These details are unbelievable.
“Do I look cool? I don’t look like a con artist?”
Roy Johnson, the architect of Bishop Sycamore sits in a dimly lit room, with dire concern about his appearance to a national audience. Within the first five minutes, BS High makes it clear this isn’t going to be your typical sports documentary.
On Wednesday night HBO released BS High, its documentary on the Bishop Sycamore scam. There’s more to this story than you can possibly imagine, but here are the most shocking moments from the dive into the school.
Roy Johnson interned on the New York Jets under Bill Belichick and Bill Parcells
Johnson is a really interesting dude. He joined the Jets in the late ‘90s, and rather than gain a desire to go into coaching, his passion was immediately directed on running the business side of things, with aspirations of becoming a general manager. It’s here the groundwork for Bishop Sycamore began. Despite being the coach of a fraudulent team,
The entire plan for Bishop Sycamore was basically an insurance scam
Upon learning it would take $150 million in funding to build a school and a sports program, Johnson formulated an insurance scheme to get funding. It involved signing church parishioners up for life insurance policies, with wording that left a percentage of their policy on death to the school.
Johnson has a really disturbing way of viewing athletes
There’s a prevailing theme throughout Roy Johnson’s interviews in BS High, and it’s that he’s totally unhinged. Early in the documentary, he explains that part of the appeal of being a coach or general manager is being the man in charge of gladiators. Later when he’s probed about why he didn’t put a stop to his scheme when funding ran out he quips “I’m Magneto, these are my mutants, and I’m fighting for them.”
There’s a power-obsessed nature to his character which is undeniable. He consistently views athletes as peons to be directed, and that’s particularly vile when it comes to these being kids who have committed to his fake high school from troubled backgrounds. Johnson notes that several of his players were homeless, and justified continuing his scam by saying to do otherwise would leave them on the street.
Bishop Sycamore targeted, and preyed on kids with shaky family lives
There was a clear pattern here. Player after player who suited up for Bishop Sycamore explain how they came from broken homes and looked for father figures in their lives. Every one of them was hoping for an opportunity to improve their lives, and Johnson (along with co-founder Andre Peterson) were happy to sell them on the dream that they would get to a D1 school and eventually make it to the NFL.
Everybody was ripped off by Roy Johnson
His video team, sold on the idea that they’d become the communications department for his fake school were paid $60 for gas in exchange for six months of work. An $800 paintball outing for the players, designed to project wealth was unpaid by Johnson. Player housing was booked on net/90 terms with hotels and never paid, with managers banging on the doors of the players demanding payment.
Johnson fed the kids by scamming grocery stores
At one point the Bishop Sycamore founder quips with pride about a “hustle” he ran, which involved calling grocery stores are ordering 25 rotisserie chickens, then not picking them up. At this point he’d wait until night, go to the store, knowing they’d be drastically marked down to $2 each so the store could recover its losses.
Johnson would buy them all to feed his players. That was a good day.
Most of the time players would go hungry, or be fed leftovers. It led to players being forced to steal frozen meals from Walmart just so they could eat that day.
Their ineptitude masked the fraud when it comes to age
The biggest saving grace for Bishop Sycamore was that they sucked. This allowed them to field players who were as old at 23-year-old, being substantially larger than their opponents — while not getting caught because the team just kept on losing.
This allowed nobody to really question why their players looked so old, or why some had precious JUCO careers, because the expectation was that adults should dominate kids — and when they didn’t the assumption was this couldn’t be a fraud.
Bishop Sycamore didn’t just destroy their players mentally and physically, but financially
When Roy Johnson didn’t pay for his players’ hotel rooms it caused a massive wave of problems for the players. He had the kids sign for the rooms in their names, meaning the eviction notices ended up in their names. This affected their credit, future ability to rent, and the permanent records.
It gets worse…
Bishop Sycamore took out dozens of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans in players’ names
Designed to help small businesses during Covid, Bishop Sycamore used players’ social security numbers to take out $20,000 loans in their names to prop up the program and keep it going during financial collapse. The players had no knowledge of the loans in their names.
They have no remorse
Even after watching their players pour out their hearts about how Bishop Sycamore ruined their lives, the response is that the players are liars and didn’t appreciate what they did for them.
Johnson claims his school isn’t dead and he had “big plans” for his future. He intends to keep on going.
