This is the story of Bishop Sycamore High School a little-known football team that gained sudden notoriety for well not even being being a real school to get right too it.
On August 29, 2021, the game between Bishop Sycamore and IMG Academy was supposed to be the grand finale of ESPN's High School Kickoff series, a weekend of televised high school football showcases featuring top-ranked teams and college prospects. IMG Academy, a football powerhouse known for producing Division I college football players like SEC schools produce sorority girls, was set to face off against Bishop Sycamore, the game was booked by Paragon Marketing, a company that has historically partnered with ESPN for high school events, but they were unable to find a team willing to play against IMG. Desperate to fill the slot, Paragon outsourced their efforts to Prep Gridiron Logistics, run by a man named Joe Maimon, who eventually connected with Bishop Sycamore, the only team willing to take on the challenge.
The game between Bishop Sycamore and IMG Academy quickly turned into a one-sided affair. From the very beginning, it was clear that Bishop Sycamore was outmatched and overpowered by the talented and disciplined players of IMG Academy. The final score was a humiliating as a bunch of grown men were defeated on live television 58-0 by teenagers.
As the game progressed, the ESPN commentators, Anish Shroff and Tom Luginbill, began to voice their doubts about Bishop Sycamore's credentials. They revealed that ESPN had been unable to verify the claims made by Bishop Sycamore about their roster containing Division I college prospects, and they could not find any mention of Bishop Sycamore or its players in any recruiting databases. Shroff wondered how Bishop Sycamore was even booked for a nationally televised game against IMG, considered the most talented prep team in the country. Luginbill expressed concerns about the potential health and safety risks for Bishop Sycamore's players due to their apparent lack of depth and competitiveness. The commentators compared the game to a matchup between "four and five star recruits against a JV team."
It emerged that ESPN officials had green lit the broadcast despite Bishop Sycamore's failure to provide basic information about the school and the team, disregarding their most easily verifiable policy (hey see if this school is real). The team's head coach, Leroy Johnson, did not show up for a scheduled virtual production meeting, and ESPN only received a fact sheet about the school hours before the game. Several names on Bishop Sycamore's roster did not check out, raising suspicions among ESPN's production staff, but the game went ahead as scheduled. They have failed to verify that there was no physical location for the student to attend class as well as a total of zero teachers employed.
The aftermath of the Bishop Sycamore vs. IMG Academy game was filled with chaos and controversy. Bishop Sycamore's head coach, Leroy Johnson, was fired the day after the game, and founder Andre Peterson took over the operation. Peterson maintained that the operation was legitimate, but former players as well as the rest of the world have since disagreed with that decision and will forever engrave Bishop Sycamore in internet history in the form of memes for years to come.
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