Fake High School tricks ESPN

[BCR]

Anyone catch this story? Bishop Sycamore, a reported online charter school, which isn’t even chartered and has no physical address and no one is even sure it exists, somehow ended up playing IMG Academy on ESPN. They are one of the nations powerhouses. They somehow also scheduled a number of games against other top teams in the country this year. Pretty amazing story.

Some different links discussing story.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/ftw.usa...mg-academy/amp

https://www.google.com/amp/s/sports....000431265.html

https://www.google.com/amp/s/theathl...on-espn/%3famp

[Crowe Diddly]

I believe Awful Announcing may have broken the story, didn;t realize they were still around.

The fun part about stories like this is that they get weird things trending on twitter again. Today's trending blast from the near past: Manti Te'o.

[BCR]

I believe Awful Announcing may have broken the story, didn;t realize they were still around.

The fun part about stories like this is that they get weird things trending on twitter again. Today's trending blast from the near past: Manti Te'o.

I saw Manti married an Instagram model last year. Hadn’t thought of him in years and had to look if he was still in the league. I felt bad when his catfishing story broke right at the peak of his fame. Was a Latter Day Saints kid, naive, now marrying Instagram models.

That coach might end up in jail. Many kids have already played JUCO football. Not students. The topper was they played a middling Pittsburgh team in Pittsburgh and lost Friday night, then turned around and played same kids on Sunday night against a team of freakish athletes. Coach already has warrants on him for fraud. Makes me wonder wtf he was thinking? Thought he could become the next IMG and be some guru or something?

[jsearles22]

Full of Juco dropouts and non high school aged adults, they nonetheless lost to IMG 58-0. AND it was their second game in 3 days. Pretty insane shit.

[BCR]

Full of Juco dropouts and non high school aged adults, they nonetheless lost to IMG 58-0. AND it was their second game in 3 days. Pretty insane shit.

Reminded me of when I played 105lb football. We were beating everyone locally and scheduled a team called the Cleveland Chiefs. In this case, we were the ones who got killed. They rolled in on chartered buses. Half the kids were pushing 200lbs and shaving. Parents were yelling how old is that kid all game, but it was the 80s, and you just played. Came out later in year half the kids were 15 and 16 and playing against like 10/11 year olds. They gave us the forfeit win post-season. Didn’t help these kids they were older. If you stink at 18, you still can’t hang with the top 100 18 years olds in the country at 20.

[GambleBotsChafedPenis]

it's absolutely amazing that ESPN outsources this type of shit to a third party marketing company...i mean how tough is it to have a rolodex of the top 50 high school programs in the country to put on these things...those are gonna be the programs that have the top D-1 prospects, which is going to be what they are looking for...like are they really gonna draw a shitton more eyeballs by having some one-off high school program on this showcase that maybe has one guy that is going to bama?

need to check to see if any ex-caesars guys are at disney right now...this is a typical evil empire fail...

[BCR]

it's absolutely amazing that ESPN outsources this type of shit to a third party marketing company...i mean how tough is it to have a rolodex of the top 50 high school programs in the country to put on these things...those are gonna be the programs that have the top D-1 prospects, which is going to be what they are looking for...like are they really gonna draw a shitton more eyeballs by having some one-off high school program on this showcase that maybe has one guy that is going to bama?

need to check to see if any ex-caesars guys are at disney right now...this is a typical evil empire fail...

Sounds like they kind of did it on the fly recently, which is retarded all by itself as most serious programs are scheduled two years out. I follow recruiting very closely. I could match up three games off the top of my head that will be at least top prospects against top prospects. It might turn into a blowout still, but it’s men against men and they’ll match up size-wise.

Outsourcing it to some marketing group a month before the game is amazing incompetence.

This team appears to have played 8 games now in its existence and is 0-8 and been outscored by a few hundred points. How they end up matched against the top team in the country on television is unreal. Following Ohio State, I can usually name half the top 100 recruits as we are after them. Fuck a marketing firm, you can just ask a fan and they’ll tell you which teams are hubs of talent.

