Nutriaitch said:

well our last coach was videoed grinding on recruits.
so pretty sure this is a step in right direction for us.

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As in; when did you first realize this program was going south?

Lauren Hill singing to a room mostly full of corrupt, rich, white, old dudes is not something I expected.

BigWoof31 said:

UNLV.
Dan Lanning takes the Runnin' Rebs to their conference title before departing for Penn State.


Also - convinced that @Tugger is cheating. He's got the almanac from Back to the Future, I swear.

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Dan? Yes. Lanning? No.

BigWoof31 said:

Division II: Avon (13-1) vs. Cincinnati Anderson (14-0), Thursday, Dec. 4 at 7 p.m.




Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.
AHS has been runner up (25, 24) and semi-finalist (23) the last three years and can't seem to break through.

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I really thought this was their year, but definitely didn't expect a 3-score win for Avon. Championship pedigree came out of them the last two games and that program seems to now have taken the next step with their first every state titles in back to back years.


Glenville up 31-7 with the 3rd quarter coming to a close. Radio link Login to view embedded media

Knew it the whole time, what was everyone so worried about

Could be his 5th Pro Bowl!

Login to view embedded media

SEE
ROOTIN

LOL. Absolutely comical recruitment. Never a dull moment in crootin these days!

Welcome aboard Chris.

Bill Lucas said:

If I was allowed to in this forum I would have some very positive cursing to post.

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Oregon really got McGuffie'd on this one!

Bill Lucas said:

Can you share any information because your links are behind a pay wall? Thanks.

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Phillip Bell III was in tears when he phoned his grandparents’ farm outside Sacramento.

“Come and help me please,” his grandmother, Lorna Barnes, recalled the then-16-year-old sobbing in March 2023.

Two months earlier, his mother had whisked Bell, a nationally ranked wide receiver, off to a new school in Los Angeles, where they were living in a mansion previously occupied by the rapper Soulja Boy and leased with the help of a sportscaster whose son played quarterback.
It was just the first stop on Bell’s odyssey through the youth sports black market. Paying students to play sports is against state interscholastic rules. But in the nation’s football hotbeds, a secret economy in athletically gifted teens has thrived for years—and the recent arrival in most states of legal Name, Image and Likeness compensation for high-school athletes has only made it hotter.

Bell’s mother, who abused drugs, shopped him from school to school, demanding up to $72,000 a year, according to court filings, public records and interviews with relatives and others who knew the family. He also joined a club team that paid thousands of dollars a weekend.
Bell is now a freshman at top-ranked Ohio State. In the era of NIL compensation, the best college players have essentially become their own businesses, and Bell has the potential to earn millions of dollars in college on his way to an even more lucrative career in the NFL.
Bell’s journey shows how the prospect of those riches has filtered into the ranks of even younger athletes, turning would-be superstars into assets vulnerable to exploitation. His experience demonstrates that far from ridding sports of backroom deals and bagman boosters, the deluge of legal NIL money incentivizes and gives cover to the illicit market.

“It’s like gas on the fire,” said NIL consultant Bill Carter, who teaches on the topic at Boston College. “It’s almost enabled the bad actors to get together, because they can just say, ‘Hey, we’re just talking about NIL, and NIL is allowed.’”

Bell’s mother died before his senior year. He no longer speaks to relatives on either side, an estrangement his family said was stoked by adults benefiting from his football talents.

Bell, 19, didn’t respond to interview requests. Serena Chao, a 33-year-old who was a friend of his mother and described herself as his caretaker, said, “This is something he is trying to leave behind.”
Bell on a visit to OSU in November 2024 with Serena Chao, who was a friend of his late mother. Lori Schmidt/USA TODAY NETWORK

‘A no-brainer kid’​

Bell was in eighth grade when he got his first scholarship offer, from Utah State. He was already 6 feet tall and wore size 11 cleats, his Sacramento youth coach Thomas Downs recalled.

“Phillip was a no-brainer kid,” said Downs, recalling the scouts’ enthusiasm. “They’re like, ‘This kid’s the real deal.’”

At Christian Brothers High, he played varsity as a freshman and was team captain as a sophomore. Georgia, Michigan, Auburn and a dozen other schools were pursuing him.

By then, colleges had more to offer players than free tuition. A Supreme Court decision the summer before Bell’s freshman year invalidated NCAA rules on compensation of college athletes.

The ruling opened the door for lavish NIL payouts for endorsements, autographs and appearances. Of about $2 billion paid to collegiate athletes this year, 65% to 75% goes to football players, according to Opendorse, a company that facilitates deals for 175,000 athletes. Top college receivers can see annual NIL compensation in the low seven figures.

