Friday Night Lies
The Bishop Sycamore Story
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
The shocking true story of Bishop Sycamore, the fake high school football team that conned ESPN and the nation.
In August 2021, a high school football game on ESPN turned into a national scandal. IMG Academy, a legitimate powerhouse, faced off against Bishop Sycamore, a team with a dubious website and a roster full of question marks. The result was a 58-0 blowout that exposed a shocking truth: Bishop Sycamore wasn't a real school.
Friday Night Lies uncovers the story of Roy Johnson, the man behind Bishop Sycamore, and the events that led to the program's implosion. Andrew King and Ben Ferree expose the exploitation and deception at the heart of this scandal, revealing:
How Johnson and his associates built a sham program on lies and empty promises.The devastating impact on the young athletes who were lured to Bishop Sycamore with dreams of college scholarships.The systemic failures that allowed this fraud to occur and the urgent need for reform in youth sports.
For fans of true crime and sports stories, Friday Night Lies is a gripping and important account of ambition, greed, and the dark side of high school football.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist King and Ferree, a former assistant director at the Ohio High School Athletic Association, debut with an overlong report on Roy Johnson's fraudulent efforts to establish a high school where teenagers who dreamed of joining the NFL could hone their athletic skills with an eye toward going pro. In 2021, Florida's IMG Academy beat Columbus, Ohio's Bishop Sycamore High School 58–0 in a game that was televised on ESPN, drawing scrutiny to Sycamore's program and founder, Johnson. King and Ferree outline the revelations that followed, centering on the misdeeds of Johnson, a shady entrepreneur who organized dubious insurance schemes before starting the Christians of Faith Academy in 2018, which was intended to compete with IMG as a pipeline to the NFL, but failed to get the proper licensing from the Ohio Department of Education and folded later that year. Undeterred, Johnson founded Bishop Sycamore High School in 2019, recruiting players whose "football or academic careers didn't go as planned" only for them to realize once they got to Ohio that the threadbare educational program consisted of a patchwork of online classes. Unfortunately, readers' eyes might glaze over at the meticulous accounts of the complicated legal paper trails created by Johnson, and it remains unclear just how he profited from the scam, with conflicting reports about whether Bishop Sycamore charged tuition. This gets lost in the weeds.
