ESPN's Avoidable Fumble

Sometimes, an unchecked lie works. Sometimes, fooling others really does lead to success, especially when I’s aren’t dotted and T’s aren’t crossed.

Take film magnate David Geffen.

Geffen never attended UCLA. He never even finished college. He had brief stops at the University of Texas, Brooklyn College and Santa Monica City College, but knew none of these would look impressive on his resume. So, he lied and claimed UCLA as his alma mater — and it worked.

Geffen knew the type of people the William Morris Agency hired for its intern program, so he carefully crafted his lie around being the perfect candidate, hoping no one would check. But it was ultimately his talent, not his lie, that allowed him to have one of the most successful careers in all of Hollywood.

Other times, though, an unchecked lie doesn’t work. By now, you’ve likely read about how a random high school from Ohio called Bishop Sycamore duped Paragon Marketing Group into believing it was a powerhouse football program with several major college prospects. Bishop Sycamore made it all the way onto ESPN this past weekend, embarrassingly losing to juggernaut IMG Academy, 58-0.

Bishop Sycamore didn’t have top prospects, went 0-6 last season, and, above all, may not even be a real school.

If anyone at either ESPN or Paragon had actually vetted this program, it would have been easy to uncover it was lying — about everything. Instead, the network and the agency came off as oblivious and inept.

Rather than just laughing at this debacle, though, we should really revisit our own process of checks and balances, and make sure that we’re doing the proper research before making any hiring decisions.

Paragon and ESPN didn’t set criteria, and thus, were subject to random applicants — leaving them completely vulnerable to a major mistake. If Paragon had demanded the following, for example, Bishop Sycamore never would’ve even gotten past step one:

1. Five year won/loss record from the Ohio High School Association

2. State championship titles

3. Attendance at all home and away games — with pictures

4. List of 10 athletes who became scholarship players at Power 5 Conference schools

What many people forget about the hiring process is that elimination is your best friend. Setting specific criteria before reviewing applicants allows you to find the types of people you want and to build an organization from the inside out. Teams become what they hire, and unless the leaders set the criteria based on an overarching philosophy, big mistakes will occur. Some might claim that narrowing the search like this will cast aside potential stars. But missing out on a couple of qualified people is still better than adding several horrible fits.

With Google searches and so much other technology available in 2021, unlike during Geffen’s era, Bishop Sycamore should have been easy to eliminate.

The lesson we can all learn from both the Geffen and Bishop Sycamore cases is: Set criteria, have a process of checks and balances, and never just assume anything to be true.