Tag: Bishop Sycamore

Is scandal-ridden football program Bishop Sycamore making a comeback?

Much-maligned football program Bishop Sycamore is back, apparently.

Bishop Sycamore, the football program that was allegedly also a high school, is back and will be playing in November. This, according to reports that the scandal-ridden school is fully back and functioning.

And, according to investigations, the Ohio-based Bishop Sycamore really wasn’t much of an academic school, let alone a football team. Nevertheless, it appears that the Columbus, Ohio, football team is back.

This could and should be interesting.

As both a football program and an academic institution, Bishop Sycamore has deservedly drawn heavy criticism. But that doesn’t seem to be stopping them from returning to the field, as a report this week said that Bishop Sycamore will play Life Christian Academy (Chester, Virginia) at Virginia State University on Nov. 9.

Life is 1-7 on the year.

As for Bishop Sycamore, they are best known for losing 58-0 to IMG Academy in 2021 during a nationally televised game on ESPN. The school has drawn criticism for its academic standards. The conclusion of a December 2021 report from the Ohio Department of Education was damning and concluded “that there is no evidence that Bishop Sycamore High School is meeting the standard for non-chartered, non-tax supported schools.”

There were a whole host of issues regarding the team, including allegedly passing bad checks to cover hotel costs.

HBO begins filming ‘BS High’ documentary about Bishop Sycamore

Did you ever hear the one about the high school football team that didn’t actually exist but still got to play on ESPN?

Did you ever hear the one about the high school football team that didn’t actually exist but still got to play on ESPN?

Well, this bizarre saga is getting the documentary treatment. According to the Hollywood Reporter, HBO has begun filming a documentary about the strangest story in football from last season.

In case you haven’t heard, “Bishop Sycamore” somehow convinced producers at ESPN to have them play against IMG Academy (Fla.) a year ago. It didn’t go great for the scammers. The fake powerhouse Ohio state school wound up losing to highly-ranked IMG Academy by a score of 58-0. The blowout was so bad that broadcasters expressed concern about the players’ safety on the Centurions during the game.

The loss caused head coach Roy Johnson to get fired. In a twist, his replacement admitted to a TV station in Columbus that it wasn’t actually a school but a “post-grad football academy,” whatever that means.

New York Giants great Michael Strahan’s company SMAC Entertainment won the rights to tell the story, with the Athletic and Oscar-winning director Adam McKay‘s Hyperobject Industries and Boat Rocker hopping in as co-producers on the project. Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe are the directors.

The film will be available to stream on HBO Max in 2023.

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Bishop Sycamore documentaries announced

Bishop Sycamore is going to have its crazy story told on the big screen.

Bishop Sycamore gained national notoriety when it duped ESPN into allowing it to play IMG Academy on national television in its second game in three days.

Now, the “high school” football program’s story is hitting the big screen.

SMAC Entertainment announced Wednesday that it will produce a documentary on Bishop Sycamore featuring Roy Johnson, the program’s former head coach. SMAC Entertainment is co-owned by Michael Strahan. HartBeat Productions — Kevin Heart’s production company — is also planning a documentary about the team.

Bishop Sycamore made national headlines after it suffered a 58-0 loss to IMG Academy. ESPN broadcasters openly questioned Bishop Sycamore’s talent level and the health and well-being of its players throughout the broadcast as IMG Academy scored touchdown after touchdown against the Ohio program.

Less than 24 hours after Bishop Sycamore was introduced to the world, multiple media outlets reported on the program’s fraudulent ways. Bishop Sycamore was using fifth and even sixth-year players and lied to ESPN about having Division I talent on its roster. Johnson also had a warrant out for his arrest because of unpaid bills.

Bishop Sycamore’s remaining opponents promptly canceled and Johnson was fired.

“To secure the rights to Roy’s story as the head coach of the Bishop Sycamore High School football team that has gone viral and made national headlines is incredible, especially as it plays out in real-time,” SMAC’s Constance Schwartz-Morini said in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. “When our head of unscripted, Ethan Lewis, brought this story to Michael and my attention, we knew we could tell it with the gravitas, authenticity and journalistic integrity that it deserves.”

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The Bishop Sycamore-ESPN saga has somehow gotten even weirder

The details surrounding this Bishop Sycamore story are wild.

It’s been a little over 24 hours since Bishop Sycamore and its mysterious football team got surprise airtime on ESPN against the best high school football team in the country. Since then, this saga has gotten far weirder and wildly sinister than anyone could have predicted.

To catch you up, ESPN aired their final game of the GEICO ESPN High School Kickoff Sunday to usher in the start of high school football. In the game, high school powerhouse IMG Academy faced off against the mysteriously unknown Ohio school Bishop Sycamore to the tune of a 58-0 drubbing. Nothing seemed off until ESPN’s commentators called out Bishop Sycamore and their lack of transparency regarding… everything about them as a school.

In the end, it turned out Bishop Sycamore lied about having D1 prospects and falsified player names on their roster. And yet, they made it onto ESPN’s national broadcast on Sunday — after playing a game less than 48 hours prior!! — due to an apparent lack of fact-checking on Bishop Sycamore’s sketchy past and easily discoverable 0-6 record from last season.

Somehow, somehow, this is just the tip of the iceberg with this story. According to reports from Awful Announcing and The Columbus Dispatch, we know a lot more about Bishop Sycamore, how ESPN got duped, and the circumstances that surround this entire saga.

Here’s how ESPN got duped into airing a terrible high school football team

You’re not the only one who hasn’t heard of Bishop Sycamore’s football program.

Well, this is a goof ESPN will be thinking about for some time.

In the midst of college football and the NFL ramping up, it’s also time for good old high school football! For the last few days, ESPN has been airing seven high school football games as part of their GEICO ESPN High School Kickoff, with the last game of the weekend slated to be high school powerhouse IMG Academy’s second game of the season.

IMG Academy’s opponent? A small school named Bishop Sycamore, an online charter school from Ohio. If that school doesn’t ring any bells, you’re not alone here. And yet, Bishop Sycamore played IMG Academy — likely the No. 1 high school team in the country — on ESPN’s main channel on Sunday, and were destroyed 58-0.

How did we get to this point, you ask? Well apparently, Bishop Sycamore lied its way into this game by stating they had D1 prospects (they don’t) and naming players who don’t even go to the school in their press release.

ESPN’s broadcast of the game, meanwhile, scrambled to fill air time during IMG Academy’s drubbing of a vastly inferior opponent.

The broadcasters also mentioned their attempts to verify Bishop Sycamore’s story, but could not come up with anything, and ultimately were concerned for the “health and safety” of the players involved… midway through the second quarter.

It’s hard to imagine how we even got here in the first place. A quick Google search will bring up Bishop Sycamore’s 0-6 record from last year, and IMG Academy cleaned their clock 56-6 in their last meeting too. Plus, Bishop Sycamore has only been around for two seasons to this point, casting even more doubt about their claims of reeling in D1 prospects.

Twitter, of course, was just as confused as to why the country’s best high school team was playing a school no one had heard of before.

Oh, and apparently Bishop Sycamore also played a game on Friday night, less than 48 hours before taking on IMG Academy, endangering the health and safety of their players even more.

Just how this got past ESPN is quite unfathomable, honestly. A thorough Google search would have told them all they needed to know that Bishop Sycamore wasn’t a legitimate program to face IMG Academy.

Part of me wants to give props to Bishop Sycamore for duping ESPN and getting their school on national television, but the injury risk to their players in a meaningless game of football was not worth it in the slightest.

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