Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [31]
Rather than being known only as Ron McCarthy’s son, I started to make a name for myself on the force, though my dad’s presence was still everywhere. When I mentioned that my dad revolutionized a lot of programs inside the LAPD, I wasn’t just referring to procedural or tactical advances. To win a bet, my old man had started the LAPD football program, which is still running to this day.
The bet had stemmed from what used to be called the Death Valley Relay, another scheme my dad had concocted in 1978 when he’d taken his SWAT team running across the famed southwestern desert to set a world’s record. That race later became the Challenge Cup/Baker to Vegas Relay, beginning in Baker, California, and stretching across the highways through the desert for about 120 miles into Sin City. In 2009, 247 teams made up of about 8,000 runners from all over the world passed the finish line. The race has become so well-known that NBC’s CSI shot an episode around the race.
Back in 1979, the Arizona Department of Public Safety had been one of the first teams to enter the Death Valley Relay. The Arizona DPS and LAPD started arguing over which state had better high school football players. In the end, Arizona DPS challenged the LAPD football team to a game. My dad gladly accepted on the spot, but there was one small problem: at the time, the LAPD didn’t have a football team.
A little detail like that wasn’t going to stop my dad, though. He recruited his first team from Metropolitan Division’s flag football team, and on May 5, 1979, the first LAPD Centurions football team stormed the Jackrabbit Stadium in Mesa, Arizona. The Arizona DPS team didn’t know what hit them, as the Centurions took home the 21—0 victory.
The idea to form more teams spread like wildfire through police departments across the country, and today the National Public Safety Football League hosts twenty-two teams nationwide.
In 1986, I joined the Centurions and had a blast playing for the next eight years. While some of my teammates had been college and pro ball players, I hadn’t played since my freshman year of high school, so it wasn’t easy. However, by my third year, I made team captain.
We traveled to New York, Phoenix, and Austin to scrap against other teams, and we did it all on our own time and dime to raise money for the Blind Children’s Center of Los Angeles. In 1989, we even had over 40,000 people watching us win our first national championship against the Metro-Miami Magnum Force at the Orange Bowl Stadium in Miami.
Being a part of the Centurions was one of the things that saved me as a police officer. Those were the guys I wanted to be next to.
Leading the Centurions out for another game
It wasn’t about individuals; it was about what we could do together. That sense of camaraderie helped fortify me on the tougher days.
Though I didn’t mind West Bureau Narcotics, I’d had my eye on another unit since I’d become an officer. I submitted my application and five months later got the call to transfer to the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums program, the stupidest unit name I’ve ever heard. It was cool when you heard the acronym CRASH, but when you realized what it stood for, it sounded a bit ridiculous. I didn’t join this antigang unit for the name, though.
CRASH wasn’t a promotion, but it was what the department called a coveted position. It was made up of twenty patrol officers and fifteen detectives who handled gang-related radio calls, and we got to work more than one area at a time. I was still within West Bureau, so I continued to bounce between the Hollywood, Wilshire, West Los Angeles, and Pacific Divisions.
I’d wanted to work in CRASH because I felt it made a difference. We got to deal with the scumbags who intimidated others and set a lot of crimes in motion, so in a way we were getting to the heart of the matter.
I stayed in CRASH for the next four and a half years. It was like navigating through a separate society with its own set of rules, relationships,