“My son is going to be a millionaire,” Bell’s mother, Samantha Barnes, started telling friends.

She and his father divorced when he was a baby and shared legal custody. His father, Phillip Bell Jr., didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Bell’s mother did the day-to-day child rearing, first in the Bay Area and later with her parents on their farm. Her parents, a retired nurse and airport supervisor, helped her buy a house in Sacramento before Bell started high school.

Mother and son were close. “He is my best friend,” she wrote in a court declaration over his custody his sophomore year. Barnes was an insulin-dependent diabetic, and her son avoided sleepovers in case she fell ill at night, she wrote.

“We can tell each other anything,” Bell said on a podcast in high school. She waved homemade signs at games and burst onto the sidelines to cheer her son’s receptions. All four grandparents and his father came to his games, too.

Bell had a scholarship at Christian Brothers and close friends. The Catholic school sent players to Division 1 football programs. By the close of his sophomore season in 2022, a recruiting site ranked Bell among the top six receivers nationally for his class.

Bell scoring a touchdown for Christian Brothers in 2021, in a video from social media. Bell's mother, Samantha Barnes, shown in a social-media image, often attended his games with homemade signs and cowbells.

Maximum exposure​

Six hours down the I-5, prep football operates at a different intensity. L.A. and Orange counties have a concentration of talent that rivals Texas and Georgia. Scouts line up to watch nationally ranked powerhouses square off. Families relocate from all over the country for a better level of competition—and the potential of more money down the line.

“It’s certainly a place to get maximum exposure to the larger colleges and then maximize your NIL deal because of that,” said Mike Caspino, an Orange County attorney who has negotiated million-dollar NIL deals.

Some families come for a more immediate payday. Paying players to transfer violates interscholastic rules in every state, but the practice is common, insiders say.

Northern California is a particular target for middlemen, known as street agents, who broker deals between boosters and families. Downs, Bell’s youth coach, said he routinely hears from street agents dangling rent, cars, jobs and allowances from $20,000 to $100,000.
“It’s cash money. There’s no paper trail,” said Downs, adding that he doesn’t participate in the illicit market.

Money had become a pressing issue for Bell’s mother. Barnes, a dental practice manager, earned over $100,000 annually, according to a declaration her mother filed in family court, but had longstanding financial problems. She ran up credit card bills she couldn’t pay and fell behind on utility bills repeatedly, public records show.

Her situation worsened after she married Isaiah Sandoval in 2021. Sandoval had no full-time job, unpaid child support bills and criminal convictions for grand theft and drunken driving, according to court records and family members. He depended on her for living expenses and money for gambling, friends and family say.

Sandoval didn’t respond to requests for comment. In letters filed in court, his relatives and others who knew him, including Chao, described him as devoted to his new family. He wrote to the judge, “I love Phillip with all of me and would do anything under the sun for him.”

As Bell was excelling at Christian Brothers, Barnes stopped making car and mortgage payments, according to liens on her home and court filings.

She had used drugs before, but she began using cocaine regularly and drinking heavily, according to friends, relatives and court records. Her mother, Lorna, wrote in court declarations that Barnes “seemed to undergo a significant change in personality” and was “in financial ruin.”

Bell with his mother and Isaiah Sandoval, in a photo Sandoval posted on social media. ‘Keep grinding and striving for greatness. I love you always,’ he wrote to Bell.

‘A big house’​

Barnes relocated her son to L.A. in January 2023. She didn’t tell her parents beforehand, nor did she tell Bell’s father, though their custody agreement required she notify him in writing before any move.

She enrolled Bell in Bishop Alemany High, a Catholic school in Mission Hills. They moved with Sandoval into a four-bedroom house with a pool and hot tub.

The $7,900-a-month lease was cosigned by George Wrighster, a retired NFL tight end and broadcaster whose son was to quarterback Alemany’s team. The California Interscholastic Federation bars students from “accepting material or financial inducement” to compete for a school “regardless of the source.”

Wrighster didn’t respond to questions about whether he had compensated anyone in connection with Bell. “They were already coming down here. It was just a matter of where,” he said.

Barnes’s boss at the dental clinic, Pritpal Gill, said in an interview that Barnes told him before she left Sacramento she was getting a $15,000-a-month “off-the-books” package that included “a big house.” She told her mother she received $25,000 upfront, according to a court filing.
Alemany administrators were “not aware of any compensation or housing provided,” a spokeswoman said.

