The activity on 22nd Avenue hardly resembled the early stages of rush hour bubbling throughout other areas of South Florida. The proliferation of churches, bus-bench advertisements and laundry facilities seen around these parts prove a conspicuous signal that you’re a ways away from the glamour of South Beach.
There’s a liquor store the color of the Purple Rain VHS box and houses painted spearmint and winterfresh. There's a peculiarity about this particular slice of America. A little further down the street, a sign reads "95th Street," which means Miami Central High School—winner of the last three FHSAA Class 6A state championships—is a few blocks away.
After turning into Central’s parking lot, the school band’s rendition of “Coming to America” serenades a walk to the athletic facility. Soon you get to a weight room and a courtyard full of teenagers, many in Rivals and Nike camp Dri-FIT shirts.
Study hall has ended, and it is time for the Rockets to get to work. Half of the team is inside lifting, and the other half is outside walking high hurdles and turning ropes. These aren’t the only athletes getting ready for autumn, though. Home from spring break is a group of Central alums, including Florida State freshman running back Dalvin Cook, who will likely be FSU’s featured player for his sophomore season.
“Here it’s more of a family,” Cook said. “We come back, we work out together. Everybody—we connect.”
Last year, Cook was one of six players from Miami-Dade County ranked in Rivals' 100. And in last year’s NFL draft, Teddy Bridgewater, Lamarcus Joyner, Stanley Jean Baptiste and John Brown were all picked within the first three rounds.
This trend of excellence will continue in this year's draft with Miami Hurricane prospects Ereck Flowers, Phillip Dorsett and Duke Johnson, along with Alabama’s Amari Cooper—all Miami-Dade products—expected to hear their names called somewhere in the early rounds.
Scout.com analyzed the previous three drafts and concluded that South Florida, with 57 players drafted in the last three years, was by far the area with the most players drafted. The entire Los Angeles area was second with 42, but even that is misleading.
The author broke those two areas down by county. L.A. County, with 17 pros, tied for seventh with four regions, including Ft. Lauderdale-Broward County in South Florida. First place was a tie at 27 between the Dallas-Ft. Worth area and Miami-Dade County.
While football heads may not be surprised, that statistic becomes jarring when juxtaposed with the fact that the Dallas-Ft. Worth area covers more than 9,000 square miles, while Dade County spans about 2,000. Miami-Dade also has a population of about 2.5 million compared with Dallas-Fort Worth’s 6.5 million and L.A. County's approximately 10 million. By almost any measure, there is no other area that can stake a claim to be the NFL’s hotbed of talent.
In Miami they don’t play football—they "do" football.
A quick list of Miami greats will, of course, yield memories of Hurricane legends like Andre Johnson, Willis McGahee, Antrel Rolle, and the late Sean Taylor. But closer examination leads to names of South Florida natives from smaller college programs—guys such as Florida International’s T.Y. Hilton and Central Michigan’s Antonio Brown. In the last 10 years, there has not been an NFL draft without a player from Dade County taken in the first three rounds.
And they succeed in the pros, too. In 2013, for instance, there were four Miami natives in the Pro Bowl (Brown, Johnson, Frank Gore and Rolle) and another five picked in the first five rounds of that year’s draft.
Many of the area's powerhouse public schools play their home games at the 10,000-seat Traz-Powell Stadium, the mecca of high school football in Miami situated on Miami-Dade Community College North Campus. Some of the bigger rivalry games used to be moved to the Orange Bowl and are now played at Florida International’s stadium. It's serious business.
Luther Campbell—of the infamous 1980s rap group 2 Live Crew—is now a godfather of Miami due to his impresario-like role with the region’s Optimist Youth Football. He said in the documentary The U that football is to Miami what gymnastics is to China. Former Pro Bowl linebacker and Miami native Jonathan Vilma believes the quote is a bull's-eye.
“When you think of gymnastics and you think of China, you think of excellence,” Vilma said. “You think of demanding, you think of a regimen—very strict regimen. I definitely think that is relatable to Miami.”
From his shoulders up through his neck, Ben Hanks looks like a linebacker. He was a three-year starter for the Florida Gators from 1992-1994 when they won three straight SEC championships. His 95-yard interception return sealed a 12-0 regular season in ’95 before his squad lost in the Fiesta Bowl to Nebraska. He then spent two years in the NFL for the Minnesota Vikings and Detroit Lions. His legacy, however, starts and ends in Miami.
He has been running Gibson Park, a community center in Overtown, for some time now. The Robin’s egg blue building sits about two minutes off the Port of Miami/Orange Bowl exit on I-95. Here you can catch Super Pee Wee football games. Super Pee Wee. While some are questioning whether six- and seven-year-olds should be playing football, there are kids in this region who strap on pads at three and four years old. The goal here is to not have the kids bogged down by rules, just to get them used to wearing equipment, running and hitting.
