As a coach, I would start every year with a greeting, talking to parents. Some parents are in difficult situations, and some are not, and when you get to know them you know the situation the kid is going through and what he’s dealing with. It gave me an idea of how to deal with each kid. Every kid is different, and I had to approach each one as such to bring out his best. I had one kid we called the Professor. His mother and his dad were educators, professional academics, but they brought their son back to the neighborhood because they wanted him to understand his own people. They didn’t want him to lose his culture. The Professor had a 4.0 all of his years of playing, just a really smart kid, but he had insecurities about being in this new environment. I had to treat him completely differently from how I’d treat a kid from a disadvantaged, broken home. Some kids were a bit more rough around the edges, and when you met their parents, the parents were a bit more rough around the edges, too. That kid may need some tough love where the Professor needed some nurturing and coaxing to feel a part of the group.
I had two goals. One was to teach these kids football, real football, the more intellectual, problem-solving side of the game. The other was to use football to give them life skills that they weren’t getting in the difficult situations they were living in. I wanted to teach the kids that sports was a means to an end, not an end in itself. Many of these Liberty City kids grew up thinking that it was either sports or jail or death. They couldn’t imagine a successful and useful life beyond that.
The first thing I did, before we even gave out the uniforms, was identify the kids who were struggling academically. Typically, we’d make kids go for tutoring if they were anywhere below a 2.0 GPA. I made it 2.5. If they had anything lower than that, I would automatically send them to get help, and I would make them bring in progress reports on a weekly basis to show me they were keeping up, because I knew during the football season a kid has the tendency of concentrating more on football than his academics. The ones who needed additional tutoring, they would come in before practice and put their thinking caps on before they put their football helmets on. In my first year as coach we had one kid who went from being an F student to an A student over the course of the season. I always told my kids, “I don’t care nothing about you playing in the NFL or anything like that. I just care that you get your diploma. Send me a copy when you graduate.” Years later, many of them did.
I used the game to give these kids structure and purpose, to teach them accountability and responsibility. I would give motivational speeches and teach them life lessons. Often their parents would sit in and build on what I was saying. I would tell them, “We got too many black men not taking care of their kids and not being held accountable and responsible.” I would tell them that football is a team sport. In life, you have to work with a team of people, whether you work from home, or a shop, or work in an office building with other people. Some days you get the things that you want, and some days you don’t, but it’s not about you. It’s about the team, the community.
I was straight with them and I made damn sure they knew the rules. I would tell them this sport is like a job, and we’re going to treat this like a job. If you’re a linebacker, you’re held responsible for taking care of the job of being a linebacker, just like your parents are responsible for putting a roof over your head and doing the things a parent has to do. You’re expected to be on time. When you’re not, there’s consequences. If you don’t show up for the class, you’re going to fail. If you don’t show up to your job, you’re going to lose it. I would tell them, “I’m not getting y’all ready for football, I’m getting y’all ready for life. You have to be accountable and responsible for whatever your job is.”
As a coach, I knew I was responsible for these kids, and I took it very seriously. I didn’t even let my players curse, if you can believe that.
I knew the problem for most of them was that they just didn’t have any money. They’re surrounded by all images of rich people on Miami Beach living the high life, and they don’t even have money for a sandwich or a comic book or a pair of sneakers without holes in them. Some of them were trying to help provide for their own mothers. That’s what drags so many of these kids into petty thieving and drug dealing; they just don’t see any other way. There’s no jobs in their communities, no malls where they can go sweep up the movie theater for minimum wage, even.
With these kids I was in the same position I was with the Miami Hurricanes guys. I could have given them money—here, here, and here—but that wouldn’t have taught them how to work for things. I didn’t want to teach them to be beggars. I would say, “Look, when you need something, don’t ask nobody for nothing, no dope dealer, nobody on the corner, nothing like that. Because they want something in return. Anytime you need something, come to me and I got work for you. You can wash the cars, you can cut trees in the yard, you can paint houses, you can wash windows. My neighbors and I got thousands of windows in our houses that need cleaning. Come by my house and do some work.” After they worked, I’d pay them and let them relax and swim in my pool, because they’d earned it. I always taught them you’ve got to work for everything you want in life.
I’ve mentored dozens of kids over the years. They’re all important to me and have incredible stories, but some of them stand out because they’ve achieved so much in the years since. Devonta Freeman was one of the nicest, sweetest kids I’ve ever known. He was well mannered, soft-spoken, just a lovable kid. He was also one of the most gifted athletes I’ve ever seen. He wasn’t tall, but he was strong. He played baseball and football. He later went on to be a running back, but in middle school we had him at quarterback with the Liberty City Warriors.