Barnes’s parents visited twice and came away disturbed. The home was dirty and the refrigerator empty, but “there was a cabinet and wine refrigerator full of liquor and alcohol,” her mother wrote in a court declaration. She said her daughter appeared under the influence and that her grandson was withdrawn and had lost weight.

“They are doing the same thing here grandma, the same thing they were doing in Sacramento,” she quoted the teenager telling her in the filing, adding, “I can only conclude that he is referring to the drug use, partying and alcoholism.”

After Bell placed pleading calls to his uncle and grandmother in March 2023, relatives from both sides of the family traveled to L.A. unannounced. When Bell spotted his father, three grandparents and mother’s brother waiting outside his school, he appeared stricken and told them, “You guys are going to get me in trouble,” relatives recalled.

Following a phone call with Sandoval, Bell said he had decided not to return home, according to relatives present. In subsequent texts filed in court, he expressed fear about the impact of a departure on his diabetic mother.

“She’s already tired and can barely see,” he wrote to his grandmother, adding later, “I can’t just leave her and make her pay all of it.”

“Your mom will be ok,” his father reassured him by text. “You are 16 years old[.] [Y]ou shouldn’t be worried about leases and paying bills.”

Bell with his father and grandmother Sandra Bell when he was at Christian Brothers. Sandra Bell

The Trillion Boys​

Previously an A and B student, Bell started getting Fs at Alemany that spring, according to court filings. Study time was limited by tournaments for 7-on-7, a no-tackle game focused on passing and receiving. Once a low-key offseason pursuit, it had become a well-funded national juggernaut. In the era of NIL, agents use the teams to scout young players who seem likely to become big college earners.

One league Bell played in—OT7—was part of Overtime, a startup funded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and others. The NFL Network broadcast its tournaments. Adidas and Gatorade were sponsors.

Bell was a member of Trillion Boys, a team backed by real-estate investor Andrew Stupin. The team sometimes traveled by private jet and the players, recruited from as far away as Florida, wore uniforms that depicted a dark-skinned boy with a tooth grill and a gold chain holding a bag of money in one hand and a stack of dollars in the other. Players are promoted heavily on social media.

Stupin and his son who runs the team didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Players were permitted to make endorsement deals with leagues or sponsors, but pay-for-play was forbidden. Still, it was commonly accepted among coaches that some teams engaged in it.

“[Sandoval] got him playing on some kind of thug league where he gets two, three thousand dollars a week for him to play football to support the family,” Bell’s grandfather, Anthony Barnes Sr., told a judge in a restraining order hearing. His grandmother added in a court declaration, “Every game, Sandoval got paid $400-$700. According to my grandson…he never see the money.”

Overtime’s general manager of football, Hunter Mandel, said in a statement that teams that don’t follow the rules “are in direct violation of their agreements with us and don’t belong in OT7.”

Bell in promotional material from the Trillion Boys social-media account.

‘Money Man’​

Bell’s sophomore spring semester ended as it had begun.

“They needed somewhere to live,” said veteran coach Bruce Bible, who has advised families of sought-after players.

Bible said Bell’s mother told him that at Alemany, “people weren’t taking care of what they said they were going to take care of” and asked if Sierra Canyon, the private school where Bible worked, might make a deal. He said he rebuffed her.

Word that Bell’s talent was up for sale reached an L.A. entrepreneur known in prep football circles as “Money Man.”

Brett Steigh admitted in September—after the California Interscholastic Federation launched an investigation—that he had paid out millions of dollars to hundreds of families over the years to transfer to schools he favored. His monthly outlay at one school, Bishop Montgomery, was nearly $100,000 at the time, he told the Journal.

Players who are found to have violated CIF rules can lose eligibility. At Bishop Montgomery, 19 players were barred from competition for two years.

Steigh said building a formidable team fed his competitive streak and didn’t violate any laws. He said he didn’t profit from the transfers, but street brokers often took a cut.

“What do you think about helping a 4 star WR transfer to Bosco from Alemany,” a St. John Bosco High assistant coach texted Steigh in May 2023, according to messages reviewed by the Journal.

The assistant coach sent Bell’s player profile and added, “What can I offer the mom and dad to make the transfer work? Find them a place near Bosco can say we can help with half the rent?”

Steigh agreed. But he said a coach who met Bell’s mother reported back that she wanted a monthly allowance of $6,000 and a house—a request Steigh deemed “just crazy.”

Bosco’s principal said in an email that administrators were unaware of discussions and didn’t pay players.
Bell running the ball in a December 2023 game, when he was a junior at Mission Viejo. Aubrey Lao/Getty Images

A shattered family​

Bell’s father asked a San Francisco family court for sole custody in May 2023. His lawyer termed the move to L.A. an “abduction” and bemoaned “[undue] stress on the minor child to provide for and care for his Mother.”

