College football is the undisputed dumbest sport in the world. This is not necessarily a bad thing – in fact, the lunacy of college football is what makes it so fun. From the process of recruiting to the games themselves, no sport provides the consistent silliness of college football. It’s perfect in almost every way.
One of the sport’s more underrated lovable things is the fact that its super weird stories are absolutely batsh*t insane. When college football gets silly, it gets really silly in ways that you never totally considered before.
Take for instance the recruitment of a guy named Unique Brissett. According to his 247Sports page (which has since been deleted for reasons that will become obvious in a second), he is a lightly-regarded wide receiver prospect out of Globe Institute of Technology, a for-profit school in New York City.
Here is what happens when you try to access the webpage for the GIT football team.
This is not to say that Globe Institute of Technology isn’t a real school – actually, hold that thought – it’s just that if you’d like to learn more about Brissett, you’re not finding much from his school. Which is unfortunate, because his 247Sports page is pretty bare, too, largely because he is a no-star prospect who no one has ever seemed to have heard of.
All of this seems pretty bland, right? An undersized kid (5’10, 157 pounds, again, hold this thought) from a junior college wants to play at the next level but there isn’t much known about him, largely because he is an undersized kid from a junior college. It is worth noting that this is actually Brissett’s second junior college – he allegedly attended Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, NY prior to his time at GIT.
So you can imagine everyone’s surprise when this rather innocuous JuCo kid dropped this highlight tape, which is seven minutes of fire.
He also dropped a list of his top-14 schools over the weekend. It is filled with a number of blue blood programs, such as Miami, Michigan, Penn State, and Texas. He’d even appeared to visit some of them, as he sent out tweets lauding the facilities at schools like Michigan State.
If this doesn’t pass your smell test, we don’t blame you. How does an undersized person so far under the radar get offers from so many Power Five schools without anyone seeming to know who they are?
As it turns out, they do not. Andrew Ivins of Inside The U got in touch with some people and learned the following things:
- The staffs of Miami and Kentucky had never contacted him, meaning they never offered him a scholarship.
- The pictures were stolen from the Twitter accounts of other recruits.
- The incredible highlight video? Those are highlights of someone else who is already going to an FBS school.
This is all kind of stunning. Saying you got a scholarship offer that you did not from one school is a sin in recruiting and is something that can be fact checked by a reporter with one phone call. Brissett, if that is a real person, did that with 14 schools. Plus he is listed at 5’10 and 157 pounds on 247Sports.
He’s 6’1, 185 pounds on his highlight video, which should set off every lie detector a person has.
Beyond this, we looked into the school where he ostensibly began his collegiate football career, Hudson Valley Community College. No one named Unique Brissett appears on the team’s 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, or 2011 roster. (We’ve reached out to a member of HVCC’s coaching staff and will update if we receive a response.)
Going even farther back, this page indicates that someone named Unique Brissett played high school football at the Bronx Academy of Letters and graduated in 2015. The issue is it does not appear that the Bronx Academy of Letters has a football program, save for a Hudl page that has two followers – one is an otherwise anonymous account named “Coach Hinds.” The other is an account called “DELETED HUDL” for a running back/wide receiver prospect who wears No. 56 and is listed at 6’3, 215 pounds.
The only things on this person’s account, as you can probably guess, are highlight videos that claim to show Unique Brissett. The most recent post is from October of 2015.
Needless to say, Brissett has tried to disappear off the face of the earth. He has deleted his Twitter and Instagram accounts, although the @Recruit_Edits account that is mentioned in his top-14 tweet retweeted this from someone who sent out Brissett’s top-8.
After some digging, this looks to be another account for Brissett based on a number of tweets that feature images.
There is even an older top-5 which features none of the schools that made the top-8 that was tweeted out over the weekend.
Since this has happened, the person behind this account has changed their handle to @Briss_II (which was the original account that started all of this) and claims to be Brissett, who has taken joy in their fooling of outlets like ESPN and SB Nation because this was all part of a plan.
https://twitter.com/Briss_II/status/867231183935066114
https://twitter.com/Briss_II/status/867220496433262593
https://twitter.com/Briss_II/status/867154621940330496
This entire story is completely bizarre. It’s also not exactly clear how Brissett managed to get an account that has since been deleted on the usually fantastic 247Sports. The other major scouting services – ESPN, Rivals, and Scout – do not have records of him. He is, however, listed on a site called Next College Student Athlete, which lets high school athletes make their own profiles.
On it, Brissett is a 6’2, 215 pound running back/receiver prospect from Bronx Leadership Academy High School, which again does not appear to have a football program. SB Nation unearthed a Facebook account which allegedly belongs to Brissett. It says he went to school called Cardinal Spellman, and the person behind the Twitter account taking ownership of this prank seems to back up that this is true.
https://twitter.com/Briss_II/status/867228972681179137
Going even further, the site HowManyOfMe.com – which admits that it is not an absolute and that it may not have all the necessary data for something like this – shows that there isn’t anyone in the United States named “Unique Brissett.” (It is important to note that the person behind the account taking credit for this claims to originally be from Germany.)
For one last fun twist, let’s look back at Globe Institute of Technology. As it turns out, the university was closed down earlier this year.
We tried reaching out to the school’s former football coach, a man named Cameron Chadwick, but have yet to hear back. Additionally, we tried calling the university via telephone, at which point a message that said the school closed and that former students who want help with their transcripts (among other things) are advised to contact the New York State Education Department.
If Unique Brissett – assuming, you know, he’s a real person, which save for a random Twitter account isn’t quite clear – wants to play FBS football, he should probably get in touch with the Department soon.
Schools need to see that stuff if you want to go there, ya know.
