21-Year-Old Man Pretends to Be Middle School Football Player

Julious Threatts is 21 years old, but for some reason, he thinks he can create his own fountain of youth. Threatts was caught trying to impersonate a 14-year-old, so he could play in a youth football league.

Threatts used the alias “Chad Jordan” to register for Webb Middle School. The school is located in Tampa, Fla. Threatts told school administrators that he was homeless on the day of his arrival to the school.

After trying to enroll, the Department of Child and Families was called to assist in the situation. That’s when Threatts was taken to the cafeteria and even given a snack. When the principal saw him, he immediately noticed that he was too old to be in middle school. He was eventually arrested on trespassing charges.

In addition to his trespassing charge, Threatts is being accused of violating the terms of his probation on an earlier burglary charge. He was kicked off the football team, when coaches from other teams recognized him. He allegedly played in the same youth league a year earlier.

“I brought him into this room with seven of our board members and coaches and said, Come on now, tell us the truth, who are you?” Ray McCloud, one of the youth coaches, told MSNBC. “He looked me right in the eye and said, ‘I swear I am who I say I am. I’m Chad Jordan.’

“This guy had us all fooled. I mean this guy acted just like a little kid. Everything about him was a little kid. He’s a total scam artist.”

Not only did Threatts’ story include his own acting ability, it came with documentation. According to media reports, Threatts had a falsified birth certificate as well as a detailed scouting report from a high school recruiting scout alleged to be from Rivals.com. The report analyzed Chad Jordan and said that he is “a very special prospect” who “hasn’t signed” but has “offers from USC (University of Southern California), Texas and Florida.”

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This story, as well as the one of Julious Threatts, makes me think of the infantilization of the black male in America. Through sports and hip-hop, black men are in a peculiar partnership with the educational, economic and criminal justice system to keep themselves uneducated, marginalized and perpetually immature.

We have 35-year-old men running around with their pants sagging, hats cocked to the side and imitating hip-hop artists who have far more money than they will ever see in their lives. There are also former athletes with few professional skills in their late 30s, hoping for another tryout with a team who will accept an aging journeyman. {snip}

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