Overwhelmed and out of answers, Tim and Tanya Blomquist listened intently to the pitch. They’d been warned – about recruiting services, about the false dreams some sell, about scammed parents left high and dry.

Upon arriving at this coffee shop meeting last spring, both clung to their skepticism. But they also were driven to despair at the thought of their son’s college football dream deferred, and the man sitting across the table was a compelling salesman, with an answer to every question.

Greg Hoyd told them time was running out. Marketing their son Elijah, a reserve running back at Mater Dei High, to colleges this late would be “a big project,” he said – one he probably shouldn’t take on. Fortunately for them, he had a plan. His recruiting service, Playing for Envelopes, could hold their hand through the process. He sold them on his connections; every day, he spoke with dozens of coaches. He named a few at the Division I level who might be interested in their son. And when Elijah stopped by the meeting, Hoyd marveled that he’d be “an easy sell.”

For decades, recruiting services have sold parents on this same promise of connecting high school athletes with college coaches who wouldn’t otherwise recruit them. Even as fewer prospects go unnoticed than ever before, especially in football, services such as Playing for Envelopes sell themselves not just as middlemen, but also as brand managers, social media marketers and recruiting power brokers – all essential, they say, in an increasingly complicated process.

“It’s not 1983 anymore,” Hoyd says. “Now, it’s about eyeballs, product, marketing.”

But amid this recruiting sea change, consultants with mixed credentials have flooded the unregulated fringes of the industry, selling big dreams and peddling connections they don’t have to parents overwhelmed by an unfamiliar world. A months-long investigation into these services revealed an industry operating legally, but almost entirely devoid of oversight, where deceit is without consequence and wrongdoing is almost impossible to prove.

Months before their meeting with Hoyd, the Blomquists took a bold step into that new world. They left family, friends and a real estate business behind in Chicago and moved to California. They left for Elijah – so he could best pursue a future playing college football. It felt right, sacrificing so much for their son’s dream. In Orange County, among prep football powerhouses, they were sure the spotlight would find him.

But at Mater Dei, a haven for top prospects, months passed in anxious silence. No calls. No emails. No direct messages. In Chicago, everyone felt on an equal playing field. But here? It was a dizzying, daunting world of position coaches, speed trainers and self-appointed gurus.

Mater Dei’s longtime coach, Bruce Rollinson, preached patience – “Everything you need is here,” he assured them. But as Elijah’s teammates collected offers, the Blomquists could not shake the feeling they were falling further and further behind.

“We were honestly wondering,” Tanya says, “have we done a disservice to our child?”

By the end of Hoyd’s pitch, they were sold. This was how they’d level the playing field. They signed a check for $3,500, made out to Playingforenvelopes.com LLC. As they left the coffee shop, they turned to each other. “What a relief,” Tim said.

But in the months to follow, as phone calls went unanswered and promises unfulfilled, the Blomquists began to seriously doubt whether Playing for Envelopes was helping their son.

As they’d soon find out, they weren’t the only ones wondering if they’d been played.

‘NOT A LOT OF SAFEGUARDS’

Within the recruiting services industry, the origin story is a well-worn cliche.

“There’s always a common theme,” says David Frank, vice president at the nation’s largest recruiting service, Next College Student Athlete (NCSA). “’I went through the process with my son or daughter. I was very surprised at how difficult it was, and I decided I wanted to start a service to help people, so they don’t have to go through the process like I went through it.’”

For Greg Hoyd, the trajectory was similar. A former player at Ole Miss, Hoyd bounced around as a local coach through 2013, with stints at Tustin, El Dorado, Canyon and Santa Margarita high schools, as well as Fullerton College and Riverside City College. Along the way, he says, he often connected coaching friends with prospects he felt were overlooked. When his son, Greg Hoyd III, garnered recruiting attention at Vista Murrieta High, Hoyd witnessed the process up close.

In May 2013, his son signed with Washington State. In short order, Playing for Envelopes was born. The client base has since expanded to 115 athletes. Its reach now extends as far as Texas, Michigan and the East Coast. Still, Hoyd remains the only “consultant” on a staff populated mostly by interns.

