Life, Death and Football

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: We turn now to a small neighborhood in New Orleans and a football program that aims to do much more than just win championships. “Washington Post” sports journalist, Kent Babb, following a high football season in his book, “Across the River,” in a state that had the highest rate of homicides per 100,000 back in 2019. Babb’s book is a stark look at the fight to keep young students out of the line of fire. And now, George Clooney has snapped up the film rights. Babb spoke to Walter Isaacson alongside Nick Foster, a former football coach at the Edna Karr High School.

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WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you. And Kent Babb and Coach Nick Foster, welcome to the show.

KENT BABB, AUTHOR, “ACROSS THE RIVER: LIFE, DEATH AND FOOTBALL IN AMERICAN CITY”: Thank you.

NICK FOSTER, HEAD FOOTBALL COACH, ST. AUGUSTINE HIGH SCHOOL: Thank you for having us on.

ISAACSON: You have this wonderful book, Kent Babb, called “Across the River.” It’s about Enda Karr High School in a troubled part of New Orleans, it’s about kids surrounded by gun violence and an amazing coach named Brice Brown who helps rescue some of them. Tell me the arc of the story and why you believe it is an American story, Kent.

BABB: Yes. I believe that in most cities in the country, there are places like Algiers, you know, where people who look like me are just perfectly content to not think about it, you know, not pay too much attention, just sort of go along your business and stroll down the French Quarter and pretend like that is not real. And, you know, there’s a sort of incredible drama that’s playing out. I mean, these are real lives and real vulnerable lives as well. You know, and they come to these coaches, Coach Foster and Coach Brown, you know, to look for guidance, to look for mentorship, sometimes for food. And, you know, football is just something that I think that draws them to the football office. And then from there, they start retraining them for real life.

ISAACSON: You know, Nick Foster, you were part of that Edna Karr High School football program and you really had two paths in lives. In some ways, you tested both of those paths. Tell me how this program and your life was changed.

FOSTER: Well, I went there Karr when I was a coach in Karr. But that culture — our school family is just a big part of what we are. You’re going to always have two choices. You go left or you go right. And you know, that left choice is not always the best decision, but when you go right, it is just a blessing and amazing feeling. And we tease the boys all the time. New Orleans is a very adverse city. Either you could be a part of that or you could change it or you could be a part of something different. And that is where we offer them with football. I went through a lot of adversity my early years in coaching that can’t put in the book. With my mother passing, that was tough. But I relied on my Karr family, and it got through it. And also, with my dad, we won state championship 2019 and my dad passed away that same night. And the only think that got me through that was my Karr family. So, just like we help those players, those players help me. They still call me every day, check on me. They’re so proud of me. I’m a head coach at St. Aug. now. And it was an amazing feeling. It is bigger than just, you know, football and our success on the field. It is about our success off the field and helping these young men grow into better citizens.

ISAACSON: And, Kent, when you were seeing that, when you are covering the Edna Karr School for that one season, what was the magic that the coach brought to this?

BABB: I mean, it is almost not even magic. It is something so basic, and that is just honesty. You know, if a kid comes to the coaches with a crisis, no matter the hour, no matter the crisis, you know, they help deal with it. I mean, the way I’d put it is, it is the rarest kind of mentorship. It is consistent. And, you know, it doesn’t matter what time of day. It doesn’t matter, you know, if it is 3:00 in the morning. These coaches, for better or worse, will answer the phone. They teach these kids to know how to trust and who to trust, who to come to if you are out of money and hungry, who to come to if you need a ride across the river to an unfamiliar neighborhood or get back home, you know, not just walking around in a city where bullets are flying all the time, they know the answers. The coaches know the answers. Sometimes these kids don’t. And so, they learn that there is an office full of adults who won’t give up on them. If this is a country and maybe even a city that’s just completely content to write off young people and young people of color in particular, there is one office in New Orleans that that’s not the case. Where they can come any time of day, it doesn’t matter the situation, and they will be supported and guided and mentored.

ISAACSON: You know, part of the story of this book is the story of gun violence. Nick, will you tell me about the gun violence and how different it is today than it was when you were growing up?

