Bishop Sycamore broke through in late August this year as one of the most baffling football stories of the year. However, it was not because of their success on the field.
Bishop Sycamore competed in high school football games on ESPN, and most famously lost to Florida high school football dynasty IMG 58-0. After this blowout loss, it was uncovered that Bishop Sycamore was a roster of grown men, hoping to reclaim their football dreams.
After this discovery, more information came out about the school, including the fact that the school was not even real and their campus address was a residential home, as well as their coach paying for their expenses with bounced checks and they were not even registered in the Ohio HS Athletic Association, where they were from.
Their coach Roy Johnson was soon fired, and they disbanded as a team. The governor of Ohio Mike DeWine soon called for an investigation into the program by the Ohio Department of Education. That report came out this week, and the 79-page ruling claimed that Bishop Sycamore was never a school and did not meet any of the standards to be an education facility: “There is no evidence that Bishop Sycamore High School is meeting the minimum standards for non-chartered, non-tax supported schools. Bishop Sycamore officials were given the opportunity to provide additional information to demonstrate the school’s legitimacy and compliance. They declined to do so. … Without the clarification from the school to prove its compliance, common sense leads one to the most obvious explanation: Bishop Sycamore is not a school as it purports on paper to be.”
DeWine responded to the report doubling down on these findings: “his report confirms numerous disturbing allegations regarding Bishop Sycamore. Ohio families should be able to count on the fact that our schools educate students and don’t exist in name only as a vehicle to play high school sports. When an Ohio student goes to school, they deserve a quality education to prepare them for success in the future.”
The Ohio governor now hopes that Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost can determine if there was any criminal activity going on with Bishop Sycamore that can be punishable by law.
One of the most tragic outcomes of this Bishop Sycamore saga is that they were getting clobbered by football teams with players years younger than them.
[Via]