A high school football team lied to ESPN to play IMG Academy on TV. Here’s how
Bradenton’s IMG Academy’s football team is a national powerhouse that has top college football recruits, who hail from all across the world, on its roster.
On Sunday, the Ascenders’ opponent, Ohio’s Bishop Sycamore, made waves, and not for defeating IMG Academy in the finale of the Geico ESPN High School Football Kickoff.
Rather, it was for how Bishop Sycamore got itself into the game and on ESPN in the first place.
ESPN announcers Anish Shroff and Tom Luginbill discussed on-air how Bishop Sycamore misled ESPN to get the TV game with IMG’s star-studded roster.
“Bishop Sycamore is a new program with young talent, and several players on both sides of the ball have multiple Division 1 offers including QB Trillian Harris and OL Justin Daniel,” ESPN’s press release on the game said.
With IMG leading 30-0 in the second quarter, ESPN’s broadcast team expressed how Bishop Sycamore duped the network.
“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,” the broadcast team 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.”
The health and safety factor was also heightened when it was discovered Bishop Sycamore was playing its second game in 48 hours, having played — and lost — on Friday.
Paragan Marketing Group president Rashid Ghazi, whose company scheduled the game, according to Awful Announcing, told the outlet that they did not know Bishop Sycamore played Friday and would have canceled the game had they known.
IMG won the game 58-0, but it was Bishop Sycamore that garnered all the attention Sunday, including online at social media sites such as Twitter.
