Is Baby Gronk’s dad the next LaVar Ball? He’s doing his best to become football’s version.
PONDER, Texas – Jake San Miguel certainly isn’t the first parent to micromanage every aspect of his child’s athletic development. Famous and infamous examples are strewn through sports history.
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There was Marv Marinovich and son Todd, the “Robo QB” who became addicted to drugs and burned out after two NFL seasons. Richard Williams was publicly bombastic, but tennis-phenom daughters Serena and Venus combined to win 30 major singles titles.
Earl Woods not only had son Tiger swinging a golf club before he could walk, but early and often thrust him into the spotlight, most famously at age 2 on The Mike Douglas Show.
The sports father to whom Jake says he most relates is more current. LaVar Ball trained and loudly touted basketball sons Lonzo, LaMelo and LiAngelo, all the while building the Big Baller Brand around them.
The Baby Gronk phenomenon began when Jake’s Instagram post of 6-year-old son Madden pulling a Dodge Ram went viral. Eight years later, Baby Gronk has nearly 1.5 million followers and subscribers across multiple social media platforms.
“The stuff we’ve done, it’s like one of one,” Jake said. “It’s pretty much how LaVar Ball did, but in football it really hadn’t been done, where a dad promotes his son like this.”
Of course, two of LaVar’s sons became top-three draft picks and are still NBA standouts. Jake’s son is three games into his eighth-grade season, but with some college athletes earning more than $1 million annually in the name, image and likeness era, the Baby Gronk brand’s social media reach could help Madden reap lucrative offers.
That is of course if he continues to excel in football and is recruit-worthy.
“We’re not trying to chase the big money,” Jake said. “We’re trying to chase the right moves to get the big money at the end.”
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Jake describes himself as being in the marketing business. He said he’s also worked in the music industry. As Baby Gronk public awareness began to boom, a business friend told Jake of the coming of NIL, which officially began in the summer of 2021.
“It was like I caught it at the right time, creating this football player,” Jake said. “I know football is not forever. But now that these kids have a chance to get paid in college and have enough money to start a company and a family and a house and everything else?
“Why not? Why not go for it?”
He said so many parents have reached out to him for advice about how to expand their kids’ public profiles that he formed a marketing agency called MSM365, Inc. San Miguel said he has about 250 kids, ages 5 to 18, whose parents receive social media and video training. The parents pay a signup fee and a monthly subscription.
He said he also works with companies, shooting videos and creating social media content to promote their product.
“I build fan bases,” he said. “I built followings. I get engagements. I learned this from the music industry. It was just the right timing, dude.”
Well, other than the fact Texas is one of just six states that doesn’t allow public high school athletes to accept NIL money.
Time will tell whether Madden San Miguel the football player and Baby Gronk the social media personality can ride the perfect storm to an NIL jackpot in five years.
If that happens, Jake San Miguel might become football’s LaVar Ball.
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This story was originally published September 22, 2026 at 5:38 AM.
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