ESPN was swindled by an Ohio high school. Although it sounds like a plot from Adam Sandler's movie, it actually happened in real life. ESPN aired Sunday's matchup in Canton between Bishop Sycamore and IMG Academy. This is one of the top high school football programs in America. It was an almost normal matchup. It was a matchup that seemed to be normal, but Bishop Sycamore wasn't a high school.
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The announcers at ESPN began to notice red flags as the game aired. One was that Bishop Sycamore told ESPN they had many Division I recruits just like IMG Academy. The announcers stated that they couldn't confirm whether any of the players on the Bishop Sycamore roster had been committed to any other school.
Their previous game was played two nights before, leaving no time for players to recover. So why did they create their schedule like that? If Bishop Sycamore truly had the best talent, then why did they only begin their program two years ago. It is not enough time for a football program of repute that high school players around Ohio would love to attend.
Bishop Sycamore wasn't a member the Ohio High School Athletic Association. This requires that each school field at least two teams in the fall, spring and winter to be eligible for membership. Why wouldn't they be able to field another sports team and become a member if they had enough students? Everyone involved found this a bit suspicious.
The public began to add two and two together when they looked a little further. One address was a duplex in the state and the other was Franklin University Library. Officially, Bishop Sycamore does not have an address on their website.
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*Cue Billy Mays voice*
But wait! BUT WAIT! A Delaware arrest warrant has been issued for the head coach of the football team. He is located in Ohio. According to reports, the warrant was issued for Leroy Johnson in Delaware, Ohio. It is for domestic violence cases that began July 2. Leroy Johnson, the head coach of Christians of Faith Academy, was also ordered to appear in court by a Franklin County judge for not paying back a $100,000 loan from First Merchants Bank back in 2018. Johnson took his team to LVL UP Sports Paintball Park, Grove City in 2018 when he was the head coach of Christians of Faith Academy. This was as a bonding activity. Dave Pando, the parks owner, claimed that the team played paintball with over 20,000 paintballs and four hours of staff time. The bill was over $1,000, but the money was never paid. Johnson offered a credit card to Pando, but it failed to work when he tried to use it.
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If the school isn't real and the commitments of the players aren't real, then who are these players? These are mostly junior college dropouts in the early twenties. Johnson countered with confidence in his team, saying that he believes he has an exciting, young program. However, this is not true. His team isn't young and won't grow after being exposed at this level. Johnson said that he should have made sure that the school had a website that explained more about our school. But the truth is that there are no clear answers to how Bishop Sycamore educates its athletes, how it operates, and how the school intends to get its students into college.
Johnson and his company chose the name Bishop Sycamore as their scam because it was a lot of BS.
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Paragon Marketing Group is being blamed by ESPN for the on-air catastrophe. Paragon stated that Bishop Sycamore claimed that they were an online school. This made it very difficult to confirm their roster. Paragon has encountered this problem several times before but never had to have a serious problem with it. Paragon was informed by the marketing company that the roster they gave them a month before the game was scheduled was different from the one they used on Sunday. Paragon and ESPN have been working together for more than 20 years to schedule games.
I don't know what Johnson or anyone could have said to ESPN in order to get them to show their game against the nation's top football teams live on TV. It wasn't going to turn out to be anything like a massacre. Although ESPN claimed that Bishop Sycamore had committed several Division I crimes, the public proved that it was easy to verify the information and disprove the statements. ESPN is a multibillion-dollar company with all the resources. This was not the right thing, and although ESPN would like to put blame on Paragon they are only responsible.
