Muck City by Bryan Mealer

Author:Bryan Mealer [Mealer, Bryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-88864-8
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2012-10-23T04:00:00+00:00

Leaving home was on KB’s mind. Not just leaving, but the whole buildup to the great exit, when he would stand on Glades Central’s auditorium stage on Signing Day and bestow on the university of his choice the gift of his talents.

Whereas Hester had gone into hiding during his recruitment, Benjamin relished the courting, devouring the bait of praise and promise that the recruiters left in trails toward their locker rooms.

After KB’s junior season, there had been a rush to secure an early commitment. Alabama head coach Nick Saban had personally visited Benjamin at Glades Central just months after the Crimson Tide had won the national championship. The coach had seen KB’s highlights and told him he had the build and style of Julio Jones, the Tide’s standout receiver.

“He was down-to-earth,” Benjamin said of Saban, whom Forbes once called “The Most Powerful Coach in Sports.” “I didn’t really know who he was.”

But by senior year, Benjamin had narrowed his choice down to the University of Florida and Florida State. Both programs had already hosted him at summer camps and tournaments and each felt it had a shot. Following September 1, the date by which NCAA rules allowed coaches to begin personally contacting players by phone (one call per week until season’s end) and visiting practice (only to watch, never to speak), both programs assigned their receivers coach the daily task of winning his favor.

For the Seminoles it was Lawrence Dawsey, the former FSU wide receiver who’d played seven years in the league, mainly with Tampa Bay. During the Raiders’ homecoming victory over Boca Raton, in which Benjamin had three catches for over seventy yards and a touchdown, Dawsey stood tall by the Glades Central end zone in a pair of pressed jeans and cowboy boots.

“This place, they got speed like nowhere else,” he said. “Every year you can find a receiver, DB, or running back. It’s just unreal. These boys can run.”

Dawsey had extra help on the ground from Mike Morris, another former Seminole. Back in 1990, Morris was one of the top ten offensive guards in the nation until a broken foot ended his playing career. He’d grown up in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami, site of devastating race riots in the late sixties and early eighties that left it one of the poorest and most violent sections of town. So tough, Morris would brag, “it makes Belle Glade look like Candyland.”

And like Belle Glade, Liberty City produced phenomenal athletes, so many that the Miami Hurricanes built their championship football program in the 1980s from players recruited primarily from that area.

Morris went into law enforcement after college and was now a lieutenant with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. His turf was Belle Glade, and all over town the mucksteppers knew him as Big Mike. He’d put on weight from his playing days, and even then he’d struggled to keep himself under three hundred pounds. In a town where many felt under constant siege by the law, Big Mike could be trusted.

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