The Watts Rivalry That Is Never Settled: the Bloods Against the Crips

What is the biggest rivalry in Watts?

Is it Jordan High School vs. Locke?

Or is it the Bloods vs. the Crips?

It’s difficult to tell.

Each year, Jordan and Locke meet in a nonleague football game known as the “Super Bowl of Watts.” At the end of the game, there is a winner and a loser.

But for the gangs, it’s an ongoing contest without a final score. The buzzer never sounds. It’s never over.

Segments of the two largest, though only loosely organized, Los Angeles street gangs wage 24-hour war. Bloods fight Crips. Crips fight Bloods. Crips fight other Crips.

Although in many ways, gang rivalries transcend the battles on the playing field, the two are often entwined.

Jordan and Locke are natural rivals. Both are in Watts. Jordan is on 103rd Street, between two government projects, the Jordan Downs and Imperial Courts. Locke is about three miles away on 111th Street.

The entire area is a hotbed of gang activity in Los Angeles.

Each school takes a different approach to the game.

Ed Woody, former Jordan football coach, calls the game a tension resolver.

“We’ve had games with Locke where everything was taken out in the football game, everything comes out on the field,” Woody said.

Everything meaning gang-related tension in Watts.

E.C. Robinson, Locke coach, said his players gear up for the game, but fear playing at Jordan.

Woody and others have said that competitive emotion is sometimes mistaken for gang rivalry.

“Sometimes you have a conflict on the field and it’ll be blown out of proportion--that will set us back 10 years,” Woody said. “Instead of looking at it as a flaring of tempers, they’ll more or less sometimes say, ‘That’s gangs.’

“Fairfax and Jordan, a flaring of tempers--’That’s gangs,’ they’ll say. That’s not gangs, it’s just a flaring of tempers. Happens in every game.”

The Locke kids fear Jordan, Robinson said--not Jordan’s athletic teams, but the area gangs.

Kenneth Williams, a former Locke running back, said: “We were scared to go to Jordan. We didn’t want to go to Jordan. We hated Jordan. We were scared of getting shot.”

Four years ago, there was a fight in the stands at Jordan during the annual game, Robinson said. It is the only incident of gang violence during an athletic event that Robinson can recall in the eight years he has coached at Locke.

Williams did not recall specific incidents, but said: “There would be threats and there would be talk before. But there would be a lot of police there for protection. Nothing really happened, except a few scuffles (in the stands as well as the game itself).”

Woody feels otherwise.

“I definitely think that Jordan High is one of the safest in the (Los Angeles Unified School) district,” he said. “Unfortunately, a reputation, one that we don’t deserve, exists. I think it’s just an old reputation that won’t die.

“I’ve never been scared,” Woody said. “The thing about ‘Bulldog City’ is, we’ll go anywhere . That’s along with the community, also. Some schools worry about threats, idle threats by kids. Not at the Doghouse. We’ll go anywhere, to any school, and participate in anything.”