Mystery surrounds Sycamore football
When Bishop Sycamore took the field in Canton on Sunday to face IMG Academy, ESPN’S announcers thought they’d be calling a game between two elite high school football teams.
It didn’t take long for it to become clear that one of those teams wasn’t what it said it was.
Bishop Sycamore – which lists Columbus as its location, though there’s no address listed on the website, and the “About Us” and “Staff ” pages on the site are blank – was overmatched from the beginning as it took on the No. 1 team in the country.
The game quickly caught national attention as it was broadcast on ESPN’S main channel. Social media was aflame with questions about how Bishop Sycamore came to be scheduled for the game, when it clearly was not fit to be playing against a team of IMG’S caliber.
Midway through the second quarter, as Bishop Sycamore trailed 30-0, commentator Anish Shroff acknowledged that ESPN hadn’t been able to find evidence to support Bishop Sycamore’s claims that they brought a roster laden with Division I talent.
“Bishop Sycamore told us they had a
“(Playing two games in three days) is against any high school rule, but they don’t have to abide by those rules not being a high school. They’re not a high school.” Tim Tyrell, Akron Archbishop Hoban athletic director and football coach
number of Division I prospects on their roster, and to be frank, a lot of that, we could not verify,” Shroff said. “They did not show up in our database, they did not show up in the databases of other recruiting services. So, OK, that’s what you’re telling us, fine, that’s how we take it in. From what we’ve seen so far, this is not a fair fight, and there’s got to be a point where you’re worried about health and safety.”
After the game, which IMG won 58-0, Shroff responded to comments on Twitter that Bishop Sycamore was the only school in Ohio willing to play IMG.
“Sorry,” Shroff wrote. “They had no business being in that game today. None. I feel bad for the kids. Player health and safety was at risk today. It was uncomfortable for anyone who watched.”
ESPN itself didn’t schedule the game, which was part of the GEICO ESPN High School Football Kickoff. Paragon Marketing Group took care of finding matchups and providing them to ESPN.
“We regret that this happened and have discussed it with Paragon, which secured the matchup and handles the majority of our high school event scheduling,” ESPN said in a statement. “They have ensured us that they will take steps to prevent this kind of situation from happening moving forward.”
Paragon president Rashid Ghazi told Awful Announcing that he wishes his company had done more due diligence on Bishop Sycamore. Ghazi also said that Paragon was unaware Bishop Sycamore had played a game on Friday night in Pennsylvania and would not have scheduled the matchup if they’d known.
Bishop Sycamore lost 19-7 to Sto-rox on Friday night before facing IMG on Sunday. Speaking on Twitter Spaces on Monday afternoon, Bishop Sycamore coach Roy Johnson said about 15 players played in both games, though he said most of them played only small portions.
Game footage from both matchups reviewed by Awful Announcing’s Ben Koo shows that players who appeared in both games played more than Johnson indicated.
“(Playing two games in three days) is against any high school rule, but they don’t have to abide by those rules not being a high school,” Akron Archbishop Hoban athletic director and football coach Tim Tyrell said. “They’re not a high school.”
In fact, it isn’t clear if Bishop Sycamore is a school at all for the 2021-22 school year.
The Ohio Department of Education lists no charter school by that name, but last year the department listed Bishop Sycamore as a “non-chartered, non-tax supported school,” a type of school that “because of truly held religious beliefs, choose to not be chartered by the State Board of Education.”
Each non-chartered, non-tax supported school must certify in a report to parents at the start of each school year that it meets the Ohio school operating standards in a report that must be filed
with the Ohio Department of Education. No one from the department’s communications office returned a telephone call Monday, and it was unclear if Bishop Sycamore filed that report.
Non-chartered, non-tax supported schools must report their students’ participation and attendance to their local school district treasurer, which for Bishop Sycamore the state lists as Columbus City Schools. Columbus schools couldn’t immediately say whether the school filed anything with it for last school year.
