A private high school in California has forfeited its entire 2025 football season amid allegations that a local bagman funded the illegal transfers of five players to the team.
Bishop Montgomery High School – which is located in Torrance, a city in the Los Angeles area – announced Tuesday that it was suspending its season due to an ‘internal investigation in coordination with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles Department of Catholic Schools’.
According to San Francisco outlet SFGate, the school self-reported violations after it was revealed on Monday that Brett Steigh – an infamous high-school booster – helped seal a number of illegal transfers to their varsity football team.
They raised eyebrows in the offseason after completing over 20 transfers, before the California Interscholastic Federation-Southern Section ruled on August 20 that five of them were ineligible due to a bylaw about ‘providing incorrect, inaccurate, incomplete or false information’ allegedly being violated.
During a recent interview with Sports Illustrated’s Tarek Fattal, Steigh admitted he paid parents to convince players to transfer to the Torrance program, as well as Narbonne – the school he graduated from in 1992 – and St. Bernard.
Bishop Montgomery are the third school which has been hit with penalties and violations because of his association.
A private high school in California has forfeited its entire 2025 football season amid allegations that a local bagman funded the illegal transfers of five players
Narbonne received sanctions in 2018 and 2024 for illegal transfers, with the first seeing them banned from the postseason in 2019 and 2020 while being forced to vacate its 2018 title.
The latter case saw multiple teams refuse to line up against them in protest of their alleged rule violations.
As for St. Bernard, Steigh – who claims most of his money comes from gambling – began to back the school financially when they hired former Narbonne coach Manuel Douglas in 2019.
Douglas told the Los Angeles Times that his payments to fund freshman transfers and school improvements amounted to almost $1million.
The partnership eventually came to an end following an investigation by the FBIO and IRS, before St. Bernard suspended its football season from 2021-23.
Steigh claims he supported the Knights with the knowledge of school president Patrick Lee, however that allegation has been refuted by a school official, who described it as an ‘outright lie’.
It was already a season to forget for Bishop Montgomery Knights football team before the decision to forfeit. Just three days after they were deemed to have violated a CIF-SS bylaw, a brawl broke out during their match against Hawaii-based St. Louis.
Officials called their 34-27 loss early when the wild scenes occurred between the two sidelines, before police were called to the venue. The incident resulted in a number of suspensions which forced the Knights to forfeit its next game.