FOSTER: You know, when we have altercations sometimes, you know, it might get to a physical fistfight or something like that. But New Orleans had got to the point now where these kids got easy access to a gun and, you know, they don’t even know how to handle altercations. So, like Kent explained it, they come to us when they’re in adverse situations and we try to, you know, detour them away from using a gun or even using violence, right? We try to change them off the field how to handle a confrontation, how to talk things out. In a City of New Orleans, there’s just so much crime with adolescent kids with the guns and everything, we just finding that football is an escape for those kids. I mean, it’s not only gun violence that are killing each other, we have robbery, just lot of carjackings by adolescent kids and stuff like that. But it is so easy to get a gun and, you know, they don’t know how to handle like if they have a disagreement, if they have a confrontation. That’s why we teach our kids how to handle them. Like we actually these teach these how to deal with these adverse situations. We teach them how to — like when they get pulled over by a police officer, how to deal with the situation. We teach them like if you get in — if your friend is in a negative, beef situation, a controversy situation, that’s not the guy you need to be hanging with. You need to be friends with the guy who is going to school, who is going to practice with you every day, your teammate. And if you see your teammate doing this, hold him accountable and let him know right from wrong. Once we start spreading this type of coaching, like (INAUDIBLE) cancer, like cancer spreads. You want to spread good cancer throughout your team and throughout your coach. So, once when start teaching kids in the communities to do right and wrong, what’s right and wrong, and to be accountable, I feel we can find a solution for it. But right now, with things having so much easy access to guns and don’t know how to use a gun and know how to have a confrontation, it is going to be them killing each other.

ISAACSON: Kent, tell me the story of Tonka George.

BABB: So, Tonka is a young man who did everything right. In 2010, he led Karr to the state championship game. He’s a skin and bones punter and wide receiver who got thrust into being a quarterback because he was willing to sacrifice himself. And he was almost a supernatural leader who could inspire somebody and chew out somebody else, just whatever it took. So, they got in the state championship in 2010 on Tonka’s skinny shoulder. He got a college scholarship and played college football Alcorn State. Got this degree. He was not involved in crime or drugs or anything like that. But made a mistake. And that mistake was coming home to see his mom. He came home in New Orleans. And while he had been gone, getting his education, some of his friends from back home had gotten themselves mixed up into something really dangerous. And his second mistake was taking walk in his neighborhood on the West Bank on warm June night five years ago and somebody in a car saw him, followed him and got out and shot and killed him. And it’s a heartbreaking story. But as much as that, it is also maddening because nobody knows why he got killed. You know, nobody knows who did it. You know, five years later, his murderer, like so many in New Orleans, remains unsolved. I mean, this is a city that recently has only solved a third of its murders, which is excruciatingly low. And, you know, Tonka was supposed to be somebody that everybody looked up to, somebody that people at Karr longed to be like and he wound up being the opposite of that. He’s somebody that you can’t be like this even though he did everything right. I think he was the person that changed the Karr program forever. Because Brice was at the crime scene. He was in this sea of chaos, and I believe it was at that moment that Brice Brown decided, my program is not just about football anymore. He’s got two relentless dual missions. One, yes, he has to win football games. The other is to keep his kids, people that these coaches care about and love. I care about love. Keep them alive and teach them how to survive no matter what.

FRYER: If you were one those kids that everybody followed, right, and, you know, everybody looked up to. But he was something to look up. I mean, he still have the record in the state championship for most yards in one game. Things like that. And he was skin and bones, like Kent mentioned, but it’s just a special blessed talent. And just guilty by association. You know, his murder still is a mystery. And, you know, it’s sad. You know, his number 5 is a special number in Karr’s program, in our family, and the kids really honor that number. Like if they wear it, they make sure they, you know, try to live up to it. But it is a sad story. And Brice keeps his jersey — or a shirt of Tonka in his office and just walking there every time, it just reminds us of — you know, it is bigger than football, it’s bigger than just winning. We really got to really save lives. We really got to help these kids because the gun violence and everything they are going through, like he’s not even involved in that type of life. But just being guilty by association by your next-door neighbor or a guy you grew up with, you could easily lose your life in New Orleans. And it is sad.

ISAACSON: This program at Edna Karr High School and I hope what Nick Foster is now doing at St. Augustine High School is teaching people not just football but the skills of life, it’s almost hoping to rescue some from them from going down the wrong path. Explain that in your book.

BABB: I mean, based on my observation, football is the thing that gets these kids through the door. You know, they want to play. They want to get on the field. And who makes that decision but the coaches. And it is not always how well they perform on the field, how they catch passes, how they block defenders, it’s about character, it’s about communication, it’s how you talk to your fellow person. You know, and what these guys do is they simulate almost as a conditioning exercise how to deal with these confrontations. I mean, it’s uncomfortable. I’ve witnessed plenty of them sometimes late at night, but it is uncomfortable. He’s laughing. But it is uncomfortable —

ISAACSON: Why are you laughing, Coach.

