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.