Breakdown: A Season of Gang Warfare, High School Football, and the Coach Who Policed the Streets

A cop-turned-coach takes youth from gang-ridden streets to the gridiron

 

From the author of Irish Thunder comes the true story about the collision of violent crime and high school football in a tough New England town. Friday Night Lights meets Boyz n the Hood in this book about a football coach—also a cop on the gang beat—who pulls kids off the streets and puts them on the field with a combination of kindness and intimidation.

 

In Breakdown (whose title alludes to a pregame psyche-up ritual), Bob Halloran gets inside the life-or-death struggles of student athletes from the Bloods, Crips, MS-13s, and Latin Kings in Chelsea, Massachusetts--the Boston area's cruelest city. While exploring the anger, fear, and violence of these young men, he follows the Chelsea Red Devils as they vie for a championship and the players try making football their way out. Meanwhile, tough-love coach James Atkins serves as a cop in the Chelsea Police Department’s Gang Unit, asking for his players’ blood, sweat, and tears on the field . . . and hoping their blood doesn’t spill off it. Will football be their way to a better life, or will street life forever haunt them?