The Truth About Bishop Sycamore

There were a lot of questions on how the game between IMG Academy and Bishop Sycamore was even scheduled and whether Bishop Sycamore exists.

While IMG won the game 58-0, ESPN and Paragon, the company that works to schedule and deliver high school games to ESPN, both said that they were not aware that Bishop Sycamore apparently played a game on Friday night, and didn’t have the number of highly recruited prospects that they claimed to have had when the game was scheduled.

During the broadcast, play-by-play announcer Anish Shroff and color analyst Tom Luginbill questioned Bishop Sycamore’s legitimacy on air. They were also suspicious of the information about the team and its players, including rosters, were hard to come by.

In a statement, ESPN said, “We regret that this happened and have discussed it with Paragon, which secured the matchup and handles the majority of our high school event handling. 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 had he known that Bishop Sycamore played a game on Friday, he would have cancelled their game against IMG.

A Paragon spokesman told The Columbus Dispatch that the roster they received a month prior to the game was different than the one in-game. The spokesman added that the company will have to check rosters more carefully in the days leading up to the game. The Dispatch reported that the company currently checks on coaching staffs, cross-checks rosters with recruiting rankings and looks at the schedules from the current and previous seasons.

Leroy Johnson, the former head coach of Bishop Sycamore, said that about 15 players played in both games, though he said that most played in small amounts.

While Bishop Sycamore is not listed as a charter school by the Ohio Department of Education, Andre Peterson, the founder and director of the school, said that the school has an academic component. However, the school’s physical address is listed as a recreation center in Columbus.

While the ODE doesn’t list them as a charter school under the name Bishop Sycamore, they did last year as a “non-chartered, non-tax supported school.”

To be considered a “non-chartered, non-tax supported school,” they must be formed around “truly hard religious beliefs” and submit paperwork demonstrating an observance to minimum standards, including curriculum, attendance, and a school building up to standards.

Bishop Sycamore reported an attendance of just three (3) students during the previous school year, with a bell schedule beginning at 7:10 AM and ending at 3:05 PM. The only class that was offered to students there was a religious class taught by Johnson. They did not list the school at all for the 2022 school year. Their physical location, practice facilities, and roster eligibility was not verified.

Ohio governor Mike DeWine tweeted about his concern “by the recent reports and questions raised about Bishop Sycamore” and said that he has asked the state education department to make sure that the school was in compliance with Ohio law and “to ensure the school is providing the educational opportunities Ohio students deserve.” DeWine called for an investigation into Bishop Sycamore as their opponents pulled out of their games, including DC-area powerhouse DeMatha, Texas’s Duncanville, and Pennsylvania’s Johnston Central.

Bishop Sycamore played in six games last season, losing all six by a score margin of 342-49 since starting their program in 2020. High school football often sees lots of blowout games between unequally-matched teams, but it is rare to see one of those end up as one of the few high school games featured on ESPN’s main network.

During the game, the broadcasters commented: “It’s very, very clear that they can’t match up.” “No, they can’t match up. And you already saw Trillian Harris, their quarterback, get dinged up. And the last thing you want is to have this showcase on national TV. …The point to finish here is, you look at IMG and this is the most talented prep team in the country. Bishop Sycamore told us they had a number of Division I prospects on their roster, and to be frank, a lot of that, we could not verify. They did not show up in our database, they did not show up in the databases of other recruiting services. So, okay, 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.

“I already am worried about it. I think this could be potentially be dangerous given the circumstances and the mismatch that we have here. And quite honestly, Bishop Sycamore doesn’t have not only the front-line players, but they don’t have the depth in case something were to happen to their roster with a kid or two here throughout the remaining two quarters of this football game.”

After IMG scored 23 points in the 1st quarter, the event organizers spoke to Bishop Sycamore head coach Leroy Johnson about calling the game, but refused. There was also the talks on implementing a running clock when the game was already out of reach. Johnson refused on that too. Johnson did not show up for a scheduled virtual production meeting two days before this game.

It’s not surprising from Bishop Sycamore, given the margin of losses they suffered in 2020, including a 56-6 loss to IMG. That season, they scored 42 points and allowed 227. Clearly, they were not a good team last year, and it should not be expected that they would be good this year. Also, they played a game two days prior to the IMG game against Sto-Rox just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a 19-7 loss. Given that they’re a high school team, there is no way that they should be playing on very short rest.

In both the Sto-Rox game and the IMG game, both the news and the broadcast name Trillian Harris as the starting QB for Bishop Sycamore. Even if he switched numbers between games, he had the same red facemask. This is an indication of another thing viewers saw: Bishop Sycamore may have mismatched helmets and possibly not enough helmets for their entire team.

This could be why their players were sharing helmets, which sparks the doubts on if they are really a high school. Their roster was also reported to be very small: Between 30 and 35 players. They also played two players who, hours before the game, just flown from Europe. They were not put in COVID protocol and were not coached. They were basically fed to the wolves.

In that same game, Bishop Sycamore did not have any mouth guards and had to buy them locally right before kickoff. This could meant that most of the team did not have any shaped or boiled mouth guards for the game. This is a significant issue.

Plus, during the rain delay of the IMG game, Leroy Johnson challenged his players to fight him in the locker room. When nobody decided that it was in their best interest to do so, Johnson called them “fake thugs.”

Another one of their games, where they played against Archbishop Hoban, they lost 58-0. You can find the game on YouTube, and you should note the differences between the two teams. Preparation, discipline, talent, size, uniform quantity, pretty much everything. Bishop Sycamore was outmatched in every single possible way.

Hoban’s athletic director and football coach Tim Tyrell said, “(Playing two games in three days) is against any high school rule, but they don’t have to abide by the rules not being a high school. They’re not a high school.” Former athletes at Bishop Sycamore also said that Johnson’s play calls all came from the EA Madden NFL video games.

Also, ESPN officials gave the green light for the broadcast despite Bishop Sycamore providing little information about the school. ESPN only got a fact sheet of Bishop Sycamore hours before the game.

Several members of ESPN’s production team said that something was wrong when several names on Bishop Sycamore’s roster didn’t match, meaning that ESPN could not verify who any of their players were in their scouting databases. At least one player was using a fake name and lied about his recruiting, and most were JUCO dropouts of age 19 or older.

When ESPN televises high school games, schools would put together rosters, headshots, and fact sheets about the players in their high school.

Bishop Sycamore did not do that, according to production members. Production staffers received a roster that listed 10 players with D1 scholarship offers, but according to two people who reviewed it, it was filled with lots of mistakes. Many of the offers could not be verified, and some appeared to not be on the team. When the game started, Bishop Sycamore’s players’ jersey numbers did not match the printed roster.

ESPN claimed that they sounded the alarm to Paragon weeks in advance when they could not learn anything about Bishop Sycamore’s roster, depth chart, or any information about the school. Bishop Sycamore allegedly bailed on a conference call with ESPN just days before the game before giving them a fact sheet of information on Sunday, falsely claiming the D1 offers from players on their team from power programs.

