing when it was large enough, it was really when I started doing a bit of googling into the original team. I found so many more of these programs and hadn’t seen a national story about them.

Q: What about the programs that legitimately help the players get into schools ? Coaches at some of these programs are former college coaches who can evaluate talent and help the players get eyes on them.

Jacoby: 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 off 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.

Q: Is there an area of the country that seems to be more “open” to these types of programs or, once identified publicly, they’re shut down quickly?

Quintana: We noticed these programs are way more commonplace in states that don’t have JUCO football programs, like Florida, and are less common in places like California.

Q: With how college sports are changing rapidly – portal, NIL, probable professionalism – and the fact that there’s a clear ‘demand’ – at least as players go – for programs like this, how would you like to see it handled going forward?

Jacoby: Ideally there would be a league of post-grad teams that would actually enforce its rules and prioritize players’ health and wellbeing – 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.

Q: Did you ask any of the players about the Pavia ruling? Seems like JUCO would be a better option now.

(Diego Pavia, the quarterback for Vanderbilt University, recently sued the NCAA, arguing his time spent playing football for a New Mexico junior college shouldn’t count against his eligibility clock. A court granted him an injuction that would allow him to play another year.)

Jacoby: We didn’t because the 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.

Q: Chris & Kenny – Please be honest, did either of you stifle laughter or at least a chuckle when you first learned there was a post-grad program called Prestige Worldwide?

Quintana: Ok, so I watched “Step Brothers” in the theater with my brother, so it definitely caught my eye. There was certainly some laughter!!

Jacoby: 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.

USA TODAY’s Reddit account, aka community manager Mallorie Sullivan: You didn’t ask me, but I reflexively said “Investors? Possibly you!” out loud to absolutely no one when I saw this mentioned in the story.

Read the full AMA and the rest of the questions and answers here.

Chris Quintana is a reporter on the USA TODAY investigations team with a background in higher education and student loans. Contact him at cquintana@usatoday.com, @CquintanaDC on Instagram and X, or by Signal at 202-308-9021.

Kenny Jacoby is an investigative reporter for USA TODAY who covers issues in sports, higher education and law enforcement. Contact him by email at kjacoby@usatoday.com or follow him on X @kennyjacoby.