We Own This Game
A Season in the Adult World of Youth Football
Although its participants are still in grade school, Pop Warner football is serious business in Miami. Games draw thousands of fans, recruiters vie for nascent talent, drug dealers and rap stars bankroll teams, and the stakes are so high that games sometimes end in gunshots. In America’s poorest neighborhood, troubled parents dream of NFL stardom for children who long only for a week in Disney World at the Pop Warner Super Bowl. A story of innocence and corruption, where every kickoff bares political, social and racial implications.
A story that ultimately isn’t about youth football, but about American itself. … [Powell] reveals a city at war with itself and, more subtly, the country in which it flourishes.
Seattle Times
Powell tackles the surprisingly tough topic of youth football — and in the process writes a hard-hitting social commentary on Miami’s black community. … A moving narrative of a community using the pigskin to escape poverty and crime … Grade: A.
Rocky Mountain News
A superbly written account of a strange and twisted world.
Dallas Morning News