Devonta was the oldest of seven brothers and sisters being raised by a single mom in the Pork N’ Beans area of Miami. His father was in prison for his entire childhood. They had nothing, but he always had this sunny, happy-go-lucky way about him. These kids in the hood, they look at the TV and see guys riding around in Bentleys living in nice houses—things they’ll never have the opportunity to experience. Then they go home to shootings and killings. They’re mad. They’re angry. They’re frustrated. That was the thing about Devonta, he wasn’t mad. I had a lot of kids who were mad, but he wasn’t one of them.
I knew Devonta had the potential to take that attitude and do great things, but these kids, even the good ones, are always at risk. The violence is random. You don’t have to be caught up in the streets to catch a stray bullet. In addition, the temptations are always present. Simply being in this environment you’re around potential danger because you can always make a few dollars here or there doing something shady. If you see your mom struggling to feed seven kids, you might do anything. I took it on myself to be a father figure to Devonta. I’d tell him, constantly, “You’re the man of the house. You mess up, you’re not just messing up your life, but you’re going to mess up the lives of all of your brothers and sisters, because they’re depending on you.” He took it to heart.
Durell Eskridge played tailback for the Warriors. He was Devonta’s best friend. Durell’s father was gone, too, and his mother, Margaret, was selling sandwiches from a cart at the airport. She couldn’t make ends meet. There were times when they’d be homeless, Durell and his mom and his two sisters living in their car, or staying in a shelter for weeks at stretch. He might show up for practice having slept in the backseat of a sedan all night. During one particularly hard time, the family had nowhere to stay, and Devonta’s mom invited Durell to come and live with them. She already had seven kids in that cramped little Pork N’ Beans apartment, but Durell was like family. He went to live there and his mom would send food stamps to help with the meals.
Devonta and Durell were inseparable. If you saw one of them, you saw the other. They hustled for everything they could get. They’d hang around the gas station, pumping gas in exchange for tips. They’d hang around at the grocery store, carrying people’s bags for spare change. They were at my house, working, almost every weeken
d, mowing my lawn and cleaning my pool. They’d take the money I paid them and buy clothes that they’d share on alternate days.
Like all the kids in Liberty City, Devonta and Durell went to bed hearing gunshots every night. They walked past dead bodies and homicide crime scenes on the way home from school. I worried about them same as I worried about all the kids, but I knew they had each other for support. “You boys keep each other close. Watch each other’s back. Protect each other,” I told them. I was more worried about the kids who had no one. Imagine being twelve years old and seeing all this violence on the streets, and not having anyone to talk to.
Rakeem Cato was one of seven kids, too. His mother Juannese raised him and his siblings in a five-bedroom house in Liberty City and worked two jobs, at the hospital and as a clerk at PetSmart, to support them. Rakeem’s father had been in prison since before he was born, for armed robbery and second-degree murder. Devonta and Durell first brought Rakeem around when he was about twelve. I would have loved to have him on my team, but he was already playing quarterback for the Gwen Cherry Bulls, and we didn’t need any quarterbacks.
Rakeem’s situation wasn’t ideal, but his mom worked day and night to take care of him and his siblings. In April of 2005, right after he turned thirteen, his mother died of pneumonia. She was only thirty-nine. Rakeem’s eighteen-year-old sister took custody of him and the younger siblings and they moved into the projects in Overtown, but Rakeem was rarely there. After his mother died, he was lost. The kid walled himself off. He was drifting through school. He’d stay at his older brother’s, at friends’ houses, anywhere he could find a couch.
He wound up staying a lot of nights at my house. He wasn’t even one of my players, but that never mattered. He was a kid who needed direction, a hot meal. He was pretty much on his own, raising himself. He had this idea that he had to be a man. He’d always refer to the other players as “kids,” even thought they were all the same age. If some other players were horsing around, he’d say, “You kids need to stop playing.” He’d say, “Y’all got mammas and daddies at home. I gotta find my own food. I got to provide for myself. I’m a man.” But of course he wasn’t a man, he was just a kid with this idea that being a man meant being tough. He was mad at the world, at everything. He missed his mom. The kid needed a hug more than anything, but he hid the pain behind this gruff persona.
For Devonta, Durell, Rakeem, and the dozens of other kids like them, football was a sanctuary. It was the place they belonged, where they had a family, where they found father figures. Their dedication and concentration was phenomenal, because they used the game to block out all the hell they experienced on the streets and at home. When they suited up and stepped on the field, they brought everything they had. Most kids in youth sports, they’re doing it for fun, or because their parents want them to do it, but for the kids from Liberty City and Overtown, football provided a dream and a mission and a purpose in life. It was that passion that they brought when they absolutely destroyed every team they encountered.
My first year of coaching for Liberty City was, hands down, one of the most amazing years of my life. We had a team that was coming from a losing record. The year before they were 3–7. Nobody believed in them, but I knew I could turn them around and make them better. By the time we hit the field those kids had so much confidence, their skill level was so high, their fundamentals were so strong. They were ready. People would say, “Y’all coming out here like the University of Miami.” That’s how my guys played. They had that same swagger.