Keep in mind that while Paragon booked the game, they were unable to find a team willing to play IMG, so they reached out to someone by the name of Joe Maimone, who runs Prep Gridiron Logistics. Maimone says that the company doesn’t make money, he plays matchmaker to top teams looking to have out-of-state games scheduled, and Bishop Sycamore was the only one willing to play.

Following the game, Maimone, under the Prep Gridiron Logistics Twitter account, became extremely active on Twitter defending the game. There were also message board accounts using very similar language and reasoning in an effort to prop up the legitimacy of Bishop Sycamore as a school and as a football program. The Prep Gridiron Logistics website stated this:

MEMBER PROGRAMS SEEKING 2021 GAMES

Good Counsel MD, St. Frances MD, Milton GA, IMG Academy FL, St. John’s College DC, Don Bosco Prep NJ, Archbishop Hoban OH, Archbishop Moeller OH, St. John Bosco CA, St. Joseph Prep PA, LaSalle OH, Mater Dei CA, Clearwater Academy FL, Life Christian VA, Deerfield Beach FL, Servite CA, Catholic LA, Buford GA, Duncanville TX, American Heritage FL, Bergen Catholic NJ, St. Joseph Regional NJ, DeMatha Catholic MD, Elder OH, Bishop Sycamore OH, Auburn AL, St. Thomas Aquinas FL, Oscar Smith VA

PGL also announced a relationship with FloSports that will see many of these teams listed play each other throughout the season, with the games streaming on FloSports.

FloSports later took Bishop Sycamore off their schedule. However, the question still remained about the relationship between Bishop Sycamore and PGL.

PGL has continued to defend Bishop Sycamore, including on the player safety issues from playing multiple games in two days, which they didn’t provide a defense too. So, you may think that there would be some pause for schools and broadcast partners of PGL. It may be happening to some degree, but only specifically with Bishop Sycamore.

Earlier, PGL and FloSports announced a four-year partnership to stream 25-30 games per year: “‘Prep Gridiron Logistics (“PGL”), the No. 1 high school football promoter in America, is partnering with FloSports, a leading sports streaming and original content network, to bring elite high school football games to audiences around the world. The four-year deal will feature a minimum of 100 games and hundreds of hours of live programming each Fall through 2024 on FloSports’ award-winning digital platform.”

Something else of note is that in that list of games, Bishop Sycamore appeared twice, although the schedule was subject to change. However, Bishop Sycamore will not appear on FloSports as intended, as FloSports pulled Bishop Sycamore’s upcoming games from programming schedule until questions concerning the integrity of the “program” are resolved. They also said that they addressed their concern with PGL, which licensed games to them. They have taken steps to avoid incidents like these for future games.

Interestingly from what they said, PGL licensed the high school football games to FloSports, indicating that PGL has some broadcast rights to these games, which was obtained from the schools. The four-year deal is off to a rocky start, given what was shown so far in the first season.

Everyone partnered with PGL that Awful Announcing mentioned in PGL’s role in scheduling and the financial model was secretive on this regard. Online, PGL and Maimone seem to be having an extreme reputation on high school football circles, with lots of it on message board posting.

PGL claims to be a database to help schools find games, but it seems to minimize the actual role that the company plays, given the FloSports comment that PGL “licensed the games” to them along with the multi-year partnership.

The reason why the other schools didn’t really respond in the consideration of explanations, cancellations, etc. is because they are locked into broadcast contracts. One person said that the reason ADs are not cancelling games is because of said signed contracts.

When asked about the Bishop Sycamore-IMG game, Paragon said that the two schools verbally agreed to play each other in May. PGL recommended Bishop Sycamore but was not involved in contracting or organizing the game. Sometimes, PGL may schedule a matchup that Paragon picks up for TV. They are usually in the business of helping teams find national matchups not actually organizing the games.

Paragon has also said that they have never worked with Bishop Sycamore in the past nor do they have plans to do so in the future. When asked if they were aware of accusations made towards the program of the coach’s history at other schools, Paragon said that they were not.

When all this broke through, Paragon CEO Rashid Ghazi took responsibility for the booking of the Bishop Sycamore-IMG game, possibly in an effort to shield ESPN from the blame. However, PGL tried to defend Bishop Sycamore and the business model behind them, often from a business perspective.

Maimone is apparently behind several message board posts under the guise of “Jersey Flyer,” an account claiming Prep Gridiron Logistics.

He made the posts on Yappi.com, a statewide high school football forum for the state of Ohio. He has even shown a level of arrogance to where he thinks he was “won” by Bishop Sycamore after all the exposure.

While what he was doing is not illegal, it was very, very shady. The way he acted and gave out info didn’t help matters. And there was one response that stood out in terms of what PGL is deeming a financial success: “I’m currently 3/4 in similar situations. And I’m not afraid if my batting average drops to .600. I have way more to gain than lose.” Notice something fishy here? Here’s another one: “I’m obviously a risk-taker, especially when I feel I have absolutely nothing to lose. I’ve taken similar risks in the past with fledgling programs like St Frances MD, Life Christian VA, and USA Academy AL. I’m batting .667 right now.”

Those two posts seem to be referring to PGL’s involvement with schools like Bishop Sycamore and the business model used to book them up against prep school powerhouses around the country for profit.

Schools like IMG have a hard time finding opponents who would be wanting to (possibly) get beat to a pulp by these highly talented programs. But much like when an FCS school schedules an FBS powerhouse in college football, there is something to be said for the visibility that comes with scheduling these kinds of games, such as TV and national exposure, not to mention the benefits of it financially. So, a promoter like PGL, which also has their own streaming deals, can step up and broker the arrangement between the two teams and offer a cut of the streaming profits to either side of the two schools. They would also require the major schools to pay certain fees in order for the smaller school to travel and play the game. Those fees often were between $3,000 and $10,000 but one such case even rose to as high as $32,000.

Companies like PGL will go on to hype up these new or unknown teams, not only to opponents, but also to promotional mediators and their media partners. They are able to get them on schedules of the most dominant prep schools and private football programs in the country, then broker much-needed travel funds to help pay for their client schools to travel. On paper, the unknown teams will become known quantities by playing these games and raising their profiles. And hopefully, the cycle would begin one day with the once-unknown school now being able to draw interest as a notable football program.

This isn’t just a model that works for PGL. Other promoters have used it to their advantage too. In the case of Beacon Hill HomeSchool, the school has been going across the country to take on some of the best schools in the nation. However, they are not affiliated with PGL. Furthermore, Beacon Hill, who lost 66-0 to Choctaw in their game, there is no evidence of them existing before this game and the “school” does not exist according to the Virginia Department of Education.

The model has worked for those in a position to make money off of it, as shown in the message board, but if PGL is batting .600 or .667, the questions come at the schools that were “whiffs.” So, what happened? One example is with Ultimate Student-Athlete Academy (USAA).

USAA was seemingly created in 2020 in Coosada, Alabama by Dustin DeVaughn. Per a PrepGridiron.com Q&A in January 2020, USAA “expected to build a 19,000 square foot football facility and has recently announced former Colquitt and Hoover head coach, Rush Propst, to lead the program.” Propst was the head coach of an MTV series titled Two-A-Days and an upcoming Netflix series Titletown High. However, he has had a controversial coaching history that included accusations of head-butting a player, giving “pills” to his players, and illegal recruiting tactics, which involved soliciting money to pay their living expenses.

