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![Pee-Wee Football Violence Prompts ESPN-On-ESPN Violence [Update]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/tibne11urgki9zpp3wb3.jpg)
Pee-Wee Football Violence Prompts ESPN-On-ESPN Violence [Update]
Update (3:15 p.m. ET): SportsCenter deleted the tweet. Here’s a screenshot:...

High School Football Participation Drops For Second Straight Year
The annual National Federation of State High School Associations survey of high school athletics was released Friday. The good news is overall high school sports participation increased for the 29th consecutive year, led by an increase of more than 15,000 participants in girls’ sports. The, uh, also...

Lack Of Players And Player Safety Concerns Kill Varsity Football At D.C. Area High School
A suburban Maryland high school is permanently disbanding its varsity football program due to a lack of players as well as concerns over player safety, reports the Washington Post....

Concussion Testing Is Flawed, But It's Not The Real Problem
The Wall Street Journal published a devastating story today about Kenney Bui, a high school football player in Washington state who died two years ago at age 17, days after a collision in a game caused him to lose consciousness on the sideline. What distinguishes Bui’s death—aside from the obvious—i...

Jon Gruden Has Had It With These Geniuses Who Are Ruining Football
The New York Times ran a story this morning on USA Football’s annual conference down in Orlando where officials met and discussed, among many other issues, the precipitous decline of youth participation numbers. They’re trying to correct the course of a sport that’s seen the amount of boys ages 6 to...

Youth Football Coach Lets Adult Play In Game, Gets Fired
The Rhode