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BRADENTON, Fla. \u2014 In the moments after IMG Academy once again finishes lighting up a scoreboard somewhere across the country, its players are often swarmed. Kids tap players asking for a pair of gloves worn during another IMG rout. They even ask for sweat-stained towels. Teenage contemporaries have their Snapchat apps open on their phones and ask for selfies. Those who show up to watch IMG know they\u2019re watching brightening stars who will soon explode onto the national college football scene.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese kids are rock stars,\u201d IMG coach Billy Miller said.<\/p>\n
These are also high school students.<\/p>\n
IMG, however, is not your average prep football powerhouse. IMG\u2019s sprawling 600-acre campus, bathed in sunshine and palm trees, includes a 5,000-seat stadium for track and football, a state-of-the-art performance and sports science center and its own 150-room luxury hotel for visitors. A Johns Hopkins University hospital affiliate manages all health services and physical therapy, according to the school\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
Since Florida State<\/a>\u2019s 2000 Heisman Trophy winner, Chris Weinke, helped launch IMG\u2019s football program in 2010, the Ascenders have gone 92-7. That includes a 38-game winning streak, the 2020 national title and blowout wins over several of the nation\u2019s top high school programs. IMG had 14 alumni on NFL rosters as the season opened, the most of any high school in the country, according to the NFL<\/a>.<\/p>\n The boarding school with 75 former players on rosters of Power 5 college programs, including seven on two-time defending national champion Georgia<\/a>, keeps annihilating opponents.<\/p>\n Last year, the Ascenders beat West Toronto Prep, 96-0. Most IMG games are blowouts \u2014 whether it\u2019s a great high school team lining up across the field or an 0-7 team like WTP. This year\u2019s team has players who are committed to programs such as Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee and Georgia.<\/p>\n Remember the Bishop Sycamore charade? IMG is the program that awkwardly stampeded over what would eventually be discovered to be a fabricated school and program on national television.<\/p>\n In 2020, IMG went on the road and beat nationally ranked Duncanville, Texas, 41-14. The Ascenders haven\u2019t landed a single Texas high school team on their schedule since.<\/p>\n Some schools have stopped answering phone calls to play again, said Miller, who coaches the national team. Some who haven\u2019t played IMG don\u2019t bother to respond to emails, texts or calls at all. The Athletic<\/em> reached out to programs in five different states that have played IMG in recent years and the only coaches who were willing to discuss IMG were recently approached in person at a tournament in Florida.<\/p>\n IMG\u2019s ascent in the prep football world has left many football fans pondering common questions: Is IMG Academy too good? And who exactly is monitoring its recruiting practices?<\/p>\n The program with rock stars at nearly every position might be the most dominant school in the country, but it is not without its detractors. Some coaches have accused IMG of actively recruiting players away from their programs, selling the IMG reality that, in Bradenton, you can simulate life as a future college football student-athlete more accurately than anywhere else and practice and play alongside the best talent in the country. Others have decided to see IMG\u2019s rise as a gold standard of sorts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe thing I try to teach my guys is to run to the fire, not from it,\u201d said Messay Hailemariam, who coaches St. Frances Academy in Baltimore, one of the regular staples on IMG\u2019s schedule each season.<\/p>\n IMG Academy started as the Nick Bollettieri tennis academy in 1978, a place for tennis prodigies. It\u2019s where Venus and Serena Williams developed into legends. In the years since, IMG has expanded to 15 sports and produced hundreds of Olympic and professional athletes.<\/p>\n But what is now one of the preeminent high school football programs in the country started in a single-wide trailer surrounded by tomato fields. Weinke trained at IMG in the months after his stellar career at Florida State ended in 2000. Ten years later, he was hired to find a way to add football to the academy\u2019s growing list of distinguished sports. Weinke told IMG it would take five years to get a football program off the ground. It took him and his newly assembled staff three.<\/p>\n There just wasn\u2019t any place to do it at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cI had to literally order my own football equipment. I did not have a football field. I had to utilize a soccer field,\u201d said Weinke, now co-offensive coordinator at Georgia Tech<\/a>. \u201cI was on a campus that was much different today than it was back then.\u201d<\/p>\n The concept for what IMG football could become over time started to materialize.<\/p>\n \u201cMy whole vision and goal of that program was to mirror what a college football program looked like so that players who left IMG were more prepared and ready to play at an earlier age in college than your typical high school player,\u201d Weinke said.<\/p>\n IMG began to purchase more land around its expansive campus. Those tomato fields, Weinke said, soon became football-specific practice fields. Football players used to share a weight room with other athletes before the 55,000-square-foot IMG Performance & Sports Science Center was built. All this was necessary for IMG to reach that goal Weinke envisioned early on.<\/p>\n Now?