The state lists Bishop Sycamore’s mailing address as a post office box, and its “physical address” as 3599 Chiller Lane in Columbus — the address of Resolute Athletic Complex, an indoor sports facility near Easton Town Center.
An official there who didn’t want to be named said a football team-sized group of about 30 kids work out in the complex’s weight room and turf fields about once a month, but no school classes have ever been located at the site.
“They don’t have an actual school here,” the person said. “Not schooling. We’re just like their training facility.”
Johnson said they operate the schooling out of the facility “a few days a week.” He later said Bishop Sycamore rents the facility “once in a while.”
The complex’s contact for the school is Andre Peterson, who the state also lists as the school’s contact.
“I think he’s like the coordinator, I guess you could say,” the person from
the sports complex said. “I think he’s like the funding guy.”
A recruiting address listed online comes back to the library at Franklin University in Downtown Columbus. A person answering the phone at the library said Bishop Sycamore rented a room there last year but doesn’t anymore.
Johnson said Monday that Bishop Sycamore’s 2021-22 enrollment begins on Sept. 1 and the education will be through Excel, an online school.
In addition to the questions about the academic legitimacy of Bishop Sycamore’s program, the football aspect doesn’t appear much stronger. Since becoming a program in 2020, Bishop Sycamore has yet to win a game and has been outscored 342-49.
Bishop Sycamore is not a member of the Ohio High School Athletic Association, which requires member schools to play at least two sports in each of the fall, winter and spring seasons. OHSAA spokesman Tim Stried said OHSAA schools are allowed to play non-member schools, which can help teams fill out their schedule — as Bishop Sycamore did in July when it was added to Hoban’s schedule.
Tyrell said he and Peterson spoke in the summer about scheduling the game, and Tyrell doesn’t recall any red flags in those initial interactions. But when game week arrived, things began to feel unusual to Tyrell.
“The week of the game it was a little bit — some things were a little bit offputting, not having rosters, not having who was actually playing, that type of stuff,” Tyrell said. “But during the game, we didn’t have any issues, other than a jersey issue. They didn’t have their (light) jerseys so they had to go in the dark jersey.”
Tyrell received calls from coaches who have previously played Bishop Sycamore, as well as anonymous emails, warning him to keep an eye on the roster and the ages of Bishop Sycamore’s players, many of whom are believed to be upwards of 19 years old.
One parent, whose son was a member of the program in the summer before leaving the team, said his son was one of the younger players on the roster at 18.
But when Tyrell brought those concerns to Peterson, he was assured that what he’d been told wasn’t true.
“I trusted him and we got through the game without any incident,” Tyrell said. “... There isn’t anything negative to say about the actual game. The organization side of things leading up to the game, yes. I would second anything anyone says on that side of things about them not being organized, for sure.”
Johnson hit back Monday against the criticism of his program, getting defensive at points. He painted the program as a young, growing program that needs help to get off the ground and wants to help underprivileged young men create better lives for themselves.
But after over 90 minutes of the interview, no clear answers emerged from Johnson about how Bishop Sycamore operates, how the school hopes to get its athletes into college or how the team ended up on ESPN. Johnson openly solicited advice and guidance from reporters and others who asked questions during the conversation.
“We want to do better,” Johnson said. “All the things that you’re saying, I’m acknowledging . ... This is a request for help, wherever we can receive it from. I’m not looking at some of the things we probably should’ve looked at, like making sure we have a functional website that explains more about what we do.”
After over an hour of Johnson speaking, Peterson, whose son is in the program, jumped into the conversation.
“I’m not gonna quit,” he said. “I’ve never quit anything in my life . ... To quit would mean I’m quitting on my son, quitting on my family and quitting on these other 49 young men who are depending on me.
“... If you really care, then help. I can take criticism all day long and I totally understand it. There’s a lot of things we’ve opened ourselves up to be criticized about.”
Dispatch reporter Bill Bush contributed to this story.