It’s competitive and all the other teams were gunning for us. When you go out to the field for a Pop Warner game in Miami, it’s crazy. It’s standing room only. There’s two thousand people in the bleachers, at the fence. It was even more so because Luther Campbell was coaching. Everybody wanted to beat the rapper’s team. People were coming out and talking trash. Many people thought, The rapper can’t coach. The kids were too young to even know what 2 Live Crew was, but I explained it to them: “You’ve got a bulls-eye on our backs because of who your coach is, but don’t let it bother you. You’re out here playing for yourself and your family, and that’s it. You concentrate on yourselves and each other.”
Those kids got out on the field and they just crushed it. My kids played at such a high level that people accused me of bringing in ringers from out of town, which I thought was hilarious. “Luke is paying the refs! Luke is paying the refs!” parents from the other teams were yelling. They couldn’t believe it. Game after game, we walked all over the competition. We won the city championship. We won regionals. One year out from a losing season, and we were going to the national championship at Disney World in Orlando.
Taking the kids to Disney World was an incredible experience because a lot of them were just like me when I was a kid, they’d never been past the Dade County line. Some had never even left the neighborhood. The whole trip was so foreign to them that it didn’t even seem possible. I made sure they knew it wasn’t a vacation, though. The other teams went to Space Mountain and rode the rides. We ran drills and studied tape. We bulked up at the Ponderosa Steakhouse for the games ahead.
We won our first two games, which put us in the national championship for our division against the Oak Grove Red Devils from San Jose, California. Looking back on it, the whole national championship game is a blur for me. I was so wrapped up in emotion the whole time, the adrenaline, the excitement, the anxiety. The Red Devils were a great team. It was neck and neck down to the last play. With less than a minute left we had possession. It was fourth down, we were down 20–14, and we were within passing distance of the end zone—one completion away from a tie, one extra point to win everything. We called a halfback pass across the middle. Our quarterback, Raymond Lee, stepped up to take the snap. Everybody in the stands was yelling, “Ray-mond! Ray-mond!” It was a perfect pass. Raymond drilled the football straight to the receiver. Kid was inches away from the goal line. He caught the ball . . . and then he dropped it. Incomplete pass. The other team took possession of the ball, took a knee, and won the game.
I cried like a baby. I literally fell to my knees and cried. It was the first time in any kind of football game that I had ever shed a tear. I had so much hope for those kids because they’d worked so hard and they went up there and accomplished so much. In the end, it didn’t matter. On the bus home there were still smiles all around. They were happy just to have played the game and gone as far as they did. And besides, we knew we’d get em next year.
The following season, after that first championship loss, most of my kids moved on to the next weight group. Normally, most coaches follow their group up to the next weight class, but I liked the age group I was working with. A few of my key players didn’t move up in weight, and I wanted the chance to make them team leaders and whip a whole new group into shape. We got the new kids in, and it was the same story as the year before. We rolled through our division like a steamroller. We mercy-ruled everybody. It was a massacre. Referees would ask me, “Can you put your second team in?” I would respond, “That is my second team.” We were beating teams 35–0 in the first half. I think we still own a Pop Warner record for points scored in a season. We went through the whole state of Florida blowing everybody out, and before long we were in the national championship again.
Back in Orlando again, we were a better team. The year before, as good as our players were, we were not as close a team as we could have been. There were some personality issues. But this year, the kids all banded together to form a perfect unit. When we arrived back at Disney World that December, I had no doubt that we were the best football team in the nation for our division. Miami had been battered by a terrible hurricane just a month before. All of my kids were scattered all over the city, commuting to different schools to finish out their terms, but we kept it together and stayed focused.
We beat Mesa Eastern of Arizona in the semifinals in a close game that took us to the championship against the Cedar Town Comets from Texas, a team th
at had previously won a national championship. Texas and Florida are the two biggest powerhouses in the country when it comes to football talent. This game was about bragging rights, and everyone knew it. The Comets were a great team, but the Warriors came to play. I told my kids that this was their game, that this was their year, that I had never coached or even seen a team this good before, that I was proud of every single one of them. Those kids were yelling their heads off as they hit the tunnel onto the field. Then they went out and beat those Texas boys 33–0.
Over the next couple years I dedicated myself more and more to the Liberty City Optimist Club. I was Luther Campbell, youth football coach and community organizer. Uncle Luke the rap star, I kept that guy around, too. He pays the bills, which is what allows me to dedicate myself to the program as much as I do. I put out my best-of album, a three-disc box set called My Life & Freaky Times. I starred in one season of a reality show for VH1, Uncle Luke’s Parental Advisory, starring me and my wife Kristen and two of my kids. I’d make personal appearances at clubs and festivals, but more and more my life centered around the young people of Liberty City.
The Book of Luke Page 26