The 6 most shocking moments and revelations from HBO's new Bishop Sycamore documentary

Bishop Sycamore is back in the news.

Almost two years after the fictitious school exposed itself by playing high-school powerhouse IMG Academy in a game televised on ESPN, HBO Sports released its long-awaited documentary on Bishop Sycamore on Wednesday night. It is available to view on the network's streaming platform, Max.

The film, aptly titled "BS High," offers a jarring and unsparing look at the story that made national news in the fall of 2021 − prompting state investigators in Ohio to look into the school and conclude it was "not a school as it purports on paper to be." It also features excerpts of interviews with the man at the center of the con, Bishop Sycamore coach and creator Roy Johnson.

While the basic threads of the story are, by this point, fairly well-known, "BS High" features several stunning anecdotes and new revelations about the scam, and Johnson's role in it.

Here are six of the biggest bombshells and memorable scenes from the documentary:

Alleged PPP loan fraud

Perhaps the most significant nugget of news comes midway through the documentary, with the revelation that "dozens" of loans were filed under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) in the names of Bishop Sycamore players. PPP loans were intended to provide an avenue for small businesses to pay their employees during the COVID-19 pandemic but wound up being a source of frequent fraud.

"Roy pressured the kids into doing PPP loans, and (he) made it seem that the money was going to go towards tuition," former Bishop Sycamore player Justin "J.D." Daniel says in the film.

Johnson denies the allegation when pressed by filmmakers on camera.

"I didn't get any PPP loans. We didn't get any PPP loans," he says. "I would not tell 40, 30, 20 kids to all take out PPP loans from the United States government. I don't even trust the United States government!"

Johnson later adds that "legally, I did not commit any fraud."

"I just hang out in the gray," he says. "What do they call me, Loophole LeRoy?"

The geese incident

Another former Bishop Sycamore player, Adrian "Pahokee" Brown Jr., tells the story of a bizarre incident with Johnson early one morning, when they were driving and encountered five geese in the road.

"(He) goes full-speed and runs the geese over, with no remorse," Brown says. "... This man said, 'I've got to show you (expletives) what it's like to go to war. (There's) nothing like the smell of fresh blood in the morning."

Brown says Johnson then went in reverse, at full speed, and hit them again.

When asked about the incident by one of the film's directors, Martin Desmond Roe, Johnson admits to hitting a goose. "It was by accident, but then after I ran it over, I had to make a joke about it," he says.

A forged check

Kristi Ferguson, the mother of former Bishop Sycamore quarterback Trillian Harris, is one of two parents featured in the film. She says that, the day before Bishop Sycamore's 58-0 loss to IMG Academy, Johnson asked her to pick him up and go with him to pick up a check. She assumed this would entail going to a bank.

"He was like 'no, let's stop over at Kinko's,' " Ferguson says. "I'm like, 'oh, that's weird, because that's just printing.' "

She says Johnson told her he was getting a "hot check" to pay for the hotel at which they were staying, but promised to "move money around" and get it taken care of after the check bounced.

Johnson tells filmmakers that they ended up paying for the hotel rooms with a credit card anyways and "it's not attempted fraud, because the account was valid and there's money in the account."

"Coach Roy made it feel like it was OK to be a criminal," Daniel says.

The chicken 'hustle'

In one sequence, Roe asks Johnson if he's a con man. "No, that's not like my trade or profession," he answers.

But he does admit to orchestrating "hustles," including to obtain food for players.

Johnson explains that he would call a grocery store and order 25 rotisserie chickens, then not show up to get them at the specified pick-up time. Instead, he would go to the same store right before the deli closed, because he knew the store would have to mark down the price of the chickens to sell its surplus. He says he purchased them for $2 apiece.

"But I didn't have a choice," Johnson says. "Where am I going to find food to feed 50 kids?"

One player says in the documentary that "we had to steal TV dinners and stuff" at various times to eat.

Homeless assault

In another disturbing story from the film, former player Quincy Talmadge recalls a time that Johnson found an apparently-homeless man trying to break into his car.

Talmadge says the coach told players "the reason he's acting like this is because he never had a dad whoop his ass," then proceeded to whip the homeless man with his belt. Several players on the team also "got licks in," Talmadge says.

Johnson does not deny the incident occurred and makes an attempted joke about how the homeless man exaggerated the extent of his injuries. "The police show up and they're like, 'What happened? What's going on?'" Johnson says. "And (the homeless man is) laying there like, 'I know I shouldn't have broke into his car and took his stuff, but they shouldn't have done me like that! There was like 100 of them!' "

Talmadge's mother, Erica Cain, then says all of her kids are in college except Talmadge, who no longer trusts men and doesn't play football "because you (expletive) him up, you royally (expletive) my kid up."

'Can we take a break?'

In a particularly poignant moment, former player Isiah Miller begins to tear up on camera while talking about the extent to which Johnson damaged his life. "This really just broke me all the way, like all the way," he says. Brown calls Johnson "evil."

The documentary then shows Johnson and Andre Peterson, the other person behind Bishop Sycamore, holding a tablet and watching footage of the players making those comments. One of the filmmakers asks for their response.

"Can we take a break please?" Johnson asks.

He pauses, apparently to wait for the cameras and microphone to cut off − though the directors keep it rolling and candidly capture Johnson's reaction from there. "That's some (expletive) bull-(expletive)," he says before storming out of the interview room.

Contact Tom Schad at [email protected] or on social media @Tom_Schad.