About
One Standard.
No Exceptions.
Elite Sports Solutions exists to cut through the noise for athletes — recommending only the tools, platforms, and resources that hold up against the highest standard: would an advisor with Jack’s background actually use this?
University of North Carolina
Division I Football — Scholarship Athlete
New Orleans Saints
NFL Undrafted Free Agent
University of North Texas
College Football Coach
Michigan State University
College Football Coach
NFLPA-Certified Agent Partner
Venture Capital
Portfolio Operator & Advisor
Jack Tabb III
Founder, Elite Sports Solutions
NFLPA-Certified Agent Partner — JB Sports / nfladvisor.com
Jack knows this landscape because he has lived every corner of it. He played Division I football at the University of North Carolina, signed as an undrafted free agent with the New Orleans Saints, and then spent years coaching at the University of North Texas and Michigan State. After leaving coaching, he became a certified NFL agent partnered with JB Sports and built experience as a venture investor.
That path creates a filter that most curators simply don’t have. When Jack evaluates a recovery tool, he’s drawing on years as an athlete and a coach who watched how athletes train and break down. When he recommends an NIL platform, he’s thinking about it the way an agent thinks about it — what’s the deal quality, what’s the compliance risk, what does this actually do for a player’s leverage? When he flags a financial resource, he’s approaching it with an investor’s eye for what builds real long-term value.
Most recommendation sites are built by people who read about sport from the outside. ESS is built by someone who has been inside every room where these decisions get made. That’s not a differentiator — it’s the entire premise.
How We Operate
Four Principles That Don’t Bend.
Not guidelines. Not aspirations. The standards every recommendation on this site is held to — regardless of who’s asking or what’s on the table.
Credibility
Every recommendation on this site runs through a filter most curators don't have: someone who has lived the athlete experience at every level, from D1 to the NFL to the sideline to the boardroom.
Full Disclosure
Affiliate relationships are disclosed on every product card, in the sticky banner on The Stack, and on a dedicated disclosure page. There are no hidden compensation arrangements. Ever.
Honest Standards
Whether or not a commission is available, the question is always the same: would this hold up in a real conversation with an athlete who's counting on good advice? If the answer is no, it doesn't make the list.
Long-Term Thinking
The goal isn't a transaction — it's a resource that compounds in value over time. Athletes and families who come back to this site should find the recommendations getting sharper, not softer.
Why This Model
Why a Curated Resource Platform
Serves Athletes Better.
The original model here was advisory — working directly with families through portal decisions, NIL negotiations, and representation conversations. That work still happens. But I kept running into the same dynamic: the families who needed help the most were the ones who didn’t know the right tools existed, not just the ones who needed someone to interpret them.
A 17-year-old athlete who doesn’t know what WHOOP is, or hasn’t heard of Opendorse, or has never thought about NIL valuation — that athlete is starting from behind before any conversation with an advisor even happens. The resource gap is real, and it’s widest at the level where the stakes are the highest: athletes who are good enough to earn money on their name but don’t have the infrastructure or the network to take advantage of it.
The independence angle still applies — it just lives in a different place now. Instead of making sure my advice doesn’t change based on what I stand to gain from a representation outcome, I’m making sure the recommendations on this site don’t change based on what a company is willing to pay to be featured. The commission structure is disclosed. The editorial standard doesn’t move. Those two things can coexist — but only if you build the model that way from the start and hold the line on it.
That’s what this is. A platform built by someone with enough background to know what’s actually worth recommending, and enough independence to say so without the answer depending on who’s paying attention.
— Jack Tabb III
See What Made the Cut.
Every tool on The ESS Stack passed the same standard described on this page. Browse by category — Performance, NIL, Finance, Learning, or Agent Tools.