Heart of the NFL Still Resonates in Compton

Busy as she is with the nurturing of more than a hundred Compton teenagers, the barking at their intruders, the worrying about slow computers and dwindling funds and neighboring storefronts that are barred and trashed, Shirley Allen never heard the news.

When a visitor told her Friday the Super Bowl may be returning to Los Angeles, she grabbed the front of her blouse, expanded her eyes like somebody in an old movie.

The school administrator was a shipwrecked soul who has just sighted a boat across the waves.

“Oh, God,” she said.

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The nationally recognizable symbol with the red, white and blue lettering is a stunning discovery in a South-Central Los Angeles strip mall.

An optometrist and beauty supply store are on one side, an abandoned furniture store on the other. The address has both numbers and letters and you park around back, where somebody recently dumped an entire chicken nuggets dinner on the sidewalk.

“The NFL YET Center” reads the large sign.

The National Football League?

Here? Still?

“When they left,” said Allen with a smile, “they didn’t take everything with them.”

Nearly three years after an NFL team last teed up a ball in this city, the league is still scoring big with the partial funding of a “Youth Education Town” here, a center it built with proceeds from Super Bowl XXVII in Pasadena.

It stands today as a warm, clean haven for three eighth-grade classes and hundreds of other children after school.

It stands as a reminder of why Los Angeles should be excited about getting another Super Bowl, if it can steal one from San Diego after a stadium bond trial there on Feb. 20.

It also stands forgotten.

The center is nearing the end of its funding deal with the league so, while it expects that the NFL will keep giving, other calls are being made.

“And it’s like, nobody is interested,” said Allen, who runs the center as an executive director with the Communities in Schools nonprofit organization.

“It’s like, a lot of people don’t know we’re still open. All the hype about this place was around the games. Now that there are no more games. . . . “

League officials still visit the center several times each year. Local players, such as Rodney Peete or Rocket Ismail, have occasionally dropped by, and former players are sometimes used for lectures.

But mostly, it is just what you would expect from an NFL facility without the NFL.

Huge photos of the likes of Emmitt Smith, Barry Sanders and Warren Moon hang on the walls. But most students have never met any of them.

A large, modern, NFL-style weight room takes up half of the center’s “gym.” But few pros live near enough to take advantage of it anymore.

The library has several copies of a magazine called “The Greatness of the Raiders.” But most here never saw them play.

It is the only school in town that holds an official party on NFL draft day. But nobody knows when to cheer, or who to boo.

It is also the only school in town that has unlimited access to NFL tickets. But because of transportation costs, students here are lucky if they go to one game, even if it is the Super Bowl.

As you might imagine of an NFL school, it has an artificial turf playground, 50 yards’ worth.

But with produce trucks backing up on it while delivering to a nearby store, the field is in need of repair.

Problem is, the turf was donated not by the NFL, but by country singer Garth Brooks, whose name even adorns two outside gates.

“And we can’t get ahold of him to tell him it needs fixing,” Allen said.

The league opened this facility in February 1993--shortly after the Dallas Cowboys defeated the Buffalo Bills--and has since opened YET Centers in every ensuing Super Bowl town.

“We want to leave a legacy from each game,” said Beth Colleton, NFL public service coordinator. “We want the young people to have something that can live on.”

When the league decided it should become more than just a youth center in Compton and actually support classes being held there--75 students, three classrooms, one grade--it became the coolest school in town.

One computer for every two students. A room reserved for Internet access. A mock store filled with real NFL gear that students sell as part of their studies.

No gangs, no graffiti, no tolerance. All at no cost to the students.

When this year’s eighth-grade class graduates, a new sixth-grade class will be enrolled from junior high schools throughout the area. With no special academic requirements, Allen expects to fill quickly.

“Where I was before, it didn’t seem like anybody was learning anything,” said Willie Davis, an eighth-grader. “Teachers always saying, ‘Get off of him, stop fighting with her. . . .’

“It’s different here. You get taught things.”

One of those lessons could occur in 11 days.

If Los Angeles is able to wrangle another Super Bowl, that will mean more attention to the center, maybe some improvements, maybe even the building of a similar center.

“An NFL school with the NFL in town, even for just a week,” Allen said. “Now that would be something.”