Little league football in South Florida: Are you the pimp, prostitute, or the preacher?

Little league football in South Florida: Are you the pimp, prostitute, or the preacher?

By Bishop

      There was a story that came out recently that flooded our local headline news, regarding the betting scandal in our popular little league football organizations. The 18-month investigation uncovered an entire network of betting and illegal gambling practices. The faces that were portrayed on television and in local media were faces that many of our community’s parents and kids considered as their leaders and mentors.

     Grown men acting as though they care for our greatest gem (Young Black boys), while they actually preyed upon them by developing young talent for capital gains. 

     Sounds almost slave-like in nature. 

     How many kids have been taught that these men were their role models? How many parents have been paid to bring their sons to these parks or auction blocks? How many private schools have paid to have these same players walk on their campuses?

     Many will blame these men and villanize them as is justly warranted, but my problem goes a little deeper than grown men passing crumpled up hundred dollar bills over marijuana smoke-filled bleachers. 

     Where is big mama? I will tell you where she is…… she is at the mall spending those crumpled up one hundred dollar bills. Big Mama plays an important role in this slave induced methodology. She plays the role of the plantation master auctioning off her son to the highest bidder. She is no better or worse than a pimp walking behind a prostitute waiting to be paid. 

     Unfortunately, this behavior correlates with big mama going from sitting in the stands watching her son playing in a game to sitting in a courtroom watching him being sentenced to serve time in prison. 

     Why? 

     Well, what happens when you are 12 years old and your mom tells you where you are going to play little league football because she got her rent and light bill  paid for three months by one of the coaches? 

     The answer is simple. 

     You develop a young Black boy into a young Black man that believes the world owes him and that football, not education, is the way out.

     The young men are the prostitutes.  They have no autonomy and learned from a false sense of fraternal support from their surrogate football fathers. 

     By the time most of these young men become high school age, they avoid playing football for their school because of the temptation of the financial offers to play another year of little league football, after playing park ball, they are ineligible to play for their high school.  That formula has created the same pariah that looms in the stands asking for bets on the next touchdown scored. We have failed these young men because we have all seen this atrocity and turned a cheek and a blind eye at these boys being pimped. 

     Often it is out of fear that these gamblers, who make their money from all types of illegal means, don’t lend kind to objections to their financial endeavors.  When the player is no longer able to make money for these guys, they either become a lost commodity to the gamblers or join then and recruit new talent.

     The preacher are the private school boosters that pay these coaches a lot of money to deliver a skillful product to their schools that can help win games and even state championships.  The preacher shares a common characteristic of the children; the slave plantation owner. The one that benefited from the money made off the backs of free labor.  They weren’t directly evolved, but those children grew wealth from those who were weakened by oppression even if they never touched a whip. 

     The preacher will make you feel as though what the coaches are doing is for the betterment of the student. In short, their environment lacks the population of the little league and this is supposed to make them better Black boys.  However, in many cases these young men are taught to look down on those old friends that attend the other public schools.  The preacher will use the athlete up and when they are through they are through (No more touchdowns…no more love).  Some schools give weekly tours and Wednesday spaghetti dinners bringing in busloads of little league prospects that are coached by the same people involved in such a scandal.

     At the end of the day, all three characters play a significant role in keeping these young Black men enslaved.  It is important that we know who the pimp, prostitute or the preacher is.