While USAA had big-time plans for their 2020 season, with a schedule featuring some of the biggest prep schools in the nation, which included Our Lady of Good Counsel (MD), St. Peter’s Prep (NJ), St. Frances (MD), and IMG Academy, they also announced plans to build a stadium and fieldhouse/football operations in Coosada. One part of it was because of the efforts of their game promoter, Joe Maimone of PGL.

However, DeVaughn was coy when he was asked who was involved in the school funding. The Montgomery Advertiser reported that tuition at USAA was “13,750 tops” and that the school was going to cost between $13M and $14M. They added, “DeVaughn did not reveal any of the school’s corporate sponsors, but said there were upcoming announcements ‘that will knock your socks off.’ He also didn’t reveal any investors, saying that ‘private investors are private for a reason.’” The fact that he didn’t reveal any corporate sponsors or investors sounds shady.

Propst, however, left his post after just two months over a buyout clause and his concerns over the school’s schedule and facilities. AL.com interviewed him, where he revealed that he was extremely concerned about the school’s ability to compete at the level they were attempting to do:

We’re less than six months away from an Aug. 22 first game with a schedule [DeVaughn] put together. I didn’t put the schedule together. He put the schedule together. That was a problem, too. I don’t know a football coach in America—do you know of one?—who doesn’t control his schedule. In high school football, usually the head football coach does. I’ve never known of anyone who didn’t have control of their own schedule.

With that, you throw in [playing] IMG and St. Frances and Good Counsel and some of these schools, and you don’t even have a building to go to work in? That’s tough sledding.

The school hired a new head coach after Propst left, but things dried up quickly after that. They have not made a tweet on Twitter since March 14th, 2020, where their tweet was related to COVID and focused on a discounted tuition rate for those who still wanted to enroll to the school’s online education program.

However, a message board post by Severino on PrepGridiron.com implied that not only was the school not going to play on their planned football schedule, but that the school itself actually never existed to begin with: “No school. No teachers. No facilities. No online classes. No proof of life. No use of Alabama State University facilities. No use of Alabama State University stadium. No 2020 football season. Kenyatta Watson, do your Twitter thing. Dusty DeVaughn, stay silent. There’s a reason for that. Parents, contact an attorney. Watch out for the fakes!”

And when many jump to the post, one commenter going by the name of “GardenStateBaller” defended the program and talked from a place of involvement with it.

When you look back at the similar-sounding name to Jersey Flyer, it can be implied that this too was Maimone. When it was clear that USAA was not going to play, GardenStateBaller removed their posts from the thread, and now only responses and quotes from other posters remain.

Here, Bishop Sycamore was not the first school to take this shady route and probably won’t be the last. And given the spotlight that this situation has put on companies like PGL, it makes these kinds of situations much harder to broker. And even if they are “batting .600,” the ones that anyone is paying attention to are the ones that were big misses, emphasized by the misses putting a stain on the well-being, safety, and health of young men in a position to take advantage of and profited off of.

Even so, two former Bishop Sycamore players, who wished to remain anonymous, exposed his wrongdoings.

The student athletes didn’t start school until months after enrolling in August. Johnson said that they would be having classes at Franklin University.

They were told that they were going to practice at Ohio State University’s facilities, but ended up practicing outside the apartment complex, and there were Ohio State students living there. Later, they couldn’t practice when it was not game day, when practice was on the mornings of the games.

There were a lot of fights in practice as well. Even if Johnson could possibly say, “It’s a brotherhood,” what really is a brotherhood if no one is getting along? Also, there was a homeless person who tried to break into Johnson’s car. The players were supposed to practice, but Johnson authorized his players to beat up the homeless guy. The practice was cancelled because of that.

Bishop Sycamore didn’t even have athletic trainers. One of the two players in the interview was hurt early in the season and played hurt the majority of the season because there were no athletic trainers. So, they sought help from one of the assistant coaches. Even when playing back-to-back games, it felt like there was no time to recover.

After the IMG game, one of the coaches called the team and said that one of the players caught COVID. They still went on to schedule games after that, risking their health. They couldn’t find any more games, so the season was over. Johnson even lied about being in touch with coaches from other colleges, as the players did not hear from him.

One player in the interview mentioned about the eating, “The eating there was crazy. We probably ate one hot dog every two days.” They basically had to run to the store to get food. The first player said that he remembers that one of the players had about $2,000 and had nothing left in his bank account because they could not eat. The second player mentioned that the food they ate was “worse than prison food.” He said that the staff fed them tuna salad on Sundays and put them on sandwiches on Wednesdays.

All in all, Johnson lied to his players and has practically scammed them.

There was even a GoFundMe about Bishop Sycamore to help fund the “program” earlier in the season. While they set the goal to $20,000, they made only $140. The description of the campaign is as follows, unedited from the original:

We are Bishop Sycamore a new football program getting established in Columbus Ohio. We play a national schedule which is ranked 4th in the nation. We have gather young men from all over the country in the pursuit of a similar goal. We currently need your assistant with helping these young men achieve their goals and inspire other young men to do the same. It takes a community to raise a child please be that community and help these young men! Please help us with funding team meals, travel expenses and equipment cost.

check us out on Instagram and twitter: @_Bishopfootball

There’s a lot of shadiness here, but there is one thing that is true: Bishop Sycamore indeed had the 4th-toughest schedule in the nation, according to MaxPreps. They had multiple games scheduled against various powerhouses across the nation.

The game against Sto-Rox suggested that Bishop Sycamore might not have an away white jersey, as both teams played in black, which made it hard for spectators and even the players to tell the teams apart.

The issues go beyond this game, even dating back to 2019. Johnson founded Bishop Sycamore in 2019, when he reached out to officials at a local school, YouthBuild Columbus, as a possible partner. They would bring new students—all football players—to the school, providing them with an education. A memorandum of understanding was drafted ahead of the 2019 school year.

But things would go sideways quickly.

The first sign of trouble was when YouthBuild learned that the players were evicted from where they were staying, per Edmund Brown, a lawyer for YouthBuild. YouthBuild’s executive director, Leigh Ann King, said that the school tried to find homes for some of the players afterward.

At the same time, Brown said, YouthBuild received an invoice from an Ohio apparel company looking for a payment of around $6,000 for uniforms and equipment that Bishop Sycamore ordered. However, YouthBuild’s Board of Governors did not approve the cost, later cutting ties with Bishop Sycamore before the memorandum was signed.

YouthBuild hired Brown after Bishop Sycamore continued referencing their affiliation to YouthBuild online, even on MaxPreps. According to a cease-and-desist letter that Brown sent to Bishop Sycamore in February, YouthBuild informed the state attorney general and the police department of their “fraudulent” activities.

There was even paperwork for Bishop Sycamore describing a partnership with two organizations: Advancing Science Worldwide and the Innovation Science and Education Foundation. However, Bishop Sycamore’s description of ASW in their ODE submission appears to be copied and pasted from the “About Us” section of ASW’s website.

