Who pays for all of these facilities? The academy has a partnership with Under Armour, the popular athletic clothes line, and Gatorade.
“You go to campus carrying a Powerade, they’ll shoot you,” Henderson joked.
The school is also backed by its parent company, International Management Group. IMG is a global sports and talent management corporation with more than 3,000 employees. In 2013, IMG was acquired by William Morris Endeavor and Silver Lake Partners in a more than $2 billion deal.
The facilities don’t stop at football.
IMG Academy was founded in 1978 as a tennis academy. It added golf in the early 1990s. Soccer and baseball came a few years later, and the school began playing basketball in 2001.
There are 12 full-size soccer fields on campus. There’s a massive driving range and a championship 18-hole golf course. There are four baseball and two lacrosse fields and 50 tennis courts, including an indoor facility.
There are more than a dozen newly built three- and four-bedroom villas that are fully furnished and set around a pool and among palm tree-lined streets.
“The pictures don’t do it all justice,” Henderson said.
The school has a full-time nutritionist, strength and conditioning staff and a football staff totalling nearly two dozen people.
The football director is Steve Walsh, a first-round pick of the Cowboys in 1989 and a former Saints quarterback. Wright previously led powerhouse prep programs to three state championships and, before replacing former coach Chris Weinke last year, he served as offensive coordinator for Western Kentucky.
Outside of the six position assistants, there are 14 football support staff members.
Saivion Smith spent two football seasons at IMG Academy, and his father said the experience exceeded his expectations.
“It was more than what I expected,” Smith said. “If every football coach in America understands what IMG can offer, they’d be doing the kid a disservice by restricting him to go.”
“One thing I’ll give them credit for: They did everything they told us they were going to do,” Henderson said. “They had a lot (of) integrity.”
A perception
Venus and Serena Williams. Novak Djokovic. Maria Sharapova. Ernie Els. Michelle Wie.
All of these tennis and golf stars have at least one thing in common: They are represented by IMG.
Representing sports superstars is how IMG got its start in the 1960s, when then-Cleveland lawyer Mark McCormack signed Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player to deals, providing the foundation of what would become one of the world’s largest sports marketing industries.
In the business world, IMG is known today as WME-IMG after William Morris Endeavor acquired the company. It ranks 15th on Forbes’ 2015 list of the world’s most valuable sports agencies, bringing in commissions totaling $38.8 million in 2015, Forbes reported in September.
IMG’s agency centers around pro golf and tennis players — not team-sport athlete representation — but in 2011, the company signed Newton to a multi-year contract. It represents Newton in everything aside from his on-field contract.
IMG’s history as a sports agency is seen by some as a reason the academy is beginning to reel in highly touted high school football players.
“If Shea Patterson goes to the NFL, he’s going to need someone to represent him and clothes to wear,” Bachman said.
“Cam is doing all right,” he continued. “The marketing strategy I see is, they’re getting them young and younger. It’s just strategy. I can’t say I blame them. Do I like it? Not really. Do I understand it? Yeah.”
During IMG’s courting of his son Justin, Paul Henderson researched the company. He was trying to answer the question nagging at him: What’s in it for them?
“This is how they’re creating future clients,” he said. “They bring these kids in here, and when they turn pro, they’re looking for reps. Who brought them to the dance? IMG.
“That’s what I realized. They’ve got all these kids, and a percentage of these kids are going to go pro, and they’re likely to sign with IMG.”
Did IMG officials ever speak to Paul about representing Justin later in life? No, Paul said, but he told IMG his theory. Said Paul: “They basically said, ‘Yeah, you’re on the right track.’ ”
In interviews for this story, IMG officials vehemently denied Paul and Bachman’s theories. The two entities — the academy and the sports marketing agency — have “no connection,” Frey said. “There’s a very strict firewall that exists because of the integrity.”
Three professional baseball players (John Ryan Murphy, Chris Perez and Tyler Pastornicky) and two basketball players (Michael Beasley and Renaldo Balkman) who attended IMG Academy are not represented by WME-IMG.
No former IMG Academy football players are old enough to have turned professional since the academy fielded its first team in 2013. The most notable names in that first class are Alabama running back Bo Scarborough and former Penn State and current University of British Columbia quarterback Michael O’Connor.
“This is so new,” Bachman said. “We really won’t know the results until we get some data down the years.”
