PAHOKEE, Fla. -- This is not a happy story. Maybe you heard otherwise, but if you did, you heard wrong. This story isn't happy. Dead teenagers don't giggle.This story is about the two star receivers in Super Bowl XLIII who clawed their way out of the same nook of Florida, the Cardinals' Anquan Boldin and the Steelers' Santonio Holmes, but it's also about the death and destruction they left behind. People are dying. Towns are dying. So don't believe a damn thing you've heard about the reunion of Boldin and Holmes in this Super Bowl. Not if all you've heard is hokey happiness. Because this story isn't hokey. It isn't happy.
"Kids are getting killed," Holmes says. Yes they are. "Our towns ... they're in trouble," Boldin says. Yes they are. This isn't a happy story. But it should be.
Going home On a per capita basis, no town in the United States has better football than Pahokee. Pahokee High has been to six straight state championship games, and won five. Pahokee products are all over college football, including Wake Forest All-American cornerback Alphonso Smith and starting defensive back Janoris Jenkins of national champion Florida. Pahokee has sent more than a dozen players to the NFL, a statistically staggering feat for a city of 6,000.
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