Back in 2019, Bishop Sycamore was kicked out of a private tournament, with their game against Mainland of Florida cancelled, because of a “breach of contract,” failing to provide a full roster ahead of the deadline and did not book hotel accommodations within the 30-day window after signing the contract. Bishop Sycamore was also scheduled to play against Point Pleasant in West Virginia, but Point Pleasant cancelled the game after allegedly finding multiple players on Bishop Sycamore’s roster over the age of 18.

Johnson, the organization’s founder, athletic director, and head football coach, came under heavy fire as it revealed there was an active arrest warrant for him related to “fraudulent misrepresentation, conversion, and unjust enrichment.” He also faces a civil lawsuit filed by ARN Hospitality, claiming that he owes them $110,685 for not paying any portion of the bill from the hotel where the players were staying at. He faces similar lawsuits for failure to pay from a busing company and a football helmet manufacturer. Johnson has also taken out a loan of $100,000, but he never repaid the bank.

That was not the first time Johnson was associated with that has had trouble. When he served as the spokesman of Christians of Faith Academy in 2018, another football-focused school, the school had its recognition revoked by the ODE because it was not a functioning school.

When talking about the school, Johnson said that the school was founded by ministers, that students pray before the games and that school infuses life lessons with biblical themes. However, it still remains unclear if Bishop Sycamore is an actual school or not. But an argument on why it may not be is that their website is an empty WordPress page.

They also have a domain name ending in .org instead of .edu, with the school website being www.bishopsycamore.org. The website was once a blog, where their last post before the site became a blank page was on May 21, explaining how to catch a college recruiter’s attention on social media. The About Us section was blank.

Those issues are further emphasized by the different high school football message boards with serious accusations about the school, as well as a feature about Leroy Johnson, which alleged fraud and mismanagement, along with classes not taking place.

Football Scoop also pointed out that Jay Richardson, a former Ohio State and NFL veteran who currently works as an analyst for WSYX, a Columbus, Ohio ABC affiliate, along with Johnson, are defendants in two cases accusing them of unpaid loans for $100,000.

Multiple businesses and other private individuals are threatening lawsuits against Johnson because of accusations of unpaid bills for services, he said. And because of that, Johnson also added that he and his attorneys are assembling a lawsuit against the AME Church in the hopes that he would clear his debts and his name.

In a November 2018 Franklin County, Ohio filing, First Merchants Bank sued Johnson, Richardson, and others for $100,000 over various types of fraud. That case led to an August 27th decision granting part of First Merchants Bank’s motion for summary judgment. A highlight cited them for fraudulent misrepresentation:

Specifically, Defendants have admitted: they made representations to the Bank in the form of having authority to enter into and execute on behalf of the Church a loan of $100,000; these representations were material to the Bank in issuing the loan; they know these representations were false; they intended the Bank to rely on these representations; this reliance by the Bank was justified; and they have not made any payments on the loan resulting in injury to the Bank. Accordingly, the Group, Richardson and Johnson have engaged in fraudulent misrepresentation.

Some other things to know about Bishop Sycamore as seen on a 45-page thread on Yappi.com:

• This is not the first time they played two games over one weekend.

• Several of their players were JUCO dropouts.

• One of their players, whose graduation class was in 2020, reported over two dozen fake offers. When he showed up once to a 7v7 tryout, he used a fake ID. His HUDL page is also a fake.

• The team has had significant uniform and transportation issues.

• The “school’s” reputation has long been in question.

• The players were all evicted from their housing, leading to their personal credit being affected.

One of the parents of a former player of Bishop Sycamore added that housing has been an issue for the team, where players were evicted from their apartment housing or asked to leave hotels because of lack of payment. A full legal roundup was posted on a message board.

Johnson was fired on August 31st, 2021, in the aftermath of the IMG game, while Andre Peterson, the founder of Bishop Sycamore, took over the operation.

Peterson said that the operation was legitimate, noting he enrolled his own son into the school. However, former players for Johnson said, “He’s never gonna leave that program. He might say he’s not taking the coaching job. He might lie to make the public get off his back. But Roy is not gonna get out of that. He’s gonna be in their ears at all times.”

Basically, Peterson used the IMG game as an “excuse” to fire Johnson to get the heat off of him and Johnson.

Since 2018, Bishop Sycamore has used multiple fake addresses, multiple fake names, fraudulently attached themselves to actual charitable entities without the knowledge or permission of the entities, and then created said fake high school name to attach themselves to, before giving it up and then going back to calling themselves Bishop Sycamore using a fake address.

There has also never been a person named “Bishop Sycamore.”

Their players were all post-graduates above the age of 18, which is a reason why the Ohio High School Athletic Association and any other certifying body for high school sports did not certify them. They also lied about their players, facilities, and D1 offers. They barely had enough players to cover both offense and defense, and they didn’t have enough uniforms, equipment, and helmets for the players, and even some of their players were forced to share helmets.

Johnson responded to the criticism of his program, painting Bishop Sycamore as a young and growing program needing help to get off the ground and want to help underprivileged young men creating better lives for themselves.

But after over 90 minutes of the interview, there were no clear answers from Johnson about how Bishop Sycamore operates, how they hope to get their athletes to college or how they ended up on ESPN. He openly lobbied advice and guidance from reporters and others who asked questions during the conversation.

Johnson also claimed that Bishop Sycamore had ties to the Third District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) had had plans to build a “massive campus.” He was also a business development director for the Richard Allen Group, the financial arm of the AME. He later used the Christians of Faith Academy and the church’s name during his attempts to sell life insurance.

However, the AME denied having connections to the school, but an investigation by The Columbus Dispatch found a track record of emails and bank statements documenting the connections between the AME and the school, initially established in an attempt to provide opportunities to disadvantaged youth. The ties between the AME and Bishop Sycamore were severed by Fall 2018.

And while most of their student-athletes were older than high school age, even with some at age 20 and 21, and that there was no real campus, while being housed in a hotel for five months, with the only schooling being at a public library, COF Academy also struggled to maintain coaching as 80% of the coaching staff quit during the season and the team was left with just two coaches and one mother of a player. The players were also not provided with food and some resorted to stealing from supermarkets to eat.

One of the two players spent $1,500 he earned working to pay for food before having to steal, while the other dropped from 205 lbs. to 180 while with Bishop Sycamore. The pregame meal for the IMG game was sandwiches and oranges, and there were leftovers from the Sto-Rox game which went visibly moldy.

One of the two players spent $1,500 he earned working to pay for food before having to steal, while the other dropped from 205 lbs. to 180 while with Bishop Sycamore. The pregame meal for the IMG game was sandwiches and oranges, and there were leftovers from the Sto-Rox game which went visibly moldy.

From here, Bishop Sycamore is not a school, has no education system, has an unknown player status, does not have a home stadium, and has an empty WordPress page for a website. Even more, they have a phone line leading to a full voicemail box that dates back to when they were COF Academy.

