Sarah Phillips, the former ESPN freelance writer who was implicated in scamming several people in an article from Deadspin.com yesterday, may have been a student at Oregon State U.
According to the office of the registrar, a Sarah Jean Phillips attended OSU from fall of 2007 until summer of 2011. She was studying psychology but did not graduate.
A man by the same name of an alleged accomplice mentioned in the article, Nilesh Prasad, also used to attend OSU. He attended from fall of 2004 until he graduated in spring of 2009 with a degree in general science, pre-nursing education.
The location registered with the state of Oregon for Phillips’s and Prasad’s Sports Comedy Network LLC, is a west Corvallis apartment. No one answered the apartment door this morning.
The unit next to it is currently unoccupied. Two neighbors said they believed apartment G103 is occupied by two females in their early 20s, but said they didn’t know the tenants.
The neighbors had not heard previously about the Deadspin.com report.
One Corvallis resident, 39-year-old Chris Singer, read the Deadspin.com report last night and immediately recognized the Sarah Phillips in the article.
Singer claims that he used to play soccer with Sarah Phillips in a co-ed recreational indoor league last fall at the Corvallis Sports Park. Singer said that Phillips claimed in the parking lot one day after a game that she wrote for ESPN’s Page 2.
“I know Sarah told me and a few others while we were having a conversation in the parking lot after a game that she was a writer for ESPN’s Page 2,” Singer said early Wednesday morning. “I knew nothing about it, but it didn’t strike me as strange or odd because I know lots of students and younger people write for SBNation, which I always thought was reminiscent of Page 2. She told us she was writing college football. This was August or September, I think, so it makes sense.”
Singer can confirm that the brunette in the pictures on Deadspin.com is the girl he played soccer with. He also confirmed that Sarah Phillips’s Twitter (@sarahphilli) avatar picture is of the girl he played soccer with.
“I am 100 percent positive the picture of the brunette on the website is Sarah Phillips, who I played soccer with,” Singer said. “When I saw her name on Twitter, I recognized the name so I read the story. When I saw Corvallis mentioned and I saw the photos I was incredulous. I couldn’t believe it was that girl from soccer.”
Singer could not confirm that the girl in the video that accompanies the Deadspin.com article was the Sarah Phillips he knew. The video was shot recently, and Singer has not seen or heard from Phillips since their soccer season concluded in September.
Singer said that Phillips did not strike him as the shady individual she is portrayed to be in the article.
“By all appearances she just seemed like your average college student,” Singer said. “Nice friendly, was funny. Good soccer player. Fun to have her part of the team. No indication she was shady or sketchy.”
The two played together on a “house” team — meaning they didn’t have a team to begin with so they just signed up and the league organizers put them on a team with other stray individuals.
To Singer’s knowledge, Phillips did not have any friends on the team.
UPDATE: Spokesperson at Corvallis Sports Park confirmed Singer and Phillips were on the same roster of a co-ed recreational soccer team (ages 13 and up) last August and September.