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On 9/4/2025 at 10:49 AM, The Dog said:

Backstory on why they canceled:

Calif. high school forfeits entire football season as it faces massive scandal

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A private high school in the Los Angeles area has forfeited its 2025 varsity football season in the wake of allegations that a local bagman funded the illegal transfers of five players to the team. 

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Bishop Montgomery High School in Torrance announced Tuesday it was suspending its season. The school is in the middle of an “internal investigation in coordination with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles Department of Catholic Schools,” after it self-reported California Interscholastic Federation-Southern Section violations.

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It was already a season to forget for the Bishop Montgomery Knights, even before the school announced its decision Tuesday. The team raised eyebrows this offseason when it picked up over 20 transfers. Suspicions that something was up were all but confirmed Aug. 20, when CIF-SS ruled five of those transfers ineligible for violating a bylaw about “Providing Incorrect, Inaccurate, Incomplete or False Information.” 

Just three days later, the Knights traveled to Hawaii to take on St. Louis School. Officials called the 34-27 loss early when a brawl broke out between the two sidelines and police intervened. The incident led to a wave of suspensions that forced Bishop Montgomery to forfeit its next game against Orange County powerhouse Mater Dei. A week after the game in Hawaii, the school parted ways with head football coach Ed Hodgkiss.

Yet all of that paled in comparison with the revelation Monday that infamous high school booster Brett Steigh helped secure the wave of transfers to Bishop Montgomery. In an interview with On SI’s Tarek Fattal on the “Fattal Factor” podcast, Steigh, a local businessman who says “most of my money does come from gambling,” revealed he paid parents to get players to transfer to not just the Torrance program but also to Narbonne — where Steigh graduated from in 1992 — and St. Bernard. This marks the third school where Steigh’s association eventually led to penalties and violations. 

Narbonne was sanctioned in 2018 and 2024for illegal transfers. Steigh claimed that he never paid players in 2018, just a parent, which he said wasn’t illegal, and otherwise paid for better equipment and uniforms. Regardless, the first incident got Narbonne banned from the postseason in 2019 and 2020 and forced the team to vacate its 2018 title. In the latter case, multiple teams refused to play the school in protest of alleged rule violations, even before the punishment came down. Steigh began to back St. Bernard in 2019 when the school hired former Narbonne coach Manuel Douglas, who told the Los Angeles Times Steigh’s payments amounted to nearly $1 million to fund freshman transfers and school improvements. The partnership came to an end following an FBI and IRS investigation, and St. Bernard shut down its football season from 2021 to 2023.

 

The details of Steigh’s financial involvement with Bishop Montgomery aren’t clear, as he told Fattal he couldn’t “comment on any players” when pressed for details. However, he did say he supported the Knights with the knowledge of school president Patrick Lee. The school official told the LA Times that the claim was “an outright lie” and, speaking on behalf of himself and the school’s principal, denied ever meeting Steigh. Steigh also claimed that Hodgkiss did not have any knowledge of this and that he’s no longer backing high schools.

“I’m done. They can beat on someone else on Twitter now. I don’t give a damn,” he said. “I’m retired. I’m out. I just want to clear it up that it was all me, and nobody else. You didn’t have to fire coach Ed. … Ed’s a scapegoat for Pat Lee. Pat Lee is the one that’s complicit.”

While Steigh’s run as the “Money Man” might be over and done with in SoCal prep sports, the fallout from his latest venture could very well be just beginning. Per the LA Times, CIF Los Angeles City Section and Southern Section are investigating Steigh’s comments on the podcast.

 

It’s the wildest story in the area. I live about 1.5 miles from Bishop it’s the size of a 3 bedroom apartment and they scheduled mater dei ahahaha. Then they brought 25 kids in.  Rumint in the area some of the transfers were 19-20 years old some even said 21.  They almost beat Saint Louis Hawai’i squad until they started a fight.  Then the narbonne scumbag was touted as paying 50G plus to the players to transfer.     Season cancelled.  Some of the JV kids were allowed to transfer to mt daughters school to play 

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