Bishop Sycamore Scheduled for Game vs. Life Christian Academy on Nov. 9, Coach Says

Bishop Sycamore football is apparently coming back to play Life Christian Academy on Nov. 9.

Life Christian Academy head coach David Fitzgerald told Zach Joachim of the Richmond Times-Dispatch his team has scheduled a game against the controversial Centurions team.

Bishop Sycamore gained infamy on Aug. 29, 2021, during a 58-0 loss to IMG Academy that was nationally televised by ESPN.

The program was purported to be a high school football team for Bishop Sycamore High School based in Columbus, Ohio. It was later confirmed the school doesn't really exist and there is no Bishop Sycamore football program.

A story about the scandal was the subject of an HBO documentary BS High that premiered in June. The film follows a number of people involved with the program, primarily head coach Roy Johnson and features interviews with several former players.

Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe, who directed the documentary, told GQ's Matthew Roberson that Johnson spoke like a "mafia don" to get commitments from the young athletes who played for the team.

"Every single time we talked to a kid, we felt worse and worse and worse," Free said. "The fact that you then have to go back and talk to Roy about it—because we bookend it with him and get his take—it was so much harder to maintain that level of objectivity. We spent hours talking to kids whose lives have been ruined by this person and still have to walk that line and take your personal feelings out of it."

Max Preps shows that Bishop Sycamore played a game two days before its matchup with IMG Academy. The team had several players suffer injuries leading up to that contest.

ESPN television announcers Anish Shroff and Tom Luginbill said on the broadcast they couldn't verify claims from Johnson and Bishop Sycamore that the program had multiple Division I recruits on the roster.

An investigation by the Ohio Department of Education completed in December 2021 found there is "no evidence that the 'school' enrolled students this year, had a physical location for classes to meet, employed teachers, nor offered any academic program meeting minimum standards."

Joachim noted there's still "no official website or contact information, and online search results do not yield a 2023 schedule for Bishop Sycamore."

Bishop Sycamore still has an account on X, formerly known as Twitter, with its most recent post coming on Sept. 3, 2022.

According to Joachim, Fitzgerald couldn't immediately provide the name of the company that set up the matchup between Bishop Sycamore and Life Christian.

The Virginia-based school at least has an online presence. Life Christian Academy is a member of the East Coast Power Prep league with seven other schools.

The football team has a 1-7 record this season and is a member of VISAA Division I, but Joachim noted the Eagles aren't eligible for the VISAA playoffs because they don't play enough games against local competition.