<\/p>\n The football program has 155 players spread out over four teams, Miller said. It starts with the star-studded national squad, but there are also two varsity teams (IMG white and IMG blue) and a postgraduate team, which won the National Post Graduate Athletic Association championship last year. The rosters on the varsity and postgraduate teams aren\u2019t very large so players get more playing time. That\u2019s by design.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only downfall about going there is that when you leave there to go play college football, the facilities may be worse than what you just had in high school,\u201d Weinke said, laughing.<\/p>\n Commitment. Sacrifice. Hard work. When you come to @IMGAcademy<\/a>, it\u2019s bigger than you. <\/p>\n Protect the #Brotherhood<\/a>. pic.twitter.com\/mftZBY8b6G<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 IMG Academy Football (@IMGAFootball) August 18, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Kevin Wright, who succeeded Weinke after Weinke left to be the quarterbacks coach for the St. Louis Rams in January 2015, remembers going to visit former star linebacker Dylan Moses<\/a> at Alabama just a few months after Moses graduated from IMG in December 2016. Moses told Wright that life at Alabama \u2014 yes, Alabama \u2014 was a breeze compared to the strict schedule as a student-athlete at IMG.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve never had so much free time in our lives,\u201d Moses joked with Wright.<\/p>\n Wright, who coached at IMG until 2019, has spent the past four seasons as tight ends coach at Indiana. He reiterated that while IMG comes with all the perks of building a modern-day star athlete, it doesn\u2019t work without embracing the grind of the schedule and lifestyle. That\u2019s what Weinke wanted to build, after all.<\/p>\n \u201cThat place is tough,\u201d Wright said. \u201cIt is absolutely not for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n Football fans might know Josh Lambo as a kicker who spent nearly a decade playing in the NFL<\/a>, but he started out as a member of the U.S. youth soccer team at IMG. Lambo lived the Bradenton life before he transitioned from soccer to football, but said the rigors of IMG prepared him for the pressures of life and the position.<\/p>\n \u201cWe weren\u2019t really allowed to be kids, but being a kid is overrated,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019d rather be successful as an adult than have fun as a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n Winston Watkins has a lot going for him.<\/p>\n He\u2019s the cousin of 2014 NFL first-round pick Sammy Watkins and an elite high school receiver in the graduating class of 2025 who is committed to play at Colorado for Deion Sanders.<\/p>\n He likely still would\u2019ve developed into one of the most coveted recruits in his class had he not transferred to IMG in ninth grade. But there\u2019s a reason Watkins bought the recruiting pitch when he was still an eighth grader: IMG\u2019s top-notch infrastructure and its track record of putting players into the NFL.<\/p>\n \u201cIMG gives me that exposure I need and also keeps me from all that nonsense I don\u2019t need to be around,\u201d said Watkins, who caught 25 passes for 393 yards and 10 touchdowns on the Ascenders national team last season as a sophomore, and who is ranked the 55th best player in his class according to the 247Sports Composite.<\/p>\n \u201cI get to be around greats all the time. If I stayed in Fort Myers, I feel like I wouldn\u2019t be as good as I am now because I wouldn\u2019t have to try at practice. Because there\u2019s a lot of kids who don\u2019t care about football. Here, I go against the best of the best in practice and real games.\u201d<\/p>\n Watkins transferred to Naples First Baptist last week, he said recently in a social media post<\/a>, to be closer to an ailing family member. But he loved his time at IMG.<\/p>\n Players at IMG said they\u2019re convinced access to world-class facilities, top coaches, a college-type schedule \u2014 practice in the morning and school in the afternoon \u2014 while living on campus prepares them for the next level in ways going to a traditional school cannot.<\/p>\n Alabama freshman defensive back Desmond Ricks<\/a>, who transferred to IMG after his freshman year of high school in Norfolk, Va., said IMG helped him hone his time management skills. Talk to current IMG national team players, and you hear many of the same reasons they left their respective high school programs.<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t mature enough to come and leave my family when IMG first recruited me as a high school sophomore, but at the end of my junior season I was like, I need to enroll early (in college). I need to handle my business and this is a school that I felt prepares you,\u201d said four-star offensive tackle Jordan Seaton, who transferred to IMG from St. John\u2019s Catholic school in Washington, D.C., in May.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not saying I wasn\u2019t prepared back there. But this school is as close to a college as you get. Being able to breathe this life, eat this life \u2014 sleep, eat, sleep, work \u2014 doing it over and over again consistently, I feel like I\u2019m one step closer to my big goal.\u201d<\/p>\n Seaton, whom Miller compares to 2022 No. 7 pick and former IMG star Evan Neal<\/a>, has trimmed his body fat down to 8.4 percent after weighing as much 350 pounds at his previous school. He\u2019s worked with nutritionists at IMG and changed his diet. At 6-5, 300 pounds, he\u2019s one of the top remaining uncommitted high school recruits in the 2024 cycle. Alabama, Florida, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Colorado are among his current leaders.<\/p>\n Attending IMG isn\u2019t cheap. The school website listed the football program\u2019s tuition for the 2022-23 school year ranging from $65,400 to $87,900 per year depending on age, boarding and grade of student-athlete. Some receive financial aid. Others do not. Sponsorship from companies such as Under Armour and Gatorade helps cover some of the costs.