Relatives on both sides backed Phillip Bell Jr. in court. Barnes’s mother warned in a letter, “It’s just a matter of time that Samantha might die because of her drug and alcohol abuse in addition to her diabetes.”

Barnes called the allegations against her false. Noting her son’s 37 scholarship offers, she told the judge, “If I was a bad mother he definitely wouldn’t be where he is today.”

The judge sided with Bell’s father, writing that the teen should return to Sacramento. But by then Bell had started his junior year at a new school—Mission Viejo, a public football powerhouse in Orange County. The judge allowed him to finish the season.

A school district spokeswoman declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.

Bell’s mother was incensed by the custody proceedings and forbade him from communicating with the rest of the family, according to Chao. At one game, a fracas broke out among relatives. Bell’s grandfather was briefly jailed. Sandoval got a temporary restraining order against Bell’s uncle, and Bell’s grandfather sought one against Sandoval. At a November 2023 hearing, Anthony Barnes Sr. said his daughter and son-in-law were exploiting Bell for money.

“And that upset you,” the judge asked.
“It’s destroying me,” the grandfather replied.
The judge ruled there wasn’t enough evidence for a restraining order against Sandoval.

Mission Viejo won a state championship. One of Bell’s catches in the title game became an ESPN highlight. Endorsement offers followed.


Bell after Mission Viejo won the state championship in 2023, in a photo from social media. Bell and Sandoval, in a photo from a 2024 social-media post.

California was at the forefront of deals for high-school athletes after the 2021 Supreme Court decision, thanks to a longstanding rule that facilitated student athletes working in the state’s entertainment industry. Now 44 states, along with the District of Columbia, allow some form of NIL at the scholastic level.

Bell signed on with Klutch Sports, the agency of NFL stars including Odell Beckham Jr. and Jalen Hurts, and inked a deal with Leaf Trading Cards for a series of autographed cards. The deal paid less than $50,000, according to a person with knowledge of the arrangement.
Bell didn’t return to Sacramento when the season ended, as the court order required.

A trashed hotel room​

Barnes and Sandoval had stopped paying rent on their two-bedroom apartment near Mission Viejo, and a property manager slapped eviction notices on the family’s front door, according to court records and a person familiar with the matter. The landlord changed the locks in March 2024. Bell moved in with his friend; his mother and stepfather didn’t have a new place to land.

“Need to talk about Phillip Bell,” Bible, who was still coaching at Sierra Canyon, told “Money Man” Steigh the day of the eviction, according to a text reviewed by the Journal.

Steigh initially agreed to pay Bell’s mother $24,000 to play at a South L.A. public school, he said, but backed away after concluding the high-profile transfer “would raise too many eyebrows.”

Bell’s senior year was still being shopped to boosters as he embarked on a series of college visits, according to texts reviewed by the Journal.
After a stop at the University of Washington, Bell’s mother texted a friend, “Good news they offered P 350k.” A university spokesman declined to comment. The family went on to Penn State and then in mid-June to Ohio State. That visit went poorly.



Bell and his mother at a visit to the University of Georgia, in a photo from social media. Bell's OSU visit, in a photo from social media.
The hotel room where Bell’s mother and stepfather were staying was “trashed,” leaving an OSU coach with a bill for broken furniture, his high-school coach later told relatives. A Buckeyes coach subsequently informed Bell’s mother that the team wanted her son, but the “entourage” wasn’t welcome in Columbus, the high-school coach said.

OSU declined to comment.

Before they left Ohio, Barnes’ blood sugar spiked to life-threatening levels, she suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized for several days, according to public records.

Tragedy in Vegas​

After the college visits, Bell’s mother and Sandoval went to Las Vegas, where they drank heavily and used cocaine, according to a police report. On June 26, Barnes began throwing up.

“We wanted to take her to the hospital but she told us she was OK,” a friend who was there later told police. Sandoval left to gamble, stopping back in the room around midnight and then returning to the casino floor, according to the police report. He was still there the next morning when the friend woke up and discovered Barnes dead in bed. She was 39.

A coroner ruled Barnes’s death an accident caused by diabetic ketoacidosis, a condition resulting from a lack of insulin, with “acute cocaine toxicity” as another significant condition.

Sandoval gave a police statement and then left town “almost immediately, taking all of Samantha’s bank cards and thousands of dollars in casino chips,” according to a lawsuit filed by Bell’s father and grandparents.

