After each goat is slaughtered, a team of coaching assistants drags its carcass to a nearby pushcart and dumps it inside. After practice, the dead goat will be wheeled into the kitchen of the team’s cafeteria, where they will be dressed out. Meat is scarce, and Coach Carrerra is thrifty. Goat will be a training table staple for the next two weeks.

Afterwards, when there are no goats left, using rubber knives this time, the safeties and linebackers practice stabbing techniques on each other.

Through with the afternoon session, the players sit around the locker room waiting for the coach to begin the team meeting.

As usual, the hidden safeties, Gus D’Armato, the first stringer and two rookies, sit off to one side by themselves. The hidden safety is practically always the most withdrawn, the most introverted member of the team. The rules of the game go a long way toward making him so. In addition to his rifle and one bullet, he’s permitted an unlimited number of knives of any type he wishes so long as none of his blades exceeds twenty four inches. Most hidden safeties opt for long bladed butcher knives or machetes. This combination of firepower and cutlery makes the hidden safety a very potent defensive force, but there’s a counterbalance to his power. Long knives can be used only against two players, the ball carrier and the hidden safety. Hence, the hidden safety is the only member of the team who can be attacked and killed on sight.

Their backgrounds—hidden safeties are usually recruited from among the ranks of ex-convicts, gangsters, army snipers, anyone who has a ready familiarity with weapons—and their peculiar dual status as both hunter and hunted conspire to make the hidden safeties the team loners. While the other players relax, drink beer or joke around, the hidden safeties patiently clean and polish their rifles or sharpen their knives. To them, football is more than a game. It’s a total way of life.

Coach Carrerra comes in. “Men,” he says, launching into what the veterans instantly recognize as the beginnings of a pep talk. “This year, we’re going all the way. Straight to the top.” With seven slashes, he puts a Roman numeral on the blackboard. “Whenever you’re out there on the street, whenever you’re running, or blocking, or shooting, or fighting, I want you to remember where it’s all leading up to. Concentrate on reaching this number. This is our goal. This is the number of the Killerbowl that we’re going to win.”

The blackboard reads XXI.

Sunday, March 21, 2010