Operating in a somewhat undefinable gray area, the recruiting services industry is a mishmash of corporate behemoths and one-man, home-office outfits. Best estimates of how many services operate in the United States range in the several hundreds, though there’s no way to account for those, like Playing for Envelopes, that function legally outside of the NCAA’s purview.

The NCAA’s scope here is limited. Only services that sell scouting subscriptions to coaching staffs are required to register with the NCAA, and that regulation went into full effect just five years ago, after Chip Kelly and his Oregon staff were caught paying a service with ties to a recruit. Beyond that, the NCAA simply doesn’t have the resources – or jurisdiction – to police private services. The NCAA does offer a number to call – (844) 562-6201 – to report a fraudulent service. Otherwise, it recommends contacting local law enforcement.

“There’s just not a lot of safeguards,” says John Scott, CEO of the Utah-based recruiting service Athletic Quest.

Well-meaning services certainly exist. Athletic Quest, for instance, offers a money-back guarantee to assuage the worries of clients, who pay $5,000 for its hands-on services. But, as even Scott acknowledges, bad actors routinely skirt the lines of fraud and false advertising. In early July, one of the nation’s largest recruiting services, National Scouting Report, was ordered by the New York Attorney General’s office to pay $20,180 in penalties and restitution for such tactics.

Weeks before those fines were levied, executives at five separate recruiting services told the Southern California News Group that deceptive business practices are, as David Frank of NCSA describes, “just a fact in our industry.” Several hinted at scams they knew were ongoing.

“Is this rampant? Absolutely, I believe so,” said Ross Hawley, president of Playced, a Dallas-based service. “They understand how emotional this process is, and some of these services absolutely prey on the emotion of the well-meaning parents. They’ll get parents to jump through hoops, just to make a buck.”

FALLING SHORT OF PROMISES

A month after signing up with Playing for Envelopes, Tanya and Elijah Blomquist walked onto Yale’s campus in New Haven, Conn. It was mid-July, a crucial stretch for Elijah’s recruiting hopes. With little tape, summer camps were his best chance to capture attention, and Hoyd recommended Yale’s camp in particular. He assured that Elijah would be on a list. The expense of last-minute travel seemed worth it. Still, Tanya felt anxious and overwhelmed.

“I just wanted him to get the most exposure,” she says. She obsessed over whether she should be doing more. She texted Hoyd. No answer.

There was no word from Hoyd the next morning, either, when it became clear Elijah was not on any list. Camp organizers at Yale had never heard of him.

It was then, Tanya says, that the Blomquists began to suspect Greg Hoyd would never help their son. And in the year since, at least a dozen other clients in Orange County, as well as others within the Southern California recruiting scene, have raised questions about Hoyd and his rapidly growing recruiting service. Several detailed in interviews, texts and documents how they believe Playing for Envelopes overpromised and underdelivered.

Hoyd dismisses these allegations as “a public witch hunt,” while parents of some top prospects at Mater Dei continue to stand by Playing for Envelopes. But the stories of concerned parents are strikingly similar to the one first told by the Blomquists in April. While Hoyd did not guarantee scholarships, they contend he sold them on dreams they were desperate to hear, and then, did nothing.

“We were promised the world,” says Troy McLeery, whose son Jackson graduated from Mater Dei in May. “I know he doesn’t control the coaches or the offers presented. But we were basically deceived and duped through the whole process.”

A cursory glance at Playing for Envelopes’ website is enough to raise questions. A video, which was replaced after the Southern California News Group spoke with the NCAA, advertised Playing for Envelopes as “NCAA compliant” and “certified.” Neither is accurate. Two non-existent addresses are also listed, one in Seattle and another in “Brookfields, N.Y.” A quick search reveals Brookfields does not exist.

Both addresses appear to be dummy text left from the template used to create the site. But Hoyd, when asked, said they were there to “give colleges the security that, ‘Hey, this company isn’t a fly-by-night.’”

Dave Snyder and Julie Ault had their suspicions when they signed up their son, Chase, with Playing for Envelopes in December 2015. They canceled a different service, College Sports Quest, which offered only “boilerplate” advice for $800. Hoyd was promising more. Chase, he told them, would be “perfect” for Ole Miss.