That was in 2018. That year, they finished 1-11, with their only win being against Brother Rice in Michigan. Their head coach changed his phone number in September, and then left after the season in November. They were no longer considered an academic institution in mid-September. That led to them having one of their games cancelled as early as September 22nd, against Lakewood-St. Edward. They lied about holding classes. Nobody received an official roster from the school.

With Lakewood-St. Edwards, their athletics director, Kevin Hickman, declined to address the scheduling of COF Academy or why they cancelled the game. When he was asked on why he was unable to speak on that regard, he disconnected the call.

COF Academy had a graphical design of what they planned to do with the school back in February 2018. The question is where they would get the money from for the design and structure.

They even had a Twitter feed that barely reported on anything that they were doing. The last time they posted something was in March 2019, around the time when the dark truth of them was long exposed. The way they responded to the criticism was extremely defensive in nature and they deflected the blame towards AME that had nothing to do with them.

That’s not how schools normally react to school criticism. Even today, on another Twitter feed, Bishop Sycamore was desperately searching for players, tweeting at several football players with just two words towards them: “dm us.” High school football does not need to be grown by way of shady recruiting tactics. That’s not how it works.

Back to COF Academy. Their list of players that they allegedly had during their lone season of play included Mario Agyen, their starting running back that season. His graduating class says that it was in 2019, but when looking at his HUDL page, it has highlights saying that his sophomore season was in 2015, which would have made him overage in 2018.

Unless he got held back a year, COF Academy was already using ineligible players that season, which is against the rules in high school athletics. It also would have made the lack of education reasonable because they were not high schoolers.

The same can be said for linebacker Marcus Manning. He had highlights on his HUDL page dating back to 2015. Unless if he was a freshman that season, meaning that if he was a varsity player and was playing at varsity levels, that would still make him ineligible for 2018.

From here, Bishop Sycamore was using players past their high school graduation to play high school football against elite high school teams. There was even a press conference on Twitter where one of their players said he was 23.

Another thing about COF Academy: One of their assistant coaches, Jeff Greene, resigned from his position because the “school” wasn’t paying him.

This rises more questions: How many of the other coaches were not getting paid for their coaching? Could it be the reason why Leroy Johnson was the head coach of Bishop Sycamore?

The connections between Bishop Sycamore and COF Academy have are that both used overage players, both had very vague plans for education and learning, both promised recruiting into D1 schools by going to their program, and both played elite high schools.

And apparently, one “college” had connections to where Bishop Sycamore’s players were “recruited” to: RPA College. Their website, www.rpacollege.org, couldn’t claim a .edu domain name for some reason, but chances are it could be the same reason why Bishop Sycamore couldn’t claim a .edu domain name for their website. The main video on their website is vague. Under the Academics tab, it says this:

RPA has mastered the art of value added offerings. With strategic partnerships, all students (traditional or working class), athletes and their families can now enjoy the luxuries of education at their pace. With a focus on providing students with practical outcomes that lead to true financial and life long benefits, RPA college is the number 1 choice for all things educational and career.

However, when clicking on the “Traditional Community College” dropdown, the list on the types of Degrees they offer are blank, and there is just a big red “Apply Now” button. However, upon further looking, when you look beyond the blank space, say, you hit Ctrl+A, there is actually some text, where they say they offer Degrees in Bible and Theology, Business Administration, Construction, Early Childhood Development, Music, Quality Assurance, and Sports Management, and even say that their programs are “transferable.” And when clicking on the “Traditional 4 year” dropdown, while they say they give Undergraduate and Master’s Degree options, both links lead to the page of Arlington Baptist University. So, from here, it can be assumed that RPA College is not a real college.

They even said that they “partnered” with an “accredited four-year university” for educational purposes. However, if a college is “partnered,” with said “accredited four-year university,” they should be able to name the university.

What they are doing is linking the university in question without naming the university. RPA’s BBB rating shows that it is not BBB accredited, per BBB.org, and BBB even added that RPA “suggests that the business is a non-profit when in fact it is not.”

RPA even said, “RPA college partnered with #1 Global Fitness Education Provider in health and fitness education, personal training certification, advanced specializations and evidence-based solutions.” However, there is no link to the provider.

Another piece of evidence is in their “Education” page. The video featured in the page has just a one-shot of the college founder stumbling through the script. What is also noticeable is that there is no B-roll of the classrooms, the students, the faculty, anything.

Further evidence for that is that their “Football” and “Players” tabs seem to be blank, but there was something under the schedules tab for their schedule. Although there were no scores listed, there was a game listed on August 21st against Butler Community College. When looking at Butler’s page, it may have looked like it was a scrimmage.

The rest of their schedule:

• @ Arkansas Baptist University, September 4th at 1 AM

• @ Cisco College, September 11th at 7 AM

• @ Tyler Junior College, September 18th at 7 AM

• @ Hendrix College, September 25th at 6 AM

• @ Fort Scott College, October 9th at 12 AM

• Vs. Howard Payne University, October 18th at 6 AM

• @ Hardin Simmons University, October 25th at 6 AM

• @ Blinn College, October 30th at 3 AM

• @ University Mary Hardin Baylor, November 13th at 6 AM

• @ Snow College, November 8th at 7 AM

Something can tell that they enjoy playing their games very early, but it could be an issue with what website builder they used. However, it’s still an unusual schedule with a mix of D3, NAIA, and JUCO schools. There is also not an option to view past seasons’ scores. To see how they did, you would have to Google them up.

Some of the past results were a spring 2021 loss to Tyler Junior College, 61-6, where Tyler led 44-0 at the half, with 256 yards and RPA had negative 36. Another was against Trinity Valley Community College, a 66-0 loss for RPA, with the game ending midway through the 3rd due to lightning. The last time the two schools met, it ended in a 70-7 TVCC win. Another was another spring 2021 loss, this time to New Mexico Military Institute, 72-0, with the game essentially ending after the 3rd quarter, as there was no scoring in the 4th, and RPA had negative 57 yards.

This could mean that RPA is the Bishop Sycamore of college. The education seems to be unaccredited, and the football team is heinously bad.

Another thing: In the HUDL page of Matt Lascon, an alumni from RPA college, it may seem harmless, but if you notice his highlights from the 2018 season, it should be noted that RPA does not have a home field.

The head of RPA is a man by the name of Reggie Calhoun, who runs a group called The Rezolution Conglomerate, LLC. TRC has two holdings: RPA College and Rezolution Wellness. They apparently have two locations, but their website is down. They do have a Groupon offer, however.

There’s no telling on if RPA College could have connections to Bishop Sycamore outside of the football players, but there could be a connection between Calhoun and another infamous prep high school: Prime Prep Academy, a failed charter school co-founded by Deion Sanders, where it closed with less than an hour’s notice in January 2015 after management found out it was financially insolvent.

Calhoun was one of the six former employees who sued ex-Prime Prep Academy Superintendent Ron Price, and Calhoun was the former resources director there. The lawsuit accused the defendants of fraud, negligence, and violations of the Texas Payday Act, where the plaintiffs sought between $200,000 and $1M. The lawsuit also accused Prime Prep officials of continuing to operate the school even when they knew its finances were unsustainable.