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody paid something, I know that,\u201d Wright said. \u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s a for-profit business.\u201d<\/p>\n The day The Athletic<\/em> visited campus, there was a sign posted in the men\u2019s bathroom above a urinal reminding students on campus to make sure they were completely outfitted in Under Armour apparel.<\/p>\n Endeavor, the parent company of International Management Group, sold IMG Academy to a Hong Kong-based private equity firm in April for $1.25 billion. The academy generates roughly $80 million a year, according to Zippia, and doesn\u2019t participate in the Florida High School Athletic Association state playoffs, in part, because it recruits players globally.<\/p>\n High school coaches and fan bases aren\u2019t happy when IMG recruits their best players away to join its star-studded national team roster.<\/p>\n \u201cI can tell you there\u2019s plenty of high school coaches that didn\u2019t like me,\u201d Weinke said. \u201cI can promise you that. And that\u2019s OK. My ultimate goal was to put something in place to create opportunities for young men to maximize their potential. Bottom line.\u201d<\/p>\n St. John Bosco coach Jason Negro, whose team from Bellflower, Calif., ranks 10th in the national polls, is one of those coaches. He said IMG recruited away one of his top receivers in 2018, Josh Delgado<\/a>, who is now at Oregon. Delgado had the offer from Oregon before he left for IMG, Negro confirmed.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only problem that I have (with IMG) is there\u2019s no governing body that regulates their ability to chase after players,\u201d Negro said. \u201cWe are bound by rules in terms of contact period, undue influence. My kids are constantly called by people from their organization, and that doesn\u2019t sit well with me. If I have a kid that chooses to go there or come to me, I\u2019m not opposed to transfers. But what I don\u2019t understand is they want to call my players and call two weeks later to play a game. That doesn\u2019t sit well with me. Coach your guys up with your people. But don\u2019t come and actively hunt my guys.\u201d<\/p>\n IMG in the national polls<\/p>\n Year<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/th>\n Record<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/th>\n MaxPreps<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n 2023<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n 4-0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n No. 3<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n 2022<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n 8-1<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n No. 5<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n 2021<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n 9-1<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n No. 17<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n 2020<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n 8-0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n No. 1<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n 2019<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n 9-1<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n No. 7<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n 2018<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n 7-1<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n No. 3<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n 2017<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n 9-0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n No. 2<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n 2016<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n 11-0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n No. 4<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n 2015<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n 9-0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n No. 9<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n 2014<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n 10-1<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n No. 16<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n 2013<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n 8-2<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n NR<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n Totals<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n 92-7<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n Negro said he\u2019d schedule IMG if he could, but Bosco can\u2019t because California state rules do not allow it to play versus schools ineligible for their own state tournament. Bosco\u2019s rival, Mater Dei, beat IMG, 28-24, in 2018 before state rules changed, Negro said.<\/p>\n The programs who do schedule the Ascenders, Miller said, are led by \u201clike-minded people\u201d who \u201cwant to play good football programs.\u201d IMG opened the season with a 35-10 win at Nashville\u2019s Lipscomb Academy and a 17-14 victory against Philadelphia\u2019s St. Joseph\u2019s Prep, two schools that won state championships last year. They defeated Indianapolis\u2019 Ben Davis, one of Indiana<\/a>\u2019s top-ranked programs, 34-14, and Glenville (Ohio) 28-6. Bartram Trail (Fla.), which went 12-1 last season, is up next on Oct. 6.<\/p>\n #Oklahoma<\/a> 5-star DL commit David Stone with a ridiculous 94yd pick six to put IMG Academy up 27-7 at Indianapolis Ben Davis in the third. A crucial play as the home team had momentum. https:\/\/t.co\/sduoLIuZjx<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/R0xxNO28E2<\/a><\/p>\n\n
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