Billy Corben: Money, Murder, Miami (Director of "Cocaine Cowboys" and "The U")

[Malice Intended]

Part 2:

http://planetill.com/2010/01/billy-corben-money-murder-miami-pt-2/

Billy Corben: Money Murder Miami Pt. 2



By Malice Intended

Planet Ill: The Miami University football program was rejuvenated in the midst of the cocaine wars that were raging in the streets of Miami at the time. Do you think any of that energy influenced what was happening on the football field being that the players came from those neighborhoods?

Billy Corben: No doubt. In terms of the community and what was going on in the streets, on the team and then specifically on the football field. First of all, you have cocaine wars, so you have a certain energy and a certain edginess, a certain sense of danger about the whole town that definitely affected the players. I’ll tell you this right now, they used to say that the student parking lot at the University of Miami looked like the lot at Prestige Motors, which was exactly what it sounded like: a car dealership for very high end expensive European imported cars.

That was because a lot of the children of the cocaine kingpins and the cocaine cowboys were attending Miami University. Of course the most expensive private school in the south. So for starters, you had these kids in the families of the cocaine cowboys attending school along with the University of Miami football players. Of course the university of Miami football players were by and large not of the socioeconomic status that those students were because they were rolling in dough, obviously.

A lot of these kids came from some pretty tough neighborhoods in Miami, which brings up another interesting element of your question which is the fact that the city of Miami at the time…let me put it to you this way: people always like to use the term “melting pot” when they talk about the city of Miami. I rarely if ever refer to it as a “melting pot”. The more appropriate metaphor is it’s like a TV dinner and sometimes the peas fall over the wall into the mash potatoes, you know what I mean? It’s a very ghettoized neighborhood.

Come visit us at Planet Ill to read the rest: http://planetill.com/2010/01/billy-corben-money-murder-miami-pt-2/