Six months ago, the conservative movement buried Charlie Kirk.
Now it's burying the man who helped build him.
The mentor who stood at Kirk's posthumous Medal of Freedom ceremony – the one who told America we'd lost a future president – is gone too, reportedly killed in an accident nobody expected.
Jeff Webb and the Empire He Built From Scratch
At 24 years old, Jeff Webb took a job most people would have laughed off.
He was a yell leader at the University of Oklahoma who decided, in 1974, that cheerleading could be something more than sideline decoration.
He founded the Universal Cheerleading Association and built it into the multibillion-dollar empire known as Varsity Spirit – introducing partner stunts, pyramids, and tumbling to competitive cheer, striking a landmark deal with ESPN that put cheerleading on national television, and creating the camps, competitions, governing bodies, and uniforms worn by virtually every squad in America.
By the time Bain Capital acquired Varsity Brands in 2018, the deal was valued at $2.5 billion.
A decade earlier, nobody thought cheerleading was worth that.
Jeff Webb did.
How Jeff Webb Became Charlie Kirk's Most Important Mentor
Webb never stopped at cheerleading.
He became co-publisher and chairman of Human Events – the newspaper Ronald Reagan called his favorite – and later acquired The Post Millennial, one of the most-read right-wing outlets in North America.
He wrote American Restoration: How to Unshackle the Great Middle Class, a blueprint for the values he'd spent a lifetime living.
And somewhere along the way, he met a 24-year-old named Charlie Kirk.
Webb recognized what few people did at the time – that Kirk had the rarest combination in politics: charisma, faith, and the ability to make young conservatives feel like they belonged somewhere.
He later described what he saw in Kirk as a gift for reaching students who had no political home. "They were isolated," Webb said, "and Charlie's message and his charisma gave them definition. It gave them hope."
He poured his resources, his networks, and his credibility into helping Kirk build Turning Point USA into a national force.
When Charlie Kirk was killed at Utah Valley University in September 2025, Webb was among the first to speak.
"We may have lost a future president," he told Real America's Voice. "His legacy is just beginning."
He wasn't wrong.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans’ eyes have been opened since Kirk's assassination.
Jeff Webb Dead at 76 After Freak Pickleball Accident
Jeff Webb died March 19, 2026 – five months after the young man he helped build.
He was playing pickleball in Memphis, Tennessee, when he fell and suffered a severe head injury.
He was 76 years old.
His family made the decision to remove him from life support after two weeks.
"A visionary who helped shape generations of young leaders and believed deeply in the power of community and country," Turning Point USA wrote in his tribute. "A dear friend to Turning Point USA and Charlie. He will be greatly missed."
His son Jeffrey and daughter Caroline remembered something different – not the empire builder, not the conservative publisher, but the man.
"To most people he is a legendary entrepreneur – to us, he was our soccer coach and on-demand comedian, our mentor and father-daughter dance partner, our solace and our source of strength," they said.
Webb is survived by his wife Gina, his children, and two grandchildren.
He built an industry from scratch, spent his later years fighting for the next generation of American conservatives, and lived long enough to see Charlie Kirk receive the Medal of Freedom posthumously – just not long enough to see what comes next.
That's the part worth sitting with.
The conservative movement is still young in one critical way – it depends heavily on a small number of institution builders willing to write checks, open doors, and stake their credibility on people nobody else has heard of yet. Kirk was one. Webb was another. The men who find the next Charlie Kirk, fund him, and stand behind him when the media comes after him – those men are not easy to replace.
Webb spent fifty years proving that one person with a clear vision and the willingness to build could change an entire industry. He did it with cheerleading. He did it again with conservative media. The movement he helped shape will carry forward. But the connector is gone.
Some men build things. Some men build the people who build things.
Jeff Webb did both.
Sources:
- Paul Bois, "Former Mentor of Charlie Kirk Killed in Freak Pickleball Accident," Breitbart, March 23, 2026.
- Real America's Voice, Jeff Webb interview, September 19, 2025.
- Shane James, "Jeff Webb, Founder of Varsity Spirit and Architect of Modern Cheerleading, Dies After Accident," Cheer Daily, March 20, 2026.
- Varsity Brands official statement, March 2026.
- John Solomon, statement via NewsNation, March 2026.
- Natalie Dreier, "Jeff Webb, who turned cheerleading into a billion-dollar industry, dies at 76," Cox Media Group, March 24, 2026.
