Commentary: Focus on Muck Bowl needs to remain on football

Friday, November 13, 2009
by Dave George

There's no way to feel about the Nu'Keese Richardson story but lousy.

His arrest for alleged involvement in a Tennessee armed robbery attempt is the dark cloud hanging over tonight's Muck Bowl.

This is supposed to be Pahokee vs. Glades Central, a glorious high-school football summit viewed for hundreds of miles around and then reviewed for years on top of years.

Instead conversation has turned to another confrontation: the Nu'Keese that everybody in Pahokee thought they knew vs. the Nu'Keese who wound up in the back of a patrol car early Thursday morning, hands cuffed behind him, head bowed.

Richardson was one of the unquestioned stars of recent Muck Bowls, and the former leader of a Pahokee program that's won five of the last six Class 2B state championships.

Is this any way for fans of the Blue Devils and Raiders to remember him now, not running free down the sidelines at the Muck Bowl but cooped up in a Knoxville, Tenn., jail cell?

"Do not blow it," Glades Central coach Jessie Hester said Thursday night to a group of players who were just beginning to process what had happened to Richardson earlier that same day, and what he potentially has lost. "Take pride in who you are, and where you're from."

Hester, an 11-year NFL veteran, delivered that exhortation about staying smart and disciplined and protecting a potential future of financial freedom, at the annual pre-Muck Bowl banquet for players at both schools.

It needs to be said, and it has been said, over and over through the years, by Hester and Pahokee coach Blaze Thompson and other responsible and caring leaders in both communities.

The short-attention span of youth, however, is a dangerous thing.

People in Belle Glade, Pahokee and South Bay are struggling more than ever, for instance, just to hold their lives together. A front-page story in Thursday morning's Palm Beach Post laid it out, with an estimate by the Palm Beach County Economic Development office that unemployment in the Glades has hit 40 percent.

If any Pahokee and Glades Central players listened to the adults in their lives discussing all of that, they couldn't have listened long, not with the Muck Bowl about to kick off, and not with the golden brick road of state championships and college signing days and NFL contracts stretching out beyond that.

Richardson hit a possible dead end on that road, obviously, but there's another short-attention-span angle to this story that stings even more.

Last November, at another Muck Bowl, players and families from both rival schools, Richardson included, were still heartbroken over the recent murder of Pahokee linebacker Norman "Pooh" Griffith, who was shot at close range by teenage gang members in a late-night robbery.

How could Richardson or any other of Griffith's former teammates ever stand to be within 10 miles of a handgun after that, or even consider participating in a random and senseless crime involving one?

The Muck Bowl remains a powerful force for unity and a shared sense of community pride, even as the rival teams struggle to knock each other down. My prayer for the Glades region is simple enough, especially in the presence of so many complicating factors.

Next year, for a sense of more lasting relief, can this game please be about football alone?

~dave_george@pbpost.com