“The only thing that scares me is if they'll get burned out,” Hanks said. “Football is all they see. This is a football town, it’s what we do. I think the kids from one to two years old, they got a brother seven or eight, they spend all day at the football field, and they just naturally gravitate to that sport.”
It can start there now, but with Hanks it started in the late 1970s with a juice carton or bent can of soda. They would throw it up, and whoever caught it would have to make what seemed like the whole neighborhood miss on their way to a makeshift end zone. He began organized football when he was seven the same way most of the Liberty City and Overtown kids did then, riding the No. 27 bus to play for Miami Beach.
This was before Luke Campbell helped start Optimist football’s Liberty City Warriors, which sparked the Overtown Tornadoes and other programs that would dominate the Greater Miami Pop Warner League. One of the teams from this league frequently wins the Pop Warner national championship in Orlando, Florida (every year since 2009).
Today, it is hard to meet a man in Dade County who hasn’t spent some time playing football. Thousands of kids sign up for Pop Warner and the Florida Youth Football league, among others. Many continue careers at one of the Dade County public high schools that seem to rotate power on a whim. Hanks played at Miami Senior High, while Campbell attended Miami Norland. Recently, Central and Booker T. Washington, located behind Gibson Park where Hanks is a volunteer coach, have put a stranglehold on football in the state of Florida.
The Miami Hurricanes teams from 2000-02 are considered among the greatest collections of talent in the history of college sports. Some of the best players to ever play in South Florida went 35-2 during that time and won the school’s fifth national championship. Vilma played on those teams but knew many of the Hurricanes from his days at Coral Gables High School.
“Frank Gore was my running back for three years, he was a year under me. We battled all through camp and all through spring practice,” Vilma said. “We played against Andre Johnson. He went to our rival high school. We played him, and we played against Roscoe Parrish at our rival high school. I played against Willis McGahee in the playoffs. I watched Santana Moss when he played at Carol City. I played with Antonio Bryant for two years, then he went on to Northwestern. We weren’t even in awe of talent anymore. It was just about competing.”
Bridgewater starred on the tail end of Northwestern’s dominant teams of the 2000s. Growing up in Liberty City, he was already dealing with common inner-city problems such as constant relocation and the constant struggle to escape or avoid poverty when his mother, Rose Murphy, was diagnosed with breast cancer. He originally dropped out of school and took on some manual labor jobs to help out around the house. The school notified her of his truancy, and she then explained to Bridgewater that the best thing he could do was receive an education and play football.
“It was an outlet,” Bridgewater said. “I was able to put all my anger on the football field. It made the game come much easier. It wasn’t too much [anger]. I just didn’t know how to grasp everything being such a young guy.
“We’re able to take out all of our frustrations, whether we’re not the smartest guys in the classroom or the most wealthy in the neighborhood. You’re able to let it all out on the football field and prove that it’s more than a game.”
Dade County kids do not grow up shielded from the harsh realities of the world, like others. Their reality is a place that, outside of football, doesn’t get much attention from the rest of the area. Those palm trees don’t look so nice when they're shading decaying row houses. It’s hard to appreciate the wide array of colors while reading an article about 10-year-old Marlon Eason being killed in the street while chasing a basketball, or about University of Florida quarterback Treon Harris’ cousin being shot dead 15 blocks away two hours prior.
Last year, prior to being drafted in the fourth round by the Atlanta Falcons, Liberty City native Devonta Freeman reflected on growing up in the Pork 'n' Beans projects.
“You can walk down the street and somebody could start shooting,” Freeman told the Miami Herald's Manny Navarro. “An argument can break out, people start fighting. Somebody could rob you.”
The running back said making it out was down to tunnel vision; his eyes were on football.
Reading an article about a predominantly black crowd of 3,000 people watching a youth football game inspired Robert Andrew Powell to write his book We Own This game: A Season in the Adult World of Youth Football. He was struck by a particular cultural enthusiasm for football, a badge of honor for an ignored group in the region.
“No community has been [in Miami] longer than the black community,” said Powell. “But they have the least amount of political power.”
According to Powell’s book, nearly half of the residents who signed the charter for Miami in 1896 were black.. Initially, conditions were what you’d expect for blacks in the Reconstruction Era South. They lived in Overtown, then called Colored Town or Nigger Town, with no electricity or indoor plumbing amid other deplorable conditions. To combat this, the Liberty Square projects were constructed in Liberty City, and by the mid-1900s both Overtown and Liberty City were thriving. Overtown was known as the Harlem of the South.
The early 1960s, however, brought the construction of I-95. The American interstate system has gutted black neighborhoods throughout the country, and Miami's was no exception. It was built through Overtown, resulting in the relocation of 30,000 black Miamians, helping to collapse what had grown into a strong, working-class black enclave. By the 1980s, Overtown and Liberty City were marked by poverty and violence. Escape routes were few.
This goes a long way toward explaining the region’s desperate pursuit of football. For many kids in Dade County, football can’t afford to be looked at as a whimsical activity.
