Harriet Ryan

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.

Southern California is just a completely different beast.

The competitive level, the number of D1 prospects, 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.

There's a lot of great high school football teams here, and I always got this, well, everybody knows it's dirty, but I'd never seen it proven.

And when I started working on this story and I started seeing the amounts, I was very surprised.

At its most elite levels, there is a very ugly side to it that basically turns the best players into commodities that can just be sold around 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.

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 Philip in the end zone to get a ball, Philip comes down with the ball.

You can double team him, he will still come down with the ball.

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.

Yeah, I mean, I talked to a youth coach in Sacramento who said, like, look, I get calls from people from Southern California who are like, I'm looking for two wide receivers.

I'm looking for like an O-line guy.

And, you know, 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, like, the deals are structured.

Like, sometimes this is like for all, you know, the rest of high school.

And sometimes it's just this season.