Milton, the team not fooled by Bishop Sycamore in 2019, is on ESPN this week

Ten high school football teams will be featured on a national stage this weekend on ESPN, and one of those teams is from Georgia, which found Bishop Sycamore before ESPN did in 2021. 
 
Bishop Sycamore also rose to national prominence at the wrong end after being beaten disastrously by IMG Academy (Florida) in 2021, aired on ESPN. 
 
Milton (Georgia) vs American Heritage (Florida) on ESPN Friday at 7 p. m. Eastern time, on the sixth of August, six days before the third anniversary of IMG Academy’s brutal 58-0 shutout of Bishop Sycamore (Ohio). 
 
Milton school officials had a somewhat recent interaction with Bishop Sycamore in 2019 and didn’t waste any time shutting the door on the Ohio “high school” that played the Trojans. 
 
Here's the story SBLive/SI published in 2021 (written by Zach Shugan) about Milton not buying what Bishop Sycamore was selling:Here's the story SBLive/SI published in 2021 (written by Zach Shugan) about Milton not buying what Bishop Sycamore was selling: 
 
If you have not yet heard tale of one “high school” football team taking every liberty possible to con event officials into allowing it to participate in a nationally televised game against a team considered to be one of the best in the country, you should probably sit down and fasten your seat belt. 
 
This is a crazy story, one of the most screwy and twisty stories I have ever heard and it just kept on going. It is quite probable that by the time you have ingested all the words on this page, more underlying information regarding one of the crazier narratives of 2021 will have come to light. 
 
On the afternoon of Sunday, Aug. 29, ESPN viewers who decided to turn to the sports channel were gifted with something highly cryptic – high school football live from the Pro Football Hall of Fame, between IMG Academy (FL) and Bishop Sycamore (OH). 
 
That victory stands at 58-0; such a score itself is not news, especially given the pedigree of the IMG program. The story, and what has attracted so much interest in the sports world in the two and half days since the game was the team that IMG beat. 
 
For a myriad of reasons, Bishop Sycamore should never have signed up to play IMG, one of the nation’s best teams, in Canton, which many consider home to the sport’s greatest stage, ESPN, which bills itself as “The Worldwide Leader in Sports”.

The School 
 
Very little is known about Bishop Sycamore, which claims to be an online-only school located in Columbus, OH. 
 
There is an incomplete feeling to the school’s website, which may be a work in progress; the About page and Staff page are empty. The team does have a school address listed on its MaxPreps page, but the address is for the library at Franklin University downtown Columbus. 
 
One patron of the library mentioned to The Columbus Dispatch that Bishop Sycamore used to have an office in the building, but does not anymore. 
 
It is not a member of the Ohio High School Athletic Association because, despite having several sports teams, it does not have enough teams to qualify. However, Bishop Sycamore competes in a national schedule. The team is listed by MaxPreps as having the fourth toughest 2021 schedule amongst all the teams in the United States. 
 
The Players 

Sources at ESPN reportedly informed them of as many as five big name talents to be part of Bishop Sycamore team. This, if true, would have made for much more safety and competitive game. Surprisingly there also seems to be no such recruits on the Centurions. 
 
Bishop Sycamore has no roster or any coaching staff mentioned on its MaxPreps or SBLive team page or on its Twitter page either, however, the team does seem to have its updated roster under the Hudl highlight videos page where they post clips of the team. 
 
Many of Bishop Sycamore players labeled as seniors are represented in highlights as playing their senior year for another team in 2020. 
 
Signing offers from Michigan, Nebraska, Oregon, Tennessee and more, a dive into one player’s Twitter account shows that no profile exists for the player on any of the recruiting databases including 247Sports or Rivals. 
 
There is another player whom 247Sports assigned a recruiting profile to, but it appears that he was initially a part of Kentucky’s 2021 class before he decided to open himself up to other schools once again with regard to interviews. The new Bishop Sycamore signee was not recruited out of high school and instead of enrolling at Kentucky or any other college or junior college, became part of Bishop Sycamore and tagged his Twitter profile with ‘Class of 2022’. 
 
