Bishop Sycamore played top prep school IMG Academy, ESPN’s announcers thought they’d be calling a game between two elite high school football teams.It didn’t take long for it to become clear that one of those teams wasn’t what it said it was.
Bishop Sycamore — which claims to be based in Columbus, though there’s no address listed on the website, and the “About Us” and “Staff” pages on the site are blank — was destroyed from the beginning as it took on the No. 2 team in the USA.
This is what happens when ESPN gets duped into airing a high school football game between the most talented team in the country and an online charter school nobody has heard of, went 0-6 last year, and lied about its roster to get on TV. pic.twitter.com/QUwM8BQKiY
— Ben Koo (@bkoo) August 29, 2021
The game quickly caught national attention as it was broadcast on ESPN’s main channel. Social media was lit up with questions about how Bishop Sycamore came to be scheduled for the game, when it clearly was not fit to be playing against a team of IMG’s caliber. According to sources, Paragon Marketing Group took care of finding matchups and providing them to ESPN.
A report from ESPN stated :
“We regret that this happened and have discussed it with Paragon, which secured the matchup and handles the majority of our high school event scheduling, they have ensured us that they will take steps to prevent this kind of situation from happening moving forward.”
The team’s head coach, Roy Johnson, also allegedly has an active arrest warrant because of fraud charges, while many of their players are said to have already graduated high school…
From this story that keeps getting wilder:
There has never been a Bishop Sycamore
They played two games in three days
Their head coach currently has an ACTIVE arrest warrant
Most of the players are JUCO dropouts who are nowhere near HS age
How was ESPN scammed this badly?? https://t.co/52KIY4BHWc
— Dawson Boyd (@dawsontboyd) August 30, 2021
Bishop Sycamore might not even be a real high school. More to come…