It made me wonder if with Covid, they were reluctant to make a schedule in advance and winged it, and this is the result. I don’t want to give ESPN any benefit of the doubt though as I hate them so badly.

[Dan Druff]

ESPN reportedly told Paragon they thought they were being scammed weeks ago when they couldn’t find information about the school. On top of that, Bishop Sycamore allegedly bailed on a conference call just a handful of days before the game. Yikes.

That's from the USA Today article.

So ESPN knew Bishop Sycamore possibly didn't exist weeks ago, and the dummies just shrugged their shoulders and let it go?

[BCR]

ESPN reportedly told Paragon they thought they were being scammed weeks ago when they couldn’t find information about the school. On top of that, Bishop Sycamore allegedly bailed on a conference call just a handful of days before the game. Yikes.

That's from the USA Today article.

So ESPN knew Bishop Sycamore possibly didn't exist weeks ago, and the dummies just shrugged their shoulders and let it go?

Yeah, for the announcers to start commenting they got rolled in the second quarter, clearly there was talk before. I mean blowouts are not uncommon. I’m watching an Ohio powerhouse team play a similar charter school from Maryland right now on replay and blowing them out 56-18 while calling off the dogs. There are all these charter schools popping up everywhere trying to become football factories. At least this Maryland team had a pedigree of a guy running it with previous success. This is happening all over the country. Guys like Deion Sanders started his own.

So when they suspected they got rolled, they likely couldn’t find a replacement this late, and common sense dictated canceling and throwing something else on, but maybe that pisses of IMG who rule prep sports in football and basketball.

Most public school programs have grown sick of the state championships going to these large Catholic schools that recruit kids from all over the state. So the charter school laws started to change at same time as the frustration, and you’ve got all these charter schools popping up, mostly black, all over the place. Some become legit football factories if they’ve got some high profile coach or ex athlete associated with it.

ESPN got conned by one who isn’t even an average small high school program talent level wise.

[Strokeofluck2020]

Watching Titletown high on Netflix about Valdosta high's controversial coach Rush Probst who you might remember from MTV's two a days. We played Valdosta in my junior year in the playoffs and they beat us 35-7 they dressed 120 players. We were beat before the game started.

[BCR]

Watching Titletown high on Netflix about Valdosta high's controversial coach Rush Probst who you might remember from MTV's two a days. We played Valdosta in my junior year in the playoffs and they beat us 35-7 they dressed 120 players. We were beat before the game started.

I remember those Valdosta teams.


Yeah, my junior year we played this Cleveland team I’m watching right now. St Edwards. Them and St Ignatius also out of Cleveland won the USA Today national title many times. It’s disheartening when you take the field against a team that overwhelming. With kids who are from all over the region while you’re playing with the same 20 kids you’ve played with since your childhood. You are used to playing really talented teams. We played the Korey Stringer/Maurice Clarrett level programs every year, but when you run into one of those recruited teams, you’re getting your head caved in. We had beaten the public schools. Those large Catholic schools from cities, forget about it.

Now with these charter schools.

I was over in Pennsylvania like 6 or 7 years ago and my buddies kid was playing for some small farm school. He was like “come catch Jake play.” I am always up for a high school game, so I went.

I had never heard of the team. He hadn’t either. They were out of Philly, like almost 5 hours from western PA.

They were a small school with only 600 students. Before the game I’m googling them and see this description.


Imhotep Institute Charter High School is a public charter high school located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1998 to offer an African-centered education that emphasizes STEM subjects.[1]

I knew the farm boys were in trouble. It was just boys against men. They had like 8 boys going division 1, three or four dudes who made the NFL for a cup of coffee. This was a single A farm school who would get rolled by a hundred teams within a half hour playing against this team of men.

Making a high school schedule is tough with conferences breaking down and charter schools becoming more popular. Your AD better be a sports guy and not some guy who was an assistant principal coaching 3rd grade girls soccer last year they just gave the job to, or you end up scheduling someone you have no business on the field with and kids are going to get hurt.

[Strokeofluck2020]

This series is jumping into the illegal recruiting especially of Jake Garcia who along with his dad moved to Valdosta from California a week before the season started last year. He is a USC committ.

