‘I used to call him on Father’s Day’: Oakland shattered by football coach’s killing

In a city where football is more than a sport, the gun death of John Beam has provoked an outpouring of emotion

Football in Oakland, California, is more than a sport. It’s a community. In many schools, coaches are like parental figures who get young people through vulnerable times, into universities and sometimes even drafted to the National Football League.

So when gun violence came for longtime Oakland football coach John Beam, whose mentorship had changed the lives of generations of students, the devastation reverberated around the city.