Bishop Montgomery’s ex-football coach speaks out amid scandal – NBC Los Angeles

A fallout from a football scandal surrounding Bishop Montgomery High School in Torrance continued Thursday as the school president resigned days after the varsity football coach was fired. 

Ed Hodgkiss, the former head football coach of 15 years, spoke with NBC Los Angeles exclusively Thursday.

He said that he had planned to retire from the job at the Catholic high school, but instead, he was terminated right before Labor day.

“I fell in love with the school.” Hodgkiss said. “I want to give back if I could, and that’s one of my favorite parts of it. You don’t remember every game, but you remember every player.”

Hodgkiss said he always ran his program the same way as he said his focus was coaching the players. 

Then last December, according to Hodgkiss, he met with Bishop Montgomery’s now former President Patrick Lee and two others, who previously worked for the football powerhouse St. John Bosco.

“They approached me and said we can do the same thing at Bishop Montgomery,” Hodgkiss said, adding the three men had planned to hire a new coaching staff, build a new stadium and bring top players to the Torrance high school. 

When NBC Los Angeles asked him if the men said how they planned to transfer players to come to Torrance, Hodgkiss said they told him that they knew a lot of players.

In the end, 24 transfers ended up playing for Bishop Montgomery’s varsity football team, Hodgkiss said, explaining during a typical season, there were about four to five transfers.

But as players poured in, the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) deemed five of the 24 transfers ineligible. And days after that ruling, in a letter co-authored by then-school President Patrick Lee, Bishop Montgomery announced it suspended its varsity football season and said Hodgkiss was no longer an employee at the school.

“I got a 10-second call. (They said), ‘We have bad news. We’re letting you go,’” Hodgkiss recalled the conversation.

Darren Richie, Hodgkiss’s attorney, said his client’s termination is a “classic textbook example of being a scapegoat.”

“You can look at year 1 through 14 and determine what type of person he was, and what he would do with what he had. If he had any bone in his body to try to play that game, he could have done that on year 1 to impress the school … He didn’t do it,” 

NBCLA reached out to the former school president but did not hear back as of Thursday.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles Catholic Schools Regional Superintendent, which has handled the communication regarding the football program at the private Catholic school, declined to provide information about Lee’s resignation, saying it does not comment on personnel matters.