[BCR]

This series is jumping into the illegal recruiting especially of Jake Garcia who along with his dad moved to Valdosta from California a week before the season started last year. He is a USC committ.

I saw it available last night, but was too tired to get into it. High school football is so crazy. Your state, on a per capita basis, has the most talent in the US. Obviously Florida and Texas and CA produce more pros, but have way bigger populations. Recruiting kids from CA into GA is next level cheating.

The thing is, for all those athletes, how many panned out at the next level?

Like Ted Ginn St at Glenville in Cleveland pumped out Troy Smith, Ted Ginn Jt, Donte Whitner. Johnathon Newsome, Antuan Moldner, Willie Henry, Jermale Hines, Marshon Lattimore, Pierre Woods, and a half dozen other pros all in a decade. It was wonderful to see them lay it on some Catholic schools.

I can’t recall any of those Valdosta kids making it big at the highest level. Looking through alumni, some guys made it to the NFL, but not memorable ones. I’m wondering if I’m forgetting some all pros. Georgia produces so many pros, I am surprised they didn’t produce more.

[Strokeofluck2020]

If you are truly into high school football stories BCR checkout Jeremy Williams who was our QB1. He went on to play Safety at. Memphis and was nicknamed the Georgia Assain. He went on to start coaching high school eventually getting the head coach job at a small rural Greenville High. He was diagnosed with ALS and kept coaching. ABC's home Makeover knocked down his old house and rebuilt a new handicap accessible home for him and his son Jacob who has spina bifida. Jeremy is a inspiration to me. The day after my stroke he called me and Parks you are a. Cherokee and we dont quit. They made a movie about him and i was blessed to go to the premier at the Rialto in Atlanta and was able to have a meal with Kenarious Gates who went on to play for my Dawgs. Another player there was NBA player Kendal Caldwell Pope who played for Jeremy. The name of the movie is Season of a lifetime. BCR will you or someone else please post the trailers for the movie in this thread from YouTube? I don't know how to do it.

[BCR]

There you go.

Fuck, I just said a few weeks ago on here in that Marfiotti thread pretty much only one thing scares me, ALS. I don’t think I could see it through. I went seven years with cancer, but ALS scares me in a way I’d struggle to not eat a bullet. I admire anyone who can see it through.

[Strokeofluck2020]

Thanks for posting it. Jeremy is a man of tremendous faith. I actually went on a double date with him and his wife to our senior prom. Jennifer has beaten breast cancer since the movie was made. Jeremy can now only communicate by using his eyes to control some computer thing. The grey headed man in the trailer was our head coach Howard "Buzz" Busby who was a hardass who turned around our whole program and we went on to tie for a state championship in 1991. Buzz win like 4 state titles in 3 different states. I believe there are more trailers for the movie. I was interviewed 3 times for the movie but didn't make it on the final cut. I traveled all over the state watching his last season coaching.

[Texter]

High school football in TX is nuts...$70 million for the new stadium in my kids district.

Could have easily spent a 3rd of that and it would still have been nice...shady how they tie the stadium to new elementary schools in a bond package to get votes.

[BCR]

Embedded Tweet

[BCR]

My buddy in Columbus said they interviewed a kid who came to play last year. This kid was a legit junior, and they were mostly kids from like New York. Most around 20. They put the kids up in a hotel, but the coach bounced the checks to the hotel, so they couldn’t eat, and were shoplifting food from Walmart and Meijer every day. They were also promised an education to those who weren’t already 20 and went to some JUCO, which consisted of exactly one trip where the coach dropped them at a public library. Kid returned home, and had to repeat his entire junior year as he obviously wasn’t educated.

For the life of me I still don’t get this scam. I have to imagine when it comes out, they’ll have gotten some type of grants from the government towards charter schools and pocketed it. Why you’d recruit 20 year old players who suck when there is legit 200 schools in Ohio alone that would kill this team makes little sense without a financial motive. This isn’t some small shitty college who gets a million bucks to get their heads caved in by Bama.


I have to think he was looking for kids with no options who had once played even if they sucked for some federal or state money. I truly can’t think of any other reason to pull this scam.