MANDEVILLE, La. • It’s 3 a.m. in Beaumont, Tex., 260 miles from a tournament that starts just eight hours from now, and Fast Houston, a 7-on-7 football team, can’t find one of its players. The team is traveling in two 15-seat vans and three trailing cars. They had pulled to a stop, their headlights illuminating an otherwise pitch-black neighborhood. “We’re here to get T-Brown,” said Ro Simon Jr., the founder, director and head coach of Fast Houston. “Vick, c’mon, you got to get him.” They were there to pick up four-star recruit Tamauzia Brown, but there was a problem: He hadn’t given them his exact address, only a general neighborhood location, and now, having probably fallen asleep, wasn’t responding to any calls. That left assistant coach Vick Machado with the task of knocking on doors in the middle of the night, hoping to find the correct home. “I’m going to get shot if I go out there,” said Machado. “ ‘I’m here to pick up a kid, hopefully this is the right house.’ I’m in an Alabama jacket. It’s 3 a.m. No, I don’t want to go out there!” This late-night scene is an example of life in the often chaotic, largely unregulated and increasingly popular and scrutinized world of 7-on-7 football — an all-passing, noncontact game played during the offseason by all-star teams looking to sharpen skills and gain exposure to college recruiters. The 2018 season unofficially culminates the weekend of June 16 with a pair of national events. Supporters of 7-on-7 bill it as an opportunity for players to increase their chances of earning scholarship offers. Its critics say it has the potential to be affected by many of the same issues that have plagued AAU basketball, an influential exhibition circuit that has garnered negative publicity in the past year amid an FBI probe into recruits receiving money and other benefits. Fast Houston is representative of 7-on-7’s rise in popularity, which has been most significant in California, South Florida and Texas but has reached most other areas of the country. The team is sponsored by the apparel company Adidas (which has been named in the FBI’s basketball investigation), features several highly rated prospects on its roster and regularly posts professional-quality highlight tapes. It has also drawn the ire of many of the state’s high school football coaches, most notably after new Texas A&M Coach Jimbo Fisher. The varying opinions on 7-on-7, however, are more complicated, with critics — often while making the AAU comparison — primarily pointing to two factors as being problematic: a “me-first” culture that promotes individual players far more than high school football’s traditional team-first approach, and an increased influence of some 7-on-7 coaches in the college recruitment of top players. Another factor that raises eyebrows is the involvement of apparel companies. Adidas, Under Armour and Battle provide equipment to select teams, while Adidas runs some of its own events, such as the Adidas 7-on-7 National Championships. But many say the comparison of apparel companies’ role in 7-on-7 to that in AAU basketball, which has been scrutinized, is unfair. “The basketball side is what is being investigated in terms of money being exchanged and stuff, but there is no money in football. Guys got to go play three or four years in college football to even have a chance [at the NFL], and it is not going to be a smart thing to do,” said Simon, adding that doing so would be against NCAA rules. “I talk to guys with grass roots and Adidas, and they are always like, ‘Let the [players] know whatever they are doing in basketball, they are not doing with the football side.’ It is two different games.”

Fast Houston players warm up before the Bootleggers Invitational 7-on-7 football tournament in Mandeville, La.