How did ESPN get duped into putting an apparently fake high school's football team on national TV?

Awful Announcing

The story of Bishop Sycamore, an apparently fake online charter school, has gotten even more bizarre. The Ohio team played Sunday in the Geico Kickoff Classic, a series of seven high school games across ESPN networks over the weekend featuring some of the country’s best high school teams. But unbeknownst to ESPN, Bishop Sycamore played Sunday two days after playing another game on Friday. Not only that, but Bishop Sycamore didn't have enough players to field an offense and defense. So the players played both ways in two games within three days, which is considered extremely dangerous for a physical sport like football. As Awful Announcing notes, "it looked like Bishop Sycamore had mismatched helmets and potentially not enough helmets for the entire team. That’s despite the roster being reported to be very small: just 30-35 players, hence the two-way participation...Friday’s game also seemed to suggest Bishop Sycamore might not have an away white jersey; both teams played in black, which obviously makes it hard on spectators and even the players themselves to tell teams apart." ESPN, meanwhile, claims it sounded the alarm weeks ago. Yet the game was broadcast Sunday with two announcers calling the game remotely.