As of 14th August 2020, a Bishop Sycamore player running over opponents in a game can be seen in a tweet by Sports Illustrated. The same player was a senior on a Michigan high school team in 2019, as reported by MaxPreps. 
 
The Safety 

What with its nationally televised matchup with IMG not enough, Bishop Sycamore then played the game less than 48 hours after they played a game in Pennsylvania. 
 
The team first attempted to explain that they have multiple groups but that argument was quickly shut down. From what was aired from the game in Pennsylvania and what ESPN made available, it is still possible to argue that several players from Bishop Sycamore took the fields both on Friday and Sunday, and some of them served both as an offense and the defence. 
 
An account on GoFundMe was opened on Aug. 21 with the target of raising $20,000 for the team’s equipment, transportation and feeding. Before cutting the campaign, only $140 was received. 
 
All of this is only taking into consideration the safety of Bishop Sycamore’s players, and again, it is not even from the home team – it has been two and a half weeks since that Bishop Sycamore’s team played at home. If at all the Centurions have been participating with several overaged players in the past few years, something that at this stage appears inevitable, it is hard to tell how many real high school students the team has been putting at risk. 
 
A Georgia Connection 

Whatever Bishop Sycamore is, is or was shall we say, has been in existence for a few years now. This weekend was not the first time that Bishop Sycamore made the people suspicious, it is the first time when the suspicion was caught on camera across the United States of America. 
 
In the year 2019, Bishop Sycamore sought to compete in the Freedom Bowl, a year end multi-team event staged at Milton, Georgia. Milton athletic director Gary Sylvestri was also one of the organisers of the event – they arranged a game between the team and Mainland (FL) on Saturday morning in the metro Atlanta area. 
 
A year before the event, there were many signs that raised the eyebrows of the Freedom Bowl’s organizers in relation to Bishop Sycamore. Problems emerged as it was taking organizational team photographs, individuals statistics, and necessary documentation. The team failed to deadline for signing up for a hotel near Milton.

‘‘We began to study them more closely and more closely,’’ Sylvestri said. That is how we came to understand that, no, there were none of them. 
 
They did not like what they saw too much so, the Freedom Bowl’s organizers relied on their instincts and excluded Bishop Sycamore. Mainland (FL) was informed of the cancellation in the early part of the week preceding the game and did not incurred any losses in the contract as reported by The Daytona Beach News Journal. 
 
All this was about nearly two years back. Hence, when on Monday, Sylvestri started receiving messages from his friends about the doings of Bishop Sycamore he could not believe his ears. Given the kind of resources that are available on the internet today, Sylvestri could not understand how any organization – and certainly not one as large and established as ESPN – could fail to pick up on the signals. 
 
‘Of course that really happened,’ said Sylvestri, astonished. 
 
Furthering the confusion and questions surrounding ESPN’s broadcast and Bishop Sycamore, Sunday’s game at the Pro Football Hall of Fame wasn’t the first encounter with IMG Academy. IMG played the Centurions at Florida on 16th October 2020 and defeated them 56-6. 
 
ESPN and its viewers might have been caught of guard but IMG must have known what it was getting itself into Sunday when it so boldly marshaled its troops. It became clear that the Ascenders were to deliver what they threatened would be the most humiliating ass whuppin in pro-wrestling history, and the world would be watching on television. 
 
After the game and the subsequent uproar, ESPN issued a statement of explanation. The company hastened to say that it played no role in fixing the games; it only aired them. The matchmaking and scheduling of the games was done by Paragon Marketing Group. 
 
“We are sorry that this occurred and have addressed it with Paragon which obtained the bout and manages most of our high school event dates,” ESPN added, “They have assured us that appropriate measures will be made to avoid this in future. ” 
 
In Tuesday’s edition of USA Today, MD has announced they have cancelled the Oct. 1 Centurions game due to this. 

“We have been doing a lot of researching, and after discussing it with our coaching staff, we have decided to cancel that game with Bishop Sycamore because they have ineligible players and it would become a liability issue,” DeMatha president Fr. James R. Day said. “I believe I have made the right call. ” 

Of all the games that Bishop Sycamore has scheduled for the future, it has already lost one game. Thus the question arises for how much longer this team will endure — or this school, for that matter.