FRYER: Well, he’s referring to something when you read the book, at Karr, we used to call it — well, they called it, pry panel. And what we do, we simulate pressure situations. So, it teaches them how to think, even on the field. Everybody thinks because we won, you know, a couple of state championship, we come from the X’s and O’s and a place. No, it comes from the binding and the brotherhood. And we make them go through adverse situations. So, when they on a field, when they in the community together, they know how to handle it.

ISAACSON: Tell me the story of Joe Thomas.

BABB: Joe is somebody that before I started reporting this, I don’t think I would have believed he was real. So, he’s senior linebacker, when the book begins, just like kind of the inglorious run stopper. Not a guy who makes sacks or anything like that. But he quite literally grew up on the streets of New Orleans. His mom was on the wrong side of the law. Had been since she was a teenager. And Joe was her lookout. You know, he used to stay up until 3:00 in the morning with a little gun in his hand making sure nobody came for his mom. And so, he grew up as protector. And as he grew, it was almost like there were two people in the world. Joe and his mom. He didn’t know how to communicate. He certainly didn’t know how to communicate with adults without being confrontational. And he had just never been held accountable in his life. He had never been held to schedule in his life. And so, he’s somebody that has completely changed how I look at communities like this because it is just too easy to think that it can’t be that bad. That somebody like Joe is made up. It is not. I mean, there is lot of Joes out there, not that many Coach Browns and Coach Fosters. And the fact that like Joe learned these tricks of survival that seem unnecessary in the United States. I mean, if you walked in McDonald’s to get some dinner, he never came back the way he went, just in case somebody was following him and trying to hunt him down and kill him. He had to hide in abandoned houses because whether it was real or imagined, he believed somebody might be chasing him at all times. He felt like he had to protect himself. When the book begins, his mom is in prison. Joe was living by himself as an 18-year-old young man. His senior year is getting ready to start and he’s got an eviction notice posted to his front door. He has no idea how to deal with this. How do you deal with that when you are 18? It is over $80. He’s about to be homeless over $80. So, what do you do? I think If not for the Karr program he would have made a very different decision, but because he played for Edna Karr High and because he had these coaches, he knew who to go to and they helped him get out of what could have been a lifechanging and possibly life ending jam.

ISAACSON: When Katrina hit, Edna Karr is on the West Bank, it’s across the river from most of New Orleans. And so, it didn’t flood. And Edna Karr High School became a place where people from all over the city, when they came back, had to go. So, you got a lot of people from different neighborhoods going to Edna Karr. Coach Nick, tell me how that affected things?

FOSTER: Well, before Katrina and, of course, the it was a mandate (ph) school. So, we had to take a test to get in in Karr. It was a — you know, most people from Algiers went to Karr. It’s a tight-knit community, very small. It was a (INAUDIBLE) school. And after Katrina, you know, a lot of schools missed out in the river on the East Bank really was closed down because they were underwater. Well, Karr was one of the ones that survived the storm. So, all these kids on the other side of the river started coming in. So, it wasn’t no tests. You know, we just had to get kids in school. Now, at first, we thought it was a bad thing because, you know, with Karr and certain people going to take that test and be in our family. But it actually expanded our family and made it amazing. We was getting a different type of athlete in Karr, a different type of kid. More kids with adverse situations, more kids that wanted more. They wanted out of Algiers. So, they used Karr as pad, as channel to get out. So, to used football and education. Our Karr was able to offer them that.

ISAACSON: Kent?

BABB: Yes. I think it made people from all over a city that’s, at least from my observation, is extraordinarily territorial. You know, this is a place where people grow up on a certain block, in a certain neighborhood and they don’t always leave that block and they certainly don’t trust somebody who doesn’t live on that block. And so, you know, what Katrina did is it — it up rooted everybody, including, you know, some sort of — some decisions that were from short sighted city officials, it uprooted everybody and forced everybody into unfamiliar neighborhood. So, what that did is raise tensions. And in the case of Karr, it made people — it made so many people have to filter into this one place and not just have to co-exist with each other but to line up beside each other and play with each other and learn how to pursue opportunities and victories together. You know, you had to learn how to trust. You had to learn how to rely on these people that didn’t sound like you or supposedly look like you. They weren’t from where you are from but suddenly you are on the same team.

ISAACSON: Coach Nick Foster, Kent Babb, thank you so much for joining the show.

BABB: Thank you.

FOSTER: Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it.