“I preach to the kids that the last three years at Booker T. Washington, we had classes of 15 or more kids go to [college],” Hanks said. “In 10 years, that’s 150 kids you’ve got from this neighborhood to go to college. What type of people will they see there, what type of role models? That’s been my vision since I started working at this park.”
The phrase "running for your life" has a whole new meaning in Miami.
Every bench press, every wind sprint, every hour spent studying the playbook could bring someone a step closer to a future that can realistically lead to a college classroom and, in this community, a slightly more realistic look at a professional football career.
Unfortunately, that type of professional energy can lead to behavior that most people would, at least on many levels, deem unethical.
Taurean Charles was a linebacker for Northwestern High in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He was considered one of the best defensive players in the country and the focus of a documentary titled Year of the Bull (warning: NSFW). The movie gives insight into what he went through as a teenager, trying to navigate the world of local notoriety and his own personal struggles.
The classic scene in the movie shows Charles back in practice after suffering a neck injury in the previous game. He understands there is a lot riding on his future and doesn’t feel the need to give his all in a tackling drill. His coach disagrees and does not take kindly to Charles' challenging his authority in front of the team. He takes Charles to the ground, and the players have to separate them.
“He wanted to see me do well. I didn’t understand at the time. I had a neck injury and didn’t want to risk further injury,” Charles said. “I had already proven myself around the country. I probably had more than 20,000 college letters in my garbage bag. After just leaving the hospital with two pinched nerves in my neck, I don’t need to duke it out in practice. We chopped it up at the end. I understand. I let any of my guys get away with something now, they’ll think anyone can get away with it.”
This puts the grave seriousness of Miami football in context. A teenager blindsided by an enraged adult now looks back on the incident with what you could almost characterize as empathy.
That type of incident can perhaps be viewed as just the inherent product of a game enslaved to adrenaline and testosterone. But the region’s fixation on the game can also lead to illegal and dangerous behavior. Johnson played Optimist football for the Liberty City Warriors. He learned to keep his head on a swivel for more than linebackers at a young age.
“It was tough to stay focused at times as a kid because there was a lot going on around you” Johnson said. “There would be shootouts at the games, and they’d have to cancel the game. It was part of the game we were kind of used to happening so much. We were always on standby because we knew anything can happen at any given time with people betting on games and betting on kids.”
In 2011, ESPN's Outside the Lines released a report on gambling in the South Florida Youth Football League that resulted in nine people, including some directly associated with the league, being arrested and 10 teams leaving the league.
Bunche Park was in that league, and Bridgewater was well aware of the gambling. This went on through high school.
“You would hear guys who would bet on the games, they would come up to the fences and shout your name and say, ‘Hey man, listen, my house is on the line, you gotta come through for me,’ and things like that,” Bridgewater said. “You're talking about a 15-year-old teenager having the responsibilities of trying to win a football game so that this guy can continue to live in the home that he is betting on. It taught me how to deal with pressure. It was bizarre.”
Those types of stakes can lead to some frightening reactions from spectators.
“We had a rough patch in our season, so they slashed our coach's tires. It was just crazy,” Bridgewater said. “One game, someone launched a bottle from the stands and threw it at one of our coaches during the game.”
In 1999, the two best teams in Florida were Northwestern and Miami Jackson. Participants included Baltimore Ravens linebacker Elvis Dumervil, former Tampa Bay Buccaneers receiver Antonio Bryant and former Miami Dolphins offensive tackle Vernon Carey. The game was a defensive struggle, but Jackson had a chance to seal the victory with a punt late in the fourth quarter. The punter bobbled the snap, and the Bulls recovered. The next play was a game-winning touchdown pass to Bryant. Northwestern eventually won the state championship.
“That punter was distraught, obviously, and he was distraught because there were a lot of people that bet on the game,” Vilma said. “I heard his arms and legs were broken.”
“Stay on your feet!”
“He dipped his shoulder coach; nothing I could do.”
The Rockets are on the practice field now, and even with no pads the cleats, can be clearly heard viciously ripping at the dirt. The time is approaching 7:30 p.m. and the final session for the day—11-on-11—is winding down. A look from the stands does not do the speed on the field justice. Running backs stop and accelerate through holes like fast cars on I-95. Wide receivers battle corners up the sideline in blurs.
Here at Miami Central, this is a small glimpse of the Dade County football machine. There are people in the stands watching and letting their opinions be heard just as loud as they will be at Traz-Powell in September.
Football may be taken too seriously in Miami, and it may be the furthest thing from a surefire way out of the inner city. However, it is undeniable that excellence and pride covered that football field like a mosquito net. Everyone involved with football in South Florida swells with the same pride when the subject is broached. They can’t wait to talk to their friends about the next Duke Johnson or the next Teddy Bridgewater they saw at the 75-pound Optimist game and gloat for the rest of their lives if their predictions turn out to be clairvoyant.
So when you hear Amari Cooper’s name in the first five picks of the draft followed by as many as five other names in the first three rounds hailing from Dade County, realize what you’re observing: the children carrying on the family business.