The Only Game in Town

S.L. Price has an excellent, heartrending article in the latest issue of Sports Illustrated highlighting the abandoned American communities whose only product seems to be the athletes lucky enough to make it out. “The Heart of Football Beats in Aliquippa” details a football-mad Pittsburgh suburb that continues to embrace the game even as it population crumbles.

The home of Mike Ditka, Tony Dorsett and Darelle Revis, Aliquippa has replaced lost steel mill jobs with the violence of the drug trade. Shootings are commonplace and high school players turn to dealing in the face of absentee parents. It’s an honest portrait of a community beset by joblessness and squandered potential. At the same time, it’s community that continues to exert a hold on those lucky enough to have left.