The school’s monthly payroll closed when it was over $200,000 a month, and its state revenue was about $184,000 per month. They propped up the budgets by not paying bills and relying on large donations from Sanders and several top administrators.

Going back to Bishop Sycamore, Peterson, the director of the school and a coach on their football team, denied that they misrepresented themselves on ESPN. He said that his players want to play against highly talented teams. He further said that an organization called Good Iron Prep contacted them to play against IMG.

Peterson went into further detail about this process and said that the organization could not find a team from Ohio to play against IMG. However, when seeking to confirm the existence of Good Iron Prep, the attempts were unsuccessful.

His son, Javan, was part of COF Academy at age 15. Both said that they have no regrets on the decision to get involved with COF Academy, yet failed to mention that he was part of the ring with Leroy Johnson and Jay Richardson.

Peterson did a terrible job at hiding the connections between Bishop Sycamore and COF Academy. They didn’t want to deal with the ODE because they would call them out if they did. The reason why they used a post office box as their mailing address was because they wanted to “protect the kids.”

However, Richardson, who was mentioned a lot around Bishop Sycamore, and its predecessor, COF Academy, including in multiple knowledge, told ABC6 colleague Haley Nelson that he has “zero involvement with Bishop Sycamore.” He told her that his legal team is in the process of clearing his name in this fiasco. He added, “I have not signed any documents, no involvement with that particularly other than trying to help the school get resources at one point. And once I realized that is just wasn’t going to be possible, I said ‘hey look I can’t help out.’”

“Zero involvement,” you say, huh?

First, Richardson’s answers to Nelson deserve inquiry. In particular, the Franklin County court filing from August 27th in the case of First Merchants Bank against Richardson, Johnson, and “The Richard Allen Group” should bring up a lot against Richardson. It included a finding that he, Johnson, and the group committed fraudulent misrepresentation, since they did not respond to claims that they did that. Richardson responded with a memo countering some, but not all, of the bank’s assertions, so he was aware of this lawsuit.

The court documents say that Richardson was involved in making these fraudulent misrepresentations and that it is not “they probably see an opportunity to involve someone that they feel like could help them recoup some of these funds.” That says something about the news stations’ coverage of the conundrum that they printed Richardson’s “zero involvement” and “they’re only going after me because I have money” claims without rebuttal or counterevidence.

But that’s just the start of that. A 2012 Metro story from Kristian Dyer listed Richardson, who was previously with the New York Jets, as a partner with Johnson in an insurance brokerage. The previous focus was commodities trading but then he, Johnson, and Sean Morrow decided on a “focus on insurance ‘where we saw the potential to make real money,’” becoming insurance brokers when they founded JR and Associates.

From that article, there was a history between Richardson and Johnson partnering in ventures where they sought after making “real money,” and that relationship expanded towards Bishop Sycamore, where an indication of Richardson’s involvement came from an interview that Awful Announcing made with Andrew King of Columbus Monthly.

When King wrote for ThisWeekNews, a local Columbus outlet, he wrote broad pieces on COF Academy back in 2018, including one where he listed Richardson as superintendent.

King told Awful Announcing that he constantly received pushback from Richardson on those stories and on Richardson’s inclusion in them. Furthermore, Johnson and Richardson were reluctant to tell ThisWeek on the details of COF Academy or its relationship with AME Church, and Richardson did not return calls seeking comment on the story and only spoke to ThisWeek only through Twitter messages and his attorney.

King also told Awful Announcing that while Richardson did not appear to be involved in the day-to-day operations with COF Academy or Bishop Sycamore, he was listed as their athletic director on some documents, and the kids in the program had some involvement with him. It’s odd, considering that Richardson was a famed Ohio State linebacker and a prominent local news figure.

Also, earlier versions of Bishop Sycamore included Richardson’s name on it. 10tv, a local Columbus station that is an affiliate of CBS, reported an early version of Bishop Sycamore’s logo, which included Richardson’s name amongst other names.

Furthermore, on Open Corporates, in the Mjölnir Development LLC listing, it listed the company as active, with the company being incorporated in August 2016, and lists both Richardson and Johnson as incorporators, and Johnson as agent.

There’s ample enough evidence that Richardson was involved with Bishop Sycamore. So, he could disclose this info when he decided to feature them as part of his media job, right? Well, the answer to both is no.

Instead, there was videos of him praising the school for this extremely perilous approach of playing two games in three days, even featuring school director Andre Peterson, who he just referred to as “Coach,” and some of the Bishop Sycamore players on his high school sports show in 2019 without disclosing any connection to them. In that video clip, he is told that Bishop Sycamore will play twice in three days. Instead of denouncing this, his response was “That’s awesome. That’s big time!”

Exactly how involved Richardson was with COF Academy and Bishop Sycamore is not known, but there is a significant amount of evidence that he was around his program, that he was seen by banks as making representations about the program and its finances, that he attempted intimidation of a reporter who wrote about the program, and that he used his local TV platform to spotlight his program without disclosing any of his involvement in it. This is not a good look for him and for ABC6 and Fox28. All of them have to explain to their audience on if there was any conflict or involvement that was not properly disclosed.

The GoFundMe campaign was run by a man named Khalil Davis of Columbus, Ohio. That same person took out a PPP loan of over $20,000 earlier this year. He runs an organization called Earned Not Given Training. From the posts on their Facebook page, they work with football players, so there is also the possibility that where they are training could have also been the training area of Bishop Sycamore.

There was even a video of one of their players from a summer training session at Bishop Sycamore. There’s no indication on if it is the same “field” that the recorded practice from COF Academy was held, but that possibility cannot be ruled out.

Ray Holtzclaw, father of Bishop Sycamore QB Judah Holtzclaw, spoke with Awful Announcing on the whole situation. He tweeted that his son was going to be the QB for the team until the debacle started ensuing, adding that they need to shut the program down. And for good reason.

Bishop Sycamore assured Holtzclaw that everything would be taken care of and that they would start playing football in the spring. They said they had a schedule, yet they were so disorganized and it was clear that Bishop Sycamore was unprepared. When they were supposed to do 7-on-7s, it never happened, even in camps scheduled in Georgia and Clemson.

Johnson later said that he was not able to get camps going for the team at Clemson. Holtzclaw even got a phone call from the hotel that he did not pay for the room, but he paid for the room, and that the rooms were supposed to be paid for by the teams.

The next day, he got a notification from his credit card company that he was charged $2,500. It was from the same hotel. When he called the hotel, the hotel told him that none of the 15 rooms used by Bishop Sycamore in the course of three nights were paid for. He clarified that he stayed for one night, asking to take the room off his list, saying that he is not a coach, but one of the parents of the players. The hotel refunded his money and took the money out of his room.

When leaving from Georgia to Dallas, Texas, after staying at another hotel, Holtzclaw’s son got a phone call in his room, saying that they needed the payment for the room. Yet nothing was paid for. Wash, rinse, and repeat. While a portion of the hotel was paid for, the hotel said that the team was not welcome in the hotel anymore.

When Bishop Sycamore was explaining on how they would play two games over the same weekend, which they did before, Johnson told Holtzclaw that there would be between 50 and 60 players on the roster. They were going to play everyone that don’t really play against this team that was supposed to be a high school team, and then the “starters” would play against IMG.