They’d already spent thousands on camps and trainers and strength coaches. How could they stop short of Chase’s dream? “You want the best for your kid,” Snyder says. “So you ask yourself, ‘Have I done everything possible to put my kid in the right place?’ If the answer is no, you keep pushing.”

Hoyd sent them a one-page contract. Under “Duties,” it pledged Playing for Envelopes would “aid them throughout the recruiting process by assisting in the search for educational opportunities, securing athletic scholarships, and building a solid foundation of success for high school and beyond.”

Days after they signed it, the parents say, Hoyd went radio silent. Several parents claimed he disappeared for days or weeks at a time, ignoring their questions. “He kept telling us he had illnesses,” Julie Ault says, “and that’s why he couldn’t return our texts or phone calls.”

When reachable, Hoyd did suggest camps to attend. But like the Blomquists, several clients showed up on campuses thousands of miles away, only to find out their son wasn’t on a list. The Aults traveled to Wake Forest, in North Carolina, where organizers were not expecting them. The McLeerys were met with similar disbelief at a camp in Birmingham, Ala., where Hoyd told them coaches were eager to watch Jackson. In each case, Hoyd maintains their sons were “on a list.”

There were other complaints. Simple requests took weeks of texts and calls to accomplish. When work was completed, it was often sloppy, as if it had been thrown together, last-minute.

In a December 2016 text conversation shared with the Southern California News Group, Hoyd told the Blomquists he sent Elijah’s ACT score to Dartmouth, but the score he listed was incorrect. After Chase Ault received an offer from Columbia, Hoyd posted on Instagram that he had a 3.7 GPA, which was false. When Hoyd was confronted, Julie says, he assured them that “everyone fudges their numbers.”

Hoyd shrugs off these claims as “he said, she said.” He said that clients are updated with a “bi-weekly or sometimes monthly spreadsheet of all the schools we’ve identified and marketed their child to.”

“We were getting zero updates,” Tanya Blomquist says. “His reason was, ‘I don’t like to give negative news. I’m not giving you updates because they all rejected him.’”

After six frustrating months, Tim Blomquist asked for a list of schools that rejected Elijah. When Hoyd finally relented, Tim sent out emails en masse to coaches from the list. Some responded. A few even showed interest. “They’d never heard of Greg,” he says.

As tensions rose, other parents investigated Hoyd’s connections. Dan Warren, whose son Nick went to Edison High, grew suspicious after a litany of unreturned phone calls. He reached out to a friend on Colorado’s football staff who Hoyd said he knew personally. Warren says that assistant coach, Darrin Chiaverini, was unambiguous: Any email from Hoyd was immediately deleted.

Eli Ginnis, whose son E.J. played at Edison, signed up along with the Warrens. He was so dissatisfied he demanded a refund.

A credit card processor by trade, Ginnis had recourse. Since he used PayPal, Ginnis filed a chargeback request with Chase Bank, suggesting Hoyd “engaged in fraud.” In a request dated July 31, 2016 – a copy of which was provided to the Register – Ginnis outlines in a bullet-point list of the many promises he says went unfulfilled.

A letter from Chase soon came in the mail. A refund of $3,108 from Playing for Envelopes was credited to Ginnis’ account.

By March 2017, the Blomquists reached their own breaking point. In a text message on March 11, Tim threatened to take Hoyd to small claims court. Hoyd responded with his own threat.

“Believe me,” Hoyd wrote, “I’m prepared to let every coach in America [sic] that you’re that parent that will sue because you didn’t get your way.”

Hoyd insists he “worked tirelessly” to promote Elijah. When asked for evidence, he provided positive video testimonials from nine other clients, plus screenshots of two text exchanges with coaches – one at San Diego, another at Columbia. In both, he mentions Elijah.

But here, again, the lines of responsibility blur. How much is enough? Who is responsible? The answers here are admittedly subjective.

While speaking with the Register, Hoyd reiterated what he told all of his clients: There are no guarantees. Those defending Hoyd offered the same defense. Is it really his fault, they say, if your kid isn’t good enough?

