We love our fairy tales, here in America. Just look at all the fairy tales the Previous Occupant spun, and all of 'em that continue be spun by his lovesick groupies.
So maybe this story isn't as weird as it seems. Or maybe it's even weirder.
It's confusing and confounding and draped in questions, like tinsel on a Christmas tree. But here's the nut: It seems ESPN, which likes to put big-deal high school football teams on the air periodically, got slicked recently into putting a "team" on the air that doesn't actually exist.
OK. So the team exists, even though it's not much of a team. Somehow its coaches, or someone, talked their way into a televised game with a legit high school power, IMG Academy out of Florida, and got laminated 58-0.
It was frankly embarrassing for all parties -- including ESPN, which got righteously catfished. That's because the team represents a prep school, "Bishop Sycamore" from Columbus, Ohio, that apparently doesn't exist.
Well. OK, so it might exist, but if it does it's only an online entity. It has a website, but it's empty. It's not a member of the Ohio high school athletic association. There's never actually been a "Bishop Sycamore" in Ohio, and it has two listed addresses that seem more than a little suspect.
One is a duplex in a residential area. The other is the library at Franklin University in Columbus.
Further, its coach, Roy Johnson, is a con artist who's fielded fake high school teams before and currently has a warrant out for his arrest on domestic abuse charges.
The "team," meanwhile, was 0-6 last year and got poleaxed by everyone. And it played a game on the Friday night before it played IMG on Sunday.
All of which shifts the Blob's famously bent powers of imagination into hyperdrive ..
FORT WAYNE, In. -- Marvin "Big Boy" Merlin, the coach of a high school football team some suspect doesn't actually represent a high school, issued an impassioned rebuttal yesterday to the rumors swirling around his team.
"It does so exist," Merlin said of Bishop Herb High School. "Does so, does so, does SO."
Asked where the "school" is located, he waved a hand vaguely toward the southwest side of Fort Wayne, a city of 300,000 or so in northeast Indiana.
"Aw, it's over there somewheres," Merlin said. "You know, over where all the rich people live. It's right out there next to one o' them fancy housing developments -- the Swale-y Swales of Swale Hills, the Glen-dy Glens of Glen-dy Hollows, one o' them places."
When told no one has been able to locate it, Merlin scoffed.
"Well, you just ain't lookin' hard enough, then," he said.
There are other questions about Bishop Herb, some of which involve the players on the Fightin' Chardonnays' roster. A few, it seems, are rumored to be 27, 28, even 30 years old.
"Well, that's just ridiculous,'' Merlin said, a bit huffily. "They's all legit, and we got some good'uns. Our quarterback, Billy 'Early Withdrawal' Barrow, is a junior coll- er, junior transfer from Dirt Clod, Oklahoma. Got a heck of an arm, and he beat that armed robbery rap fair and square.
"And his favorite target? Shoo. Well, that's Homer 'Jailbreak' Jenkins, who came here from Hog Jowl Correctional in Alabama after an unfortunate dispute with the parole board. Kid can fly, I'm tellin' ya.
"We got a bunch o' other good kids, too. They ain't too big and they can' run a lick, but they'll hit ya, especially when you ain't lookin'. Just gotta teach 'em a little whistle discipline."
Asked how they were doing in "school", Merlin again waved his hand airily.
"Ah, they doin' fine," he said. "Found the cafeteria on the first day."
To date, Bishop Herb does not have a complete schedule. Merlin says he'd love to play the other Catholic schools in town, Bishop Luers and Bishop Dwenger, both of which have a deep and illustrious football tradition that includes a combined 15 state titles. But so far Luers and Dwenger have given Bishop Herb a wide berth -- wisely, most people in Fort Wayne seem to think.
"They just scared," said Merlin, whose team is 0-2 so far and been outscored 125-6.
Officials at Luers and Dwenger refused comment, aside from rolling their eyes, shaking their heads and maybe laughing a little.
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