Daily News from New York, New York • 78

78 Sunday, November 29, 2015 DAILY NEWS NYDailyNews.com END ZONE BY MICHAEL O'KEEFFE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS It is the middle of the second half of the first annual Street Bowl championship game and Carver Mobb defender Nafeez Hoyte sprints across the field to pick off a 30-yard bullet from AFC quarterback Keith Aldridge. Hoyte arrives a half-second too late and crashes into receiver Travis Poole, who somehow manages to hang on to the pass and then runs backward into the end zone. Poole flexes his biceps and roars in defiance. The touchdown gives AFC, an upstart squad out of Queens, a 25-20 lead and the edge forthe $16,000 championship purse "chip" that will be presented to the winning team at the end of the two-day tournament. The Carver Mobb players the top dogs in New York street football for many years shrug it all off, just another bump in the road they've been dominating foryears, especially after an AFC receiver flubs a pass on the extra-point attempt.

"That could be costly ladies and gentlemen," says the MC calling the game at Harlem River Park on a golden autumn Sunday. "That was a $16,000 drop." Welcome to New York street football, a world of bruising hits, unabashed testosterone and boundless brotherhood. Dozens of teams and leagues, a loose alliance known as the Touch Football League, play seven-on-seven smash-mouth football, a tough inner-city sport that sprang out of the South Bronx and other Latino and African-American neighborhoods some 40 years ago. "This is our NFL," says Carver Mobb coach Paul (Pamz) Rivera, the heart and soul of the team he founded in the early 1990s with his friends from Spanish Harlem's George Washington Carver Houses. "This is my family.

This is my life." This is rough-touch football, a sport that is played virtually year-round on divot-pocked fields from Co-op City to Coney Island. Defenders regularly knock receivers to the turf and blockers aren't afraid to throw elbows as they clear the lane for ball carriers. Injuries concussions, broken noses, busted knees, fractured forearms come with the territory. So do camaraderie and friendship: Rivals who bludgeon each other on the field happily share beers and blunts after the final whistle blows. For all the trash talk that comes with street football, for all of the piss and rage spewed on the field, street football also offers its players Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, blacks, whites, men in their early 20s to their mid-50s brotherhood and community.

Especially if you play for the Carver Mobb, a team that parties and grieves together with equal intensity. The Mobb's jerseys sport angel wings and the name "Ella" in memory of Danny "Moya" Reyes' infant daughter and her fatal struggle with heart disease. It wore pink Street-corner chefs grill burgers as hundreds of fans party on the sidelines, cheering for husbands, boyfriends, brothers and buddies. Carv season tickets, says former CM player Will Wright, now a coach: "Somebody needs to die first," he says, laughing. I This is our NFL.

This is my family. This is my life. PAUL 'PAMZ' RIVELA, CM FOUNDERCOACH Not everybody is Carver Mobb material. Carver Mobb players pride themselves on checking their egos and working as a unit. It's like playing for the Yankees or the Patriots (the inspiration for the Carver Mobb logo) -guys who are stars er fans are easy to spot, since they wear shirts that say "Carver Wife" and "Carver Son." Pamz says street football is finally ready for prime time after 40 years on the fringes of New York sports.

"When the world sees us, it is going playing to win." The quarterback is especially important in rough touch; unlike tackle football, running the ball rarely gains much ground. That makes Chuck Martinez maybe Carver Mobb's most important player. A former college point guard, Martinez has an uncanny knack for hitting receivers with no-look passes and an impressive ability to keep his cool with blitzing defenders on his heels. "We all hate to lose equally," says Martinez, one of the team's original core from the 1990s, "and that's why we are more than a team." Carver Mobb receiver Johnny Vitolo, a fixture on the street football scene since the 1970s, says Martinez, with his perpetual Zen grin, keeps his team grounded in tense moments. jerseys at the Street Bowl in honor of receiver Wes Santiago's wife, Lisa, a two-time cancer survivor.

"From Day 1, we were not just a group of guys who got together to play football," Pamz says. "We look out for each other." The Street Bowl, an eight-team, two-day tournament sponsored by Def Jam Recordings and the subject of an upcoming VICE documentary produced by Mandalay Sports Media and independent producer Isaac Solotaroff, is the biggest event in the history of New York's rough-touch scene. With a chip roughly twice the amount of the average championship purse, it drew the city's very best players and teams, including the Mobb's biggest rival, Undarat-ed, which lost to Carver Mobb on the very last play of the semifinal. to be unbelievable," Pamz says. "Nobody has a vision for street football like I do." Joining Carver Mobb is a little like getting Green Bay Packers elsewhere become role players in exchange for chips and championships.

"Some guys don't fit," says receiver Danny Encarnacion, "but if you are playing on Carver you are.