When Holtzclaw saw some of the clips from the Sto-Rox game, he saw that the players from the IMG game are the same ones from the Sto-Rox game. And there are some players that he has not seen before that they picked up and some that were previously on the team were no longer there.

On the housing situation, the mother of one of the players called Holtzclaw asking how to hold the coaches accountable because they were not responding. Her son lost most of the items on the apartment they were kicked out of. He just came to his home and was going back to get something and was going back to the apartment to get his stuff, but was unable to do so. It was gone—the team left the apartment, possibly being evicted.

Holtzclaw said that he rented out facilities when the team practiced when the weather got cold in January and February. He kept asking where they were going to actually practice on outdoor football fields because he “couldn’t keep doing this.”

He also got the food for the players, going out to dinner with them a “couple of times” after each practice. He added, “They would take them to the all-you-can-eat place, and the kids would just eat and eat and eat and then go back to the hotel or apartment.”

Holtzclaw let Bishop Sycamore’s opponents know about what is happening with Bishop Sycamore. He told Duncanville High School that some of Bishop Sycamore’s players were 19, 20, or older. He called and talked to the coach because he is from Texas and he played at Trinity High School, one of Texas’s powerhouse high school football schools.

While the head coach of Duncanville assumed to Holtzclaw that Bishop Sycamore is a high school from Columbus, Ohio, Holtzclaw revealed that Bishop Sycamore is not a high school. IMG knew what the deal was, but Holtzclaw described that their mentality was “We don’t care, we are going to beat them anyway.” He added, “They are just trying to put that… what I was told, when Roy would put me on the line on mute and I would listen in to what… the ESPN thing they were pumping Judah as, ‘Hey, we’re not the team that we were last year. We’re a different team because we have Judah Holtzclaw at QB and he’s got really good receivers. Our line is amazing and we think we’re going to beat you.”

On the financial side of things when dealing with Bishop Sycamore, he was told that it was $1,000, since Judah would be “[living] at home.” Nothing else was told. He paid the $1,000 and it was the only thing charged officially. They were supposed to pay for the camp, and said that they would have sponsors paying for everything. They paid for the hotels, entry fees, taking care of everything because they were doing it “for all the kids.”

He said, “As long as you are doing it for all the kids… I didn’t want to get into that where he got something that someone else didn’t get because that could affect his eligibility. I was like ‘As long as everybody else is getting it, and the school is paying for it, I guess that’s fine.’ But no, I ended up paying for all our hotel rooms, we paid for all of our entrance into the camps.”

Holtzclaw advised high schools to not play Bishop Sycamore, and he lists some reasons: “One is you’ve got kids that are… let’s say that at a public school… my kids play for a public school and you have a couple good athletes on your team. An average of maybe two D1 players on a very good high school team, maybe more. There’s a potential that you’re going to go up to an IMG, like they did to them. What if a 20-year-old hurts a 16-year-old on the field, which with them could happen. There’s that part of it, and there you go, ‘Okay, but it’s not fair.’ If you are playing that poorly, a coach is going to look at it and go ‘I don’t care, you’re terrible.’ Because you didn’t get to show anything. They have some really good receivers on their team, and those receivers didn’t get to show anything because they didn’t have an opportunity because the rest of their team is sub-par and their coaching… they didn’t have at all.”

His biggest takeaway is that he is prioritizing player safety. He said, “Probably what’s going to happen is, these kids that have invested time practicing… they are running everywhere to go practice football, their lives are football and that is what they are seeking. They’ve just been misguided in the wrong direction by some people that have, I don’t know, got head games going on. The kids truly just want to play football and go to the next level. They are putting their bodies out there on the line. What’s going to happen is maybe their schedule because some of these… HSAA, or Texas, or somebody stands up and says ‘You can’t play that team because they are not sanctioned by…’ They are sanctioned supposedly by the Texas Christian Athletic Association, they are on the website… but how did they get there?”

Holtzclaw described Johnson as a “true con artist” and “a master at convincing you that you are doing the right thing.” On Bishop Sycamore’s group chat, Holtzclaw let the team know that he was not going to be with them, letting the other parents in the chat know. The team was not paying the bills, and everything was in total disarray.

Regarding the hotels, Bishop Sycamore was accused of stiffing the hotel they stayed at for their nationally televised blowout loss to IMG. Canton, Ohio police obtained reports that Bishop Sycamore that the Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott management that Bishop Sycamore rented 25 rooms, and wrote two invalid checks totaling $3,596, per The Repository.

Also, the hotel assessed room cleaning fees of $250 apiece for three rooms. Although nobody was charged, Canton Police Lieutenant Dennis Garren said that detectives are investigating this situation and they listed two suspects, indicating that the investigation involves “passing bad checks” or forgery.

Ben Ferree, the Assistant Director of Officiating and Sport Management at the Ohio High School Athletics Association, spent three years looking into the legitimacy of Bishop Sycamore and COF Academy. He knew that it was a scam all along, and the events that unfolded when Bishop Sycamore played IMG on national television proved him right.

The origins of the investigation started back in the winter of 2017. In Ohio, to determine which high school football teams make the playoffs, they used a computer formula: You get more points beating a D1 school than beating a D7 school. The division that the school plays in is based on how many students they have enrolled. If there is a school that is not a member of the OHSAA, and that the OHSAA doesn’t know their enrollment, the OHSAA has to call and ask. This is usually a five-second process.

When Ferree found out that COF Academy had 750 students, all boys, he was skeptical. While he was offered to see the applications, Ferree said he didn’t need to see the applications, instead wanting to see the 750 students.

When he was shown the address to the location, he found out that there was nobody. He saw that there was no school there, leading to them declared as not a school for OHSAA purposes, leading to the school charter being revoked by the Ohio Department of Education.

While Bishop Sycamore had a 4-5 season in 2019, what Ferree found from their schedule is that they didn’t play any schools from Ohio. They played some big schools nationally, and some similar legit programs, such as a community school out of the Cincinnati area. They didn’t play big schools like IMG back then, just small high schools.

When the COVID pandemic happened, it was the perfect opportunity for Johnson and Bishop Sycamore to bounce. But then, the schools can’t find games, because the schools around them cancelled their seasons or weren’t playing in the spring. It is also possible that schools may have a game scheduled but they just had a COVID breakout and now Ferree has to find a game.

Ferree says that the end goal for Johnson was money. It’s basically as if when they are playing against a powerhouse organization, they are wanting the powerhouse to pay them money to get them there. And then, there would be a lawsuit because Johnson never paid the busing company.

So, Ferree was finding where the money went, and he noted that it didn’t go to the hotels, so a new lawsuit appeared. It didn’t go to the helmet manufacturers as Johnson never paid them. And it didn’t go to the banks when he took out loans, so there’s more lawsuits. He’s straight up pocketing money.

Ferree doesn’t know the exact amounts of how much money could have been siphoned off from the school. However, schools told him that they paid a travel stipend, but he didn’t ask them the number because that didn’t matter. But when Johnson got paid a travel stipend but then on the court documents it says that he never paid the travel company, where did the money go? There are standard game contracts, but when it involves Bishop Sycamore, it could be around $10,000 per game.

