Bishop Sycamore is in trend for all the wrong reasons.
A resounding defeat in a game on ESPN allegedly against two elite high school football teams has drawn national attention and questioned Bishop Sycamore’s legitimacy as a football program and educational institution.
The school claims to be based in Columbus, Ohio, although there is no address listed on the website. On Sunday, they lost to the country’s second team, the IMG Academy of Florida, 58-0.
Andre Peterson, who played for Jim Tressel at Youngstown State in the 1980s, is the founder, director of Bishop Sycamore and currently coaches the football team’s offensive and defensive lines.
FUTURE PROGRAM:An opponent of Bishop Sycamore withdrew from his game against the program
On Tuesday, he told USA TODAY Sports that football manager Roy Johnson was fired Sunday after the game. Peterson also defended Bishop Sycamore’s aim of giving players a better chance to play college football and denied any inclusion of a “scam” related to Sunday’s game or Bishop Sycamore.
“There’s nothing I’ve gotten out of this that would constitute it as a scam because I’m not making any financial gains from what we’re doing,” Peterson told USA TODAY Sports Monday night. “The reality is that I have a son (Javan) who is also on the program and has been on the program for four years.
“If it’s a scam and the kids don’t go to school and don’t do what they’re supposed to do, then I’m literally cheating myself. And most importantly, I’m hurting my child. So when people say things like that … I would literally take my child’s future and throw it in the trash. ”
Peterson said the decision to switch to Johnson was made Sunday night after the game against IMG. However, he didn’t publicize the news until he had another conversation with Johnson early Tuesday.
However, as the controversy over Bishop Sycamore escalated on Monday, Johnson represented the school as head coach in an interview on Twitter Spaces. Peterson agreed with this.
“We hadn’t put anything out,” he reasoned. “So yes, I agreed.”
One reason behind Johnson’s removal was the team’s poor injury monitoring work, Peterson said.
“There were a lot of things that played a part in it,” Peterson said.
Not one of them was the fact that the team played two games in three days, the director said.
“Roy was honestly like a little brother to me in the sense that when we were really launching Bishop Sycamore, there were some things we wanted to do better and we could have done better,” Peterson said. “I appreciate him as a person, but I thought right now he needed to resign, he needed to leave. We simply decided to part with each other. “
So it’s not a shooting?
“Yes, it’s mutual. But he is no longer the head coach, then. “
Whatever you call him, Johnson is no longer the Bishop Sycamore coach. Peterson said a coaching meeting on Tuesday afternoon will determine the new head coach.
But the intrigue around this situation doesn’t stop there.
Aside from having no background information about the school, Bishop Sycamore’s website looks more like a football blog with advice on how to get recruited.
“We have to make sure that the website also includes the academic part. There are things you learn,” he said. “There are growing pains that you have. We realized this is a problem. The reality is that we caused some of the questions by not doing some of the things that should have been done before. So it’s understandable. I understand that perfectly.
“We have to make it a real school website.”
However, the Ohio Department of Education does not list any charter schools for 2021-22 by the name of Bishop Sycamore, and last year the department listed Bishop Sycamore as an “unauthorized and unsupported school” , a type of school that “because of truly rooted religious beliefs, choose not to be authorized by the State Council for Education”.
On multiple occasions, Peterson said the school has been in existence for four years, only to later say it was founded in 2019.
When asked why Bishop Sycamore’s listed address is a post office box, he said the school’s actual location is private to protect students who have been harassed in their pre-pandemic location. According to Peterson, Bishop Sycamore rents a space in a building in the Easton neighborhood of Columbus.
“Before COVID, the project is that they walk into the building, they have their computers, they sit down, they do their lessons, we have some (adults) that are there checking what they do,” Peterson said.
Peterson said he was advised to close the program on Monday.
“I can’t,” Peterson said. “I have kids who depend on what we do. For me to start all over and send them home and say ‘Hey, fix it yourself’ would be a disservice to them. I just know we have things to be right.
“We have to get to where every question that is asked, there is an answer.”
Follow Chris Bumbaca on Twitter @BOOMbaca.
Contribution: Bailey Johnson, The Columbus Dispatch
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