Originally published at: "Steps will be taken" to ensure fake high school's fake football teams never appear on ESPN again | Boing Boing
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Bishop Sycamore’s existence as an actual school has also been questioned. The school is not recognized by the Ohio High School Athletic Association and does not have a fixed physical location.
Multiple people made epic screw ups to not notice that they were broadcasting a fake school. ESPN, Paragon that promoted the game, and IMG academy (how does the biggest sports factory in the country schedule a game against a fake school?)
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This problem can be simply resolved by using blockchain.
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People in my home town trolled the state news paper for years about games played by a fictional college team. It went on for so long that you can, to this day, buy paraphanalia for the fake team. I went years with a sign for the school in the back window of my car. When the paper finally figured it out (!!?) they instated a system of verified score reporters for all game results. This lead to hilarious gaps in coverage. Like my home town team won the state playoffs and it took a week for it to get reported because the paper didn’t have a verified person at the playoffs. Still, it was epic. Go good old UofO!
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So a fake high school has a fake team, but a real game was played featuring the fake team beating the hell out of a real high school’s real team?
It sounds like a real team of real college aged men beating up a bunch of kids. So not exactly a fun time was had by all.
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The reporting is a bit unclear but it’s the fake school that got the hell beat out of them.
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It took me a long time to parse this post, because so little of it makes sense to me. Why on earth would someone create a fake high school just so older players could trounce a bunch of kids in football games? I mean, WTF? What do they get out of it? Perpetually re-living their high school glory days?
Also: “There are allegations of child endangerment”… I mean, that’s just high school football, period. This wasn’t a different situation here just because some of the players were older.
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Everything about this is more than a bit unclear. But my fake interest is really waning, so I’m really not going to dig any deeper.
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First, IMG (a sports academy in Florida that could beat most college teams*) trounced the older players. If I understand correctly, the coach created the fake team to get them on tv as a money making scam, endangering teenagers as part of a grift for some of the money ESPN paid to broadcast the game
eta: *this is why espn was broadcasting it in the first place, IMG has future NFL players and the fake team lied and said they did as well
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I can’t imagine there was that much money from ESPN, once it was divided up between a whole football team and the people organizing the scam. (If there is that much money for high school football games, something is seriously, seriously wrong…)
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Reminds me of University of Okoboji - Wikipedia
But also what about Slippery Rock?
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I’d love to see a matchup between Okoboji and Miskatonic U.
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I didn’t know things like IMG existed, but if I’d thought about it for a hot second I’d have realized that someone would start up a private school that would appeal to families with pro sports ambitions and a couple tenthousand to spend on the dream. Seems a little riskier investment than trying to get your kid into a STEM program, but the market rules all. "High Performance Parenting," indeed.
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There have been problems in college football with this, too. Only at the Division III and NAIA level though, since big D-I schools don’t play non-D-I programs. But if you’re an “online” university and have no campus, who is to say you aren’t a real school?
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It is a little counter intuitive that the fake school with older players lost this game 58-0. 
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My brother in law sent his son to IMG to play football. They spent $70K there in the hopes he would get a college football scholarship. Me when I heard this logic:
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Factor in the book deal and movie rights…
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I assume they were playing the long game, though. If you have NFL hopes, you need to be playing for one of the big College schools to later get drafted.
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The fake team lost 58-0.
The real team is one of the best in the country and filled with legitimate Division I prospects who are going to that school primarily to play sports. The fake team had some older players, but they weren’t high level athletes so of course they got trounced.
This is a really odd story. The vibes I’m getting are of a con that was too successful.
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They’re pretty delusional people, but I don’t think even they had delusions of an NFL career. But that would explain it, so maybe.
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