Cheer Incorporated: Varsity Founder Jeff Webb Dead at 64

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by JENN WOOD

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Jeff Webb — the controversial founder of Varsity Brands and a central architect of modern competitive cheerleading — has died at the age of 64, according to multiple reports and a statement released by the organizations he helped build.

Webb’s death was confirmed this week, with tributes pouring in from across the cheerleading world — including a post from the Universal Cheerleaders Association (UCA), the company he founded in 1974.

“It’s with a heavy heart we honor our visionary… Jeff Webb, Employee #1,” UCA wrote on Instagram. “We are all better for having had Jeff in our lives.”

Webb was widely credited with transforming cheerleading from a sideline activity into a billion-dollar industry — but his legacy remains deeply entangled in controversy.

As FITSNews has extensively documented through its Cheer Incorporated investigative series, that transformation came with consequences that are still playing out in courtrooms across the country.

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THE ARCHITECT OF CHEER’S MODERN ERA

Webb didn’t just popularize competitive cheer — he industrialized it.

After founding the UCA as a teenager, he went on to build what would become Varsity Brands — a corporate juggernaut that came to dominate nearly every facet of the sport, from training camps and uniforms to competitions, media, and athlete certification.

Through acquisitions and aggressive consolidation, Varsity constructed a vertically integrated system that controlled vast portions of the industry’s infrastructure — prompting critics to liken its influence to a monopoly.

That dominance, reinforced by private equity backing from Bain Capital, helped transform cheerleading into a highly commercialized, billion-dollar enterprise featuring national broadcasts, elite training pipelines, and lucrative sponsorships.

But it also created what critics — and later plaintiffs — described as a closed ecosystem: one that controlled access, controlled opportunity and, according to multiple lawsuits, controlled accountability.

Or a lack thereof…

As the sport expanded at a rapid pace, meaningful regulatory oversight failed to keep up — a gap that would later sit at the center of some of the most serious allegations facing the industry.

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A SYSTEM UNDER SCRUTINY

For more than three years, FITSNews relentlessly tracked what became known as the Cheer Incorporated scandal — a sprawling web of civil litigation and allegations tied to Varsity-affiliated gyms, coaches, and governing bodies.

That reporting began in the aftermath of the 2022 suicide of Rockstar Cheer founder Scott Foster — a Greenville, South Carolina case that triggered multi-state investigations and a cascade of lawsuits.

Those filings — in South Carolina, Tennessee, Ohio, and Georgia — have consistently pointed to the same core allegation: that the system Webb built prioritized growth and profit over athlete safety.

In a 2022 federal complaint (.pdf), plaintiffs alleged Varsity and its affiliated governing bodies — including the U.S. All Star Federation (USASF) and USA Federation of Sport Cheering (a.k.a. USA Cheer) — operated as part of a broader enterprise that failed to protect minor athletes while continuing to certify coaches accused of misconduct.

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RELATED | LAWSUIT ALLEGES WIDESPREAD ABUSE, SYSTEMIC FAILURE

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Subsequent reporting by FITSNews detailed claims that these organizations maintained internal tracking systems — including “ineligibility lists” — that critics say were inconsistently enforced and often failed to prevent accused individuals from remaining active in the sport.

Despite the scale of the allegations, many of the original Cheer Incorporated cases never reached public trial.

In April 2024, a federal judge dismissed the South Carolina Rockstar Cheer litigation following a series of sealed settlements — agreements that reportedly included seven-figure payouts to dozens of victims.

Those settlements effectively closed the first chapter of the scandal – but they did not resolve the underlying questions.

Instead, as FITSNews has repeatedly reported, they left behind:

• No public accounting of responsibility
• No transparent findings of fact
• Limited structural overhaul of the system at the center of the allegations

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A PATTERN THAT KEPT REPEATING

As FITSNews reported in October 2025, a new lawsuit in Georgia expanded the scope of the scandal — pushing it beyond private gyms and into taxpayer-funded school programs.

That complaint alleged a minor athlete was subjected to “sexual abuse, rape, drugging, harassment, [and] exploitation” by a coach who had been certified within the same Varsity-linked system.

It further accused Varsity, USASF, and USA Cheer of:

• Failing to enforce disciplinary actions
• Ignoring warning signs
• Allowing continued access to minor athletes

The filing described what plaintiffs called a “pipeline of young athletes” — one sustained by a profit-driven structure that allegedly minimized oversight while maximizing revenue.

As FITSNews noted at the time, the Georgia case echoed the same themes uncovered in earlier litigation:

The alleged grooming, the lack of oversight, and the concentration of power all pointed to a system that “prioritized profit and control over athlete safety.”

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RELATED | ‘CHEER INCORPORATED’

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A LEGACY STILL UNDER SCRUTINY

In the wake of Webb’s death, tributes have focused on his role as a visionary — a builder of opportunity and a pioneer of cheerleading as a global sport.

Those contributions are unmistakably real – but so, too, is the system he leaves behind, which multiple lawsuits have described as opaque, self-regulated, and resistant to external accountability. A system that, despite repeated scrutiny, continues to generate new allegations across multiple states.

Even as Varsity Brands has consistently denied enabling misconduct — maintaining its commitment to “providing a safe, positive environment” — the litigation tied to its ecosystem has not subsided.

Webb’s passing marks the end of an era for competitive cheerleading, but by no means does it close the book on the Cheer Incorporated saga.

If anything, the cases still moving through the courts — and the survivors still coming forward — suggest the reckoning tied to this industry is far from over.

From Greenville to Gwinnett… from private gyms to public schools, the same questions remain:

Who was responsible for protecting these athletes?
Who failed?
How much of that failure was structural?

Those are questions Webb’s legacy cannot answer — but ones the system he built will continue to face.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

As a private investigator turned journalist, Jenn Wood brings a unique skill set to FITSNews as its research director. Known for her meticulous sourcing and victim-centered approach, she helps shape the newsroom’s most complex investigative stories while producing the FITSFiles and Cheer Incorporated podcasts. Jenn lives in South Carolina with her family, where her work continues to spotlight truth, accountability, and justice.

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