The latest entry in the debate over charter schools may have its roots in, of all things, a high school game that aired on ESPN on Sunday night. All available evidence suggests that a little-known charter school Bishop Sycamore in Columbus, Ohio, only got a slot in that game by falsely claiming that it had a roster chock full of blue-chip recruits.
But it turns out that there are more fundamental issues than just lying in order to get into the national spotlight. Bishop Sycamore took the field on only one day’s rest—something which should never, ever happen with any legitimate high school football team. Moreover, all attempts to turn up any information about this school has resulted in dead ends—which makes me wonder about whether Ohio has any kind of oversight over charter schools.
On Sunday night, longtime prep school powerhouse IMG Academy of Bradenton, Florida, faced off against Bishop Sycamore on the final night of the GEICO ESPN High School Kickoff. ESPN initially billed this as a matchup between two schools with lots of Division I recruits between them.
However, it soon became apparent that Bishop Sycamore was far less than advertised. During the second quarter, ESPN’s own announcers accused Bishop Sycamore of conning its way onto national television.
Midway through the second quarter, with IMG leading 30-0, play-by-play man Anish Shroff dropped a bombshell—no one at ESPN had been able to verify that Bishop Sycamore’s supposed blue chippers even existed. According to Shroff, no one from Bishop Sycamore showed up on ESPN’s recruiting databases, nor any other recruiting database. Based on what he’d seen so far, Shroff concluded that “this is not a fair fight,” and he wondered whether we should worry about the “health and safety” of the Bishop Sycamore players.
Color commentator Tom Luginbill was of the same mind. He believed this game could have turned into a dangerous situation since Bishop Sycamore didn't have nearly enough depth “in case something were to happen to their roster.”
Ultimately, IMG won in a rout, 58-0. Since then, we’ve learned that no one from Bishop Sycamore is listed among the top 50 prospects in Ohio in either the classes of 2022 or 2023. MaxPreps only started tracking Bishop Sycamore’s games in 2020, a year in which they went 0-6 with a point differential of -185.
However, I did discover that in 2019, Bishop Sycamore was slated to play in the Freedom Bowl, an all-star high school tournament in the Atlanta area. Organizers canceled the game because Bishop Sycamore didn’t send in a roster or make hotel reservations within 30 days of signing the contract.
All of this should have been enough to raise alarm bells at ESPN and the outfit that scheduled the game, Paragon Marketing Group. Clearly, Bishop Sycamore had a shady reputation, and had no place on ESPN either in terms of talent or character.
Now here’s where this story really gets hideous. According to The New York Post, Bishop Sycamore quarterback Josh Jenkins tweeted out this video of his team playing on Friday—two days before the game against IMG.
SB Nation revealed another player tweeting out highlights from the game, against Sto-Rox High School in Pittsburgh’s northwestern suburbs—which Bishop Sycamore lost, 19-7. Awful Announcing dug up this video of the Friday night game, which shows Bishop Sycamore wearing the same jerseys and using the same formations as in Sunday’s game. Additionally, it looks like a large number of Bishop Sycamore players were playing both ways.
No one with an iota of decency would allow football players that young to play two games in three days. It raised the obvious question—how was this allowed to happen? However, attempts to get information about this school have only raised more questions.
The Massillon Independent reveals that Bishop Sycamore is an online charter school. According to The Columbus Dispatch, there’s no information about this school on the database of Ohio’s charter schools—or “community schools,” as Ohio calls them. However, last year, Bishop Sycamore claimed to be a “non-chartered, non-tax supported school” that was not required to get a charter from the state for religious reasons. Under Ohio law, Bishop Sycamore was required to submit attendance and participation data to Columbus City Schools, but there’s no immediate word on whether it did so.
Its physical address is the same as that of an athletic complex near Easton Town Center in northeast Columbus. While head coach Roy Johnson claims classes are held there, he later claimed the school rents the facility “once in awhile.” An official at the athletic complex claimed that he’s seen players practice there, but he can’t recall any classes being held there.
The closest thing to a school website is more of a bare-bones blog. There are no Twitter or Facebook feeds about the school itself, though the football team seems to have an active Twitter account. Moreover, according to Awful Announcing impresario Ken Koo, a former player revealed that he and his teammates were evicted from apartments and hotels after school officials didn’t pay the bills.
Koo also revealed that Bishop Sycamore initially stonewalled ESPN when the network tried to get basic information about its roster and depth chart, only providing a bogus fact sheet hours before kickoff. And yet, ESPN still went ahead with the broadcast when it should have asked more questions about this school—or done some digging when the school refused to provide more information.
Had ESPN done any actual digging, it would have discovered that it had been played by a so-called school that checks off nearly every bad stereotype about charter schools. And it would have discovered a situation that would lead any right-thinking person to wonder how this could be tolerated. Technically, according to one of Bishop Sycamore’s opponents, Bishop Sycamore isn’t a high school. But anyone with an iota of decency ought to wonder how Ohio allowed this “school” to exist.