“If they don’t offer you,” Hoyd says, “I don’t control that.”

HIGH-PROFILE RECOMMENDATION

Equanimeous St. Brown was in the eighth grade when his father, John Brown, first felt a creeping sense of anxiety about his son’s recruitment. “I was like a deer in the headlights,” says Brown, a former bodybuilder who was twice named Mr. Universe. But a friend he’d met years ago through Pop Warner offered to show him the ropes.

Since, Greg Hoyd has worked with each of Brown’s three sons, Equanimeous, Osiris, and Amon-Ra St. Brown — all of whom are now elite receiver recruits, with piles of high-profile offers and an evergreen presence on Playing for Envelopes’ social media feeds.

The St. Browns, it seems, are exactly the type of prospects who wouldn’t need a recruiting service. They are household names, coveted by powerhouse football programs. Brown’s phone has “every coach in America’s cell number,” he says.

So why affiliate themselves with any recruiting service?

“People tell me now, ‘You don’t need Greg,’” Brown says. “He got the ball rolling for all three of my sons. When Equanimeous was a junior, did he need Greg? No. When Osiris was a junior, did he need Greg? No. When Amon was a junior, did he need Greg? No. Because the ball was rolling. But who got the ball rolling?”

In return, Brown has played a supporting role in Playing for Envelopes’ rise in Orange County. The majority of parents who spoke to the Register said they were either directly referred by Brown or signed up only after Brown offered his support of Hoyd. On a few occasions, Brown tagged along while Hoyd gave his sales pitch. “I took what (Hoyd) said as legitimate because of John,” Eli Ginnis says.

Several parents have since approached Brown to voice their dissatisfaction.

“Take my word for it: These parents are crazy,” Brown says. “Now, is Greg doing something wrong? I mean, I’m not there. I’m sure he’s not perfect. But at the end of the day, this is what it comes down to: They didn’t get scholarships. If they got scholarships, they wouldn’t be unhappy.”

In an otherwise vague world, scholarship offers are often portrayed as currency. On June 12, Playing for Envelopes tweeted to its nearly 28,000 Twitter followers that it reached $50 million in scholarship offers for 2017.

But that calculus is troublesome, not only for the slapdash math, but for the assumption that a service is directly responsible for every offer. When it comes to top recruits, it’s fair to wonder how much — if anything — is gained from using a recruiting service.

Multiple local high school coaches who spoke with the Southern California News Group agreed these services are beneficial to a narrower market of recruitable players than parents are led to believe. Usually, that means lower-level prospects who hoped to gain exposure with schools that couldn’t afford to recruit nationally. Not a family of blue-chippers.

“In Division I,” Vista Murrieta athletic director Coley Candaele says, “they already do a great job at finding those athletes. If you’ve got it, they’re going to find you.”

Angus McClure agrees. With a tiny recruiting budget as an assistant at the University of Buffalo, he once perused the databases of these services. Now, as football recruiting coordinator at UCLA, he has little use for them.

Recruiting services have a considerable incentive to convince parents otherwise. Especially if their son or daughter is already bound to be recruited. “They pay for the service, get recruited, and then, it looks like the recruiting service deserves all the credit,” Ron Allen, president of B2G Sports explains.

In a saturated market, that cachet can go a long way.

“The thing is (top recruits) are already going to get scholarships,” Serra coach Scott Altenberg says. “It’s like a ponzi scheme. They’re the plant. The others are the payers.”

A pipeline of top prospects at Mater Dei — and elsewhere — continue to affiliate with Playing for Envelopes. Social media posts tie Hoyd to at least six four-star recruits on Mater Dei’s roster.

Tommy Brown is one of those prospects. A massive, four-star offensive lineman at 6-foot-7, 315 pounds, Brown committed to Alabama in early July. His father, Vince, has so far been satisfied with Hoyd.

The former head baseball coach at Foothill High, Brown says Hoyd “opened doors” for Tommy early on, facilitating introductions and doing the social legwork. Still, Brown agrees that Tommy “probably would’ve had a lot of (the offers) he’s gotten eventually.” He understands that Nick Saban did not offer his son purely on the recommendation of a recruiting service.

