Why Did a High School Football Powerhouse Fire Its Coaches and Cancel the Season?

Cardinal Ritter College Prep in Missouri pulled the plug on its program

Why Did High School Football Powerhouse Fire All Coaches and Cancel Season?
A stock image of a football. (Image by filterssofly from Pixabay)

A Missouri high school has pulled the plug on its powerhouse football program after it was revealed that the coaching staff devised a scheme to use a suspended player during a game in August.

During their game against the Nazareth Academy in suburban Chicago, coaches at Cardinal Ritter College Prep identified junior running back Bill Jackson as a different person the team’s official roster and sent him onto the field with a different number, an investigation by STLhighschoolsports.com first uncovered.

Jackson was ineligible to play under National Federation of State High School Associations guidelines because he had been ejected during Cardinal Ritter’s last game the season before, the 2018 Class 3 state championship game.

Ignoring the rule, Cardinal Ritter coach Brandon Gregory and his staff sent Jackson onto the field under the assumed identity of a freshman player named Marvin Burks. Fortunately, someone noticed that Burks and Jackson had remarkably similar arm tattoos.

Once the incident came to light, Cardinal Ritter decided to self-impose sanctions on the Lions and fired Gregory and the rest of his coaching staff. In three seasons leading the Lions, Gregory coached the team to a 28-8 record and finished as the Class 3 runner-up last season.

Longtime Cardinal Ritter athletics director Preston Thomas, who coached the Lions to three state basketball championships and was inducted into the Missouri Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame 2017, “made the decision to retire.”

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