Multi-hyphenate talent Kevin Hart and NBA agent Rich Paul reportedly are in line to turn what may be one of the year’s biggest sports stories into a docuseries: the truth behind Bishop Sycamore high school football team.
The alleged online charter high school was thrust into internet infamy after taking on the nation’s champion team, IMG Academy, during the “GEICO ESPN High School Kickoff” on Aug. 29. The unevenly matched teams ended the game with the unheard-of Ohio school suffering a 58-0 blowout, leaving viewers and the game’s announcers baffled as to how the unknown school landed a spot in the broadcasted showdown.
Further adding to the confusion was the lack of talent on the field, despite the alleged high school claiming to have D1 talent.
“Bishop Sycamore told us they had a number of division one prospects on their roster, to be frank, a lot of that we could not verify, and it did not show up in our database, they did not show up in any databases of other recruiting services, so it’s, okay if that’s what you’re telling us that’s fine, that’s how we’ll take it in,” said announcers Anish Shroff and Tom Luginbill as Bishop Sycamore’s team suffered injuries to both ego and body.
“From what we’ve seen so far this is not a fair fight and there’s gotta be a point now Luig where you do worry about health and safety….this could potentially be dangerous.”
Days after the horrendous loss, which also included two other games, news began circulating that the team’s head coach Roy Johnson was fired.
In a statement, ESPN said the bamboozling incident would never happen again. “We regret that this happened and have discussed it with Paragon, which secured the matchup and handles the majority of our high school event scheduling. They have ensured us that they will take steps to prevent this kind of situation from happening moving forward,” read the statement.
With all the elements of an unbelievable Hollywood story perfectly laid out, Hart said there was no way he could pass on the material. The “Night School” star and Paul, who is NBA player LeBron James’ agent, have already secured exclusive interviews with past and present players and coaches.
“As soon as I started following this story, I was immediately drawn to it and knew it was something that myself and my team at HartBeat had to dive into. HBP thrives in the doc-series space,” Hart told Deadline.
On social media, he also shared a post announcing the upcoming project as being “such an amazing story” and that “big things are coming!” His followers were equally excited judging by the flood of comments that read:
“Yeah we need this lmao we need to know how tf they finessed ESPN like that 😂😂😂”
“This man don’t waste no time 😂” and “It just happened 😂😂” wrote some social media users.