For many other parents, causality is not as clear. When Illiana Gallagher signed up her son, Orley Frost, just before his senior season at Mater Dei, she was naive. A single mother in La Habra Heights, Gallagher says she knew next to nothing about football, and even less about recruiting services, when Playing for Envelopes came into the picture.

Any recruiting service will claim to turn away prospective clients they can’t help, whose expectations don’t jibe with their potential. But the opposite is often true, and Frost is one example. When he signed up, available scholarships were limited. A hamstring injury had previously hindered him at Mater Dei, as well, leaving him buried on the depth chart.

Coaches never called. Soon, Hoyd stopped communicating, too. Frost gave up on football and now plans to study architecture at the University of San Francisco.

“If (Hoyd) was a real coach, he would’ve said the truth,” Gallagher says. “But he was just after money.”

‘THEY’VE BEEN WARNED’

Bruce Rollinson does not recall ever meeting Greg Hoyd. But over the past year, Playing for Envelopes has been brought to his attention.

It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before. Over nearly three decades at Mater Dei, Rollinson has cautioned against recruiting consultants of every variety. “I haven’t seen or heard of a lot of success stories,” he says. Still, year after year, more services come out of the woodwork, and more parents spend thousands on the promise of a scholarship.

“Honestly, I don’t have much sympathy if the service or the product doesn’t work out for them,” Rollinson says. “They’ve been warned. There’s enough information out there.”

But misinformation is just as rampant. Listen to Hoyd long enough, and you might believe he’s the sole proprietor of Mater Dei’s recruiting success.

“A few years back, Mater Dei was only getting two to three kids scholarship offers,” Hoyd said. “We went over, partnered with some athletes. Last year, I think was the biggest year Rollo has ever had with 20-plus athletes with Division I offers.”

Not all recruiting services seek to deceive. Brian Scanlon worked for a major service which touted its “relationship sales.” He understands the game, how consultants don’t lie, per se, but “lead people to believe something that’s not there.”

So he left and founded his own service, The Recruiting Coaches, which offers education for parents about the process. Honesty, he says, is paramount. During a free webinar in May, he explained to parents virtually attending that, in recruiting, “exceptions are for the exceptional.”

“People and services that sell you what you want to hear,” Scanlon says, “they do pretty well.”

Judging by its rapid growth, Playing for Envelopes has done quite well over the past year. When the Register first contacted him for this story in late June, Hoyd spoke glowingly of its success and expansion.

By early August, his tone had changed. After months of no contact, unhappy clients received a message from Hoyd, asking to meet and offering to apologize. “The arrogance in success totally blinded me,” he wrote them.

When reached again, Hoyd admitted he “didn’t foresee growing that fast.” Customer service suffered. He wanted to accept responsibility.

But beyond that admission, Hoyd wasn’t exactly remorseful. He “could only speculate,” he said, why so many parents were unhappy.

For those parents, his apology rang mostly hollow. Many put their sagas with Hoyd behind them months ago. They’d sent emails and signed up for camps and willed their sons ahead, on their own. For some, it worked. For others, it didn’t. But in their experience, the odds were no better with a recruiting service.

This fall, Elijah Blomquist will play Division III football at Amherst College, a top liberal arts college in Massachusetts. Chase Ault made the training camp roster as a preferred walk-on at UCLA, his dream school, even after Hoyd told him it wouldn’t happen. Jackson McLeery is already settled at FCS stalwart Montana State. E.J. Ginnis is taking a prep school year. Each of their parents claim Hoyd had nothing to do with their college decisions.

Looking back, Elijah can’t help but wonder: Could he have played Division I? Could more have been done? Athletic scholarships are not available at the DIII level, which means the Blomquists must pay his way. But after the anxious turmoil of the last year, he is finally content. “I ended up in a good position,” he says.

A recruiting service was never going to decide his dream of playing college football. He knows that now. But in the case of Playing for Envelopes, Elijah is sure of one thing.

“It certainly didn’t help.”

Correction: A previous version of this story reported that the Blomquist family wrote a $3,800 check to Playing for Envelopes. The check was actually for $3,500.