Raymond Allen and Christopher Johnson are more than inmates; they're teammates. At Louisiana's Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, the two play for the Buccaneers tackle football team, just one of six organized sports offered through the Louisiana Institutional Recreational Program.

The Louisiana Department of Corrections has always recognized the importance of recreational activities, according to Hunt Correctional Center Warden Marty Lensing. The center, which was originally built with an official-sized gymnasium, uses proceeds from inmate phone commissions to pay for equipment and employ a recreational director, who supervises sports teams.

"[Hunt Correctional Center] has always been a big proponent of sports programs in order to keep the inmates busy so that idleness is not prevalent in our inmate population," said Lensing, who estimated that some 800 eligible inmates at Hunt participate in at least one of the organized sports offered there.

"Inmates take the sports very seriously," Lensing said. "It gives them something to do rather than resorting to institutional violence or drugs."

At Hunt, only minimum and medium security inmates are allowed to join the sports programs, which include football, volleyball, softball, boxing and basketball. Teams are assigned according to their physical locations within the facilities, and a "referees association"-made up of trained inmates-creates and enforces the rules of engagement.

But prison sports in Louisiana go beyond the walls of the Hunt Correctional Center. Heavyweight boxer Clifford "The Black Rhino" Etienne put the Louisiana Department of Corrections on the map for recreational activities when he took up boxing during his 10-year sentence at Louisiana's Dixon Correctional Facility. After his release, Etienne began boxing professionally under the instruction of the well-known trainer Jack Mosley and, just last year, faced off against former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson.

"Etienne really took the time he did in our system to work on his boxing and develop his focus," Lensing said.

A Super Bowl of Their Own

Unlike Ettiene, most Hunt inmates have a more "genuine interest" in tackle and touch football, Lensing said.  In fact, during this year's Super Bowl game, frustrations ran high at the prison, when the Carolina Panthers lost in the final minutes of the game.

Inmate running back Johnson, 23, insisted, "If I was in the Panthers' backfield instead of Stephen Davis, we could've pulled the game up...I think we could've won the game."
Johnson, who has a good-time release date of November 2005, is serving an eight-year sentence for armed robbery and simple burglary.

Johnson's teammate and quarterback Allen, who is serving a six-year sentence for violating a controlled dangerous substance law near a school, believes his Panthers counterpart, Jake Delhomme, "did all he needed to do."

But since the Super Bowl, the football teams at Hunt Correctional Center have been focused on a more important game, the statewide correctional football championship.

Each year, the center's six tackle football teams hold an internal tournament, after which the winning team goes on to compete with other Louisiana correctional institutions for the championship. Lensing said the outside games, which are also funded by the recreational activities program, provide the inmates with an incentive to avoid malingering and institutional violence.

Players who use violence on the football field are suspended for a year. And, the suspension is extended indefinitely if the violence is directed at a referee.

In the face of such high stakes, Lensing said violence is rare at Hunt because inmates don't want to be suspended and miss their chance to compete. Several years ago, in fact, the winning team from Hunt won the championship after a memorable game against the largest, maximum-security prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.

"When we beat Angola that day, we felt how New England must have felt after winning the Super Bowl [this year]," said football fan Kenneth Wheeler, who has been at Hunt for 11 years and is editor of the prison newspaper. "We felt like we were all just one family...that's how we live behind these walls."

Football Helps Tackle Issues Off the Field

Participating in recreational sports at the facility provides the inmates with more than just a sense of family, though.

"Football helps me stay out of trouble," said Allen, who is eligible for parole in April 2005. "I can just walk out onto that field and relieve my frustration."

The 27 year-old, who was an athlete in high school, said he has been near a ball all his life.
 
"Playing football helps me think about things better and forces me to see a lot of what I'm missing out there," he said of life outside prison walls. 

Like Allen, Johnson said he plays football to alleviate stress.

"Just as some listen to music to calm their nerves," Johnson said, "I like to hear the sound of helmets colliding."
 
The staff, too, believe that playing organized sports benefits the inmates in many ways. According to Lensing, football teaches inmates important principles, such as teamwork, discipline, sportsmanship and organization.

"I've seen numerous inmates come into the center with serious management problems," the warden said. "But then they get back down to medium security and join a recreational activity and, the next thing you know, they've become model inmates."

A Future in Football

With the skills Allen has attained on and off Hunt's football field, he hopes to find a job working with the football industry after release.

But Johnson, who would like to try out for [the] arena football [league] after his release, has higher expectations.

"Who knows? The NFL might even draft me," he said. "The heart and mind I have for football is unstoppable."

While the inmates contemplate their future careers, Wheeler is more concerned about the present funding for Hunt's recreational program. A bit of government funding, he said, could perhaps allow the teams to buy better playbooks for example.

Lensing, however, is protective of the program's independence from any revenue from taxpayers, whom he fears may believe the center should direct their funding elsewhere.

"What the public doesn't understand is that the prison is not just allowing a bunch of inmates to run around playing sports...they definitely don't just stand around playing football all day," he said. "The activities are only provided after 4 p.m. and on weekends, when they aren't working."

Even with such limited time to play sports, Wheeler said Hunt inmates show "raw talent" and only need to be trained to focus.

"In the likes of [Allen and Johnson], these guys are potential athletes; they just got sidetracked by trying to come up too quickly," he said. " We've got guys here with natural abilities, who just didn't have direction until now."