Bishop Sycamore scheduled games against Maryland and IMG, but that was not Ferree’s job. He said that he was not calling IMG to warn them, but he told other schools like Archbishop Hoban, St. Ed, St. Ignatius, and St. Vincent-St. Mary. St. Ignatius and St. Vincent-St. Mary saw that what Bishop Sycamore was doing was shady and cancelled their games, and then there’s Hoban and St. Ed basically saying, “Thank you for your time, we’re going to play them anyways,” per Ferree.

In the case of Hoban, where they basically said that a week before their game against Bishop Sycamore, it could be a situation where they weren’t really aware until after they signed the contract. But they still knew and played anyway.

So, if Bishop Sycamore is not known for being a program on the rise, why do schools keep scheduling them? Ferree explained, “If 99 percent of schools are doing the right thing, and only one percent of schools are doing the wrong thing, that’s still enough schools doing the wrong thing to let Bishop Sycamore to keep going. There are over 800 member schools in the OHSAA. If one percent of them are willing to play Bishop Sycamore, then guess what, that’s eight games. You’re the majority of the way to a football schedule. It just takes a couple of people that don’t care to be able to perpetuate the Bishop Sycamore scam to keep going. If no one would play them, then there’s no scam. They can’t play games if no one schedules them. They only need a few people to buy in to be able to keep it going. They don’t even have to play 10 games this season. If they play five games a season, Roy Johnson can still make money that way. It doesn’t take a lot of buy-ins from a couple of people that don’t care.”

Ferree found no good reason on why decision makers had the games go on as scheduled, but the reasoning for it is because not every team makes the playoffs, so big schools have a hard time finding people who want to play them.

Ferree added, “If you are a school, why do you want to go play Hoban in the regular season and lose probably? You don’t get any playoff points for a loss. So it can be hard for them to find teams to come play them.” Playing against Bishop Sycamore does not get teams points to help them make the playoffs, but they would rather play a game than take a bye, as those are their only two options.

Each school has their own schedule, and if there was a better matchup for the school, they would take that better matchup on paper, but they don’t, as people don’t want to play them. But with the expansion of the playoffs from eight to 16 teams, maybe it could help the issue, because it is now easier for teams to make the playoffs, as losing is not as big of a deal as it was before.

So, teams can play a team like Hoban, take an L, but learn some lessons as well. Ferree says, “I think the more likely scenario, and again this is just speculation on my part, is the AD at Hoban, for example, is like ‘Man, I cannot find a team to play us Week 2. I’ve called everyone I know and I’ve got nothing.’ Joe Schmoe Shady comes along and says ‘I can get you a game for Week 2.’ And he says ‘Great!’ And they go along with it because they have exhausted all their other options. Is it possible that they sorta just sign on and outscore the work and don’t really care? It’s possible. But I think it’s more likely they have exhausted their other opportunities and then buy into what they are being sold because it fills a need. ‘I can’t find a game Week 2, but you can find me a game Week 2? Yes, please!’”

The OHSAA does not control the regular season schedules. Their rules permit teams to play whoever they want. When COF Academy played in the 2018 season, the OHSAA did a survey asking if they should change the rule so that they can only play member high schools. The majority of the people said no to changing the rule.

However, because that was three years ago, it could be possible that opinions have changed, but at the same time, it could also be possible that opinions may remain the same. When the OHSAA launched the investigation and informed the schools of it, some schools cancelled their games, and others said that they are playing anyway.

The OHSAA didn’t really know about Bishop Sycamore playing multiple games in a weekend at the same time, since they were informing schools before the start of the season and during the season. But they knew about the players potentially being overage.

When the first issue with COF Academy happened, before anyone was aware of anything, they were able to schedule games. They got one school to schedule them. Then, they would call other schools to say that they would play a certain school. That triggered them scheduling other people. This is when the OHSAA stepped in and did the investigation.

Bishop Sycamore “inquired” about membership when they were COF Academy, to where it was revealed that they never inquired about membership, because they knew what would happen.

Ferree says that Bishop Sycamore will continue to play SOME amount of games, and that the schools are not cancelling on them. He added, “If you are a student, ‘student,’ a member of that football team, you aren’t bringing anything new you didn’t already know, you are living it. If you weren’t going to leave then, I would leave now. They’ve found a way so far. That might be the thing that they’ve been able to scam companies, because they just get a different company each time and scam them each time. Maybe now they call up XYZ busing company and they say ‘Hey, didn’t I just see you on ESPN?’ And maybe that helps, but I wouldn’t… I’m too cynical by this point in time that I’ve been screaming about these people for three to four years and nothing has happened. But I’m not holding my breath. But it is possible.”

Ferree, an OHSAA employee, knew all along that Bishop Sycamore was a scam from the very beginning. He adds that if schools believed him, they would not have scheduled their games against Bishop Sycamore. Had those games not been scheduled back then, then this scandal would not garner nationwide attention.

New Bishop Sycamore head coach Tyren Jackson went on record to further the idea that the school is a sham, even admitting that it is not actually a school when speaking with NBC4 in Columbus, Ohio: “We do not offer curriculum. We are not a school. That’s not what Bishop Sycamore is, and I think that’s what the biggest misconception about us was, and that was our fault. Because that was a mistake on paperwork.”

Yeah, right. A “mistake on paperwork.” But yes, it’s not a school. So, if it’s not a school, then what is it? Jackson refers to it as a “post-grad football academy.”

NBC4 also noted that when they pressed him on what that mistake was or entailed, Jackson provided no further info and said that he didn’t know a lot about the paperwork, which was submitted to the ODE before his hiring. They also pressed him on the fact that the “school” had a bell schedule for the prior year, beginning at 7:10 AM and ending at 3:05 PM. As for why a school that is not a school would even have a bell schedule in the first place, Jackson did not answer.

And even as far as Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s investigation into Bishop Sycamore, Jackson says he plans to cooperate: “I don’t have any problem cooperating, letting them know whatever they want to know and things of that nature. That stuff should never have happened the way it happened. I’m willing to take responsibility for it and say that it was a mistake. It’s something that shouldn’t have been that way, and that’s something that I have to address stepping into this role.”

Lastly, as part of his defense for the “program” and the players who play for Bishop Sycamore, Jackson can’t help but lean into the sense of the self-promotion that it is a hallmark of these situations. Jackson further told NBC4, “A lot of it, you can say, was self-inflicted, and I’m willing to say that. But at the same time, that’s probably from a head-down type of thing. Don’t attack these kids. Don’t take that part from them, now that they don’t have a season, possibly. Once the smoke clears, we’re national news. Whoever does schedule us next will be national news.”

It’s just hard to believe that a reputable program will be willing to schedule Bishop Sycamore, or that such a game would be broadcast in a way that people would be willing to see it. The only two ways this could possibly end is if either the “school” succumbs to public pressure, cancelling their games, or the people in charge go to jail. Ferree says that this could take possibly another three or four years, because trials take a long time.