Bell alerted his father, who rushed to Southern California. When he showed up at the address his son had given to him, no one answered, according to the lawsuit. He called 911 saying he suspected Sandoval was inside with his child, according to a police report. Officers conducted a welfare check and told Bell’s father his son was OK.

“Dad was advised to not come back unannounced,” the report stated.



Samantha Barnes's grave. Bell with his grandparents at a Christian Brothers game. ‘Our joy was screaming and hollering at games,’ says his paternal grandmother, Sandra Bell, far left.Lorna Barnes

The next month, a lawyer for his father and grandparents sent a cease-and-desist letter to Mission Viejo’s principal warning school officials not to have contact with Bell and to notify his family of his whereabouts, according to a copy of the letter filed in court.

A school district lawyer responded that no employees were in contact with the teenager. A week later, social-media posts showed Bell playing for Mission Viejo in a 7-on-7 tournament.

Bell’s father and uncle went to the school later that summer looking for him. Near the football field, they encountered head coach Chad Johnson.

“I want to be able to sit down and talk to my son. His mom just died. His mind is all over the place,” Bell’s father told him, according to a recording of the conversation, adding, “It’s not normal for a kid to cut off their entire bloodline.”
Johnson acknowledged suspicions about the adults surrounding his star receiver but said he couldn’t force Bell to meet with his legal guardian, according to court documents. A few weeks later, Sandoval traveled to Hawaii with the team for an early season game.
Bell’s father also appealed to Klutch, his son’s agency, with court records attesting to his custody rights. The teen’s agent texted an attorney for Bell’s father, “I have spoken with our client Phillip, who has directed Klutch not to get involved in this matter.”
Klutch declined to comment.

Bell turned 18 on Aug. 30, 2024. The next day, he announced that he had chosen OSU for college. Sitting before an illustration of his mother wearing angel wings, Bell told a sports journalist, “I’ve just learned to keep going.”

Bell’s father and maternal grandparents sued Mission Viejo’s school district and employees last year, alleging interference with a familial relationship, among other claims. The district denies wrongdoing, writing in an October court filing that its legal obligations don’t “include a duty to protect the mental or emotional well-being of a student’s parents and grandparents.”

Bell finished his senior year at Mission Viejo. In a rare public comment on his family, Bell told a reporter for sports site High School on SI last year, “I feel like [my father] tried to take control of me when my mom died…. And it didn’t feel like it was right.”

As an OSU freshman, Bell has seen playing time in four blowouts. His team bio lists as relatives only his late mother and Chao, whom he calls his “aunt.”

In an interview, she said she befriended Bell’s mother in 2021 and that four months before her death, Barnes asked Chao to care for her son if she died. Video of his final high-school game shows her at his side. She said she flies back and forth to Columbus “to make sure he is mentally OK.”

Serena Chao comforted Bell after a Mission Viejo game in November 2024.

Chao, a former accounts manager at a real-estate company, described herself as between jobs, but said she wasn’t benefiting financially from Bell. She said that on the contrary, she spends lavishly on him, including partly paying for a Mercedes for his 19th birthday.
“I try to keep Phillip’s lifestyle as consistent as possible to what his mother had given him,” she said.

Bell’s father watches his games on TV with his younger half-siblings. Relatives said he finds it too painful to speak publicly about his separation from his son.

Write to Harriet Ryan at [email protected]

colobuck79 said:

Every time I see "Hiter", my brain turns it into "Hitler."

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Can’t wait for the showdown…

Division II: Avon (13-1) vs. Cincinnati Anderson (14-0), Thursday, Dec. 4 at 7 p.m.




Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.
AHS has been runner up (25, 24) and semi-finalist (23) the last three years and can't seem to break through.

WAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! Now all we need is a WR coach as good as Brian .

Can you share any information because your links are behind a pay wall? Thanks.

TampaBuckeyes said:

I wonder what the final offers were for each school.

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Yes, I guess we'll never know.
I'm sure he received a very nice NIL package from OSU.
I also guess it wasn't the largest package he was offered.

TampaBuckeyes said:

What are they saying there?

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Basically that Bey is waiting to be 18 in 2 weeks and then either be released by Tennecheat and sign with OSU or entering the transfer portal in Jan for OSU. I'm not sure if I'm 100% buying that, it's a strange set of circumstances.

If I was allowed to in this forum I would have some very positive cursing to post.

jwinslow said:

Unless I'm missing it, not one reference to CHJ Jr decision after a monster Hartline USF thread

They're going through some things right now.

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They are already shifting to basketball in early December. A good sign of not being a big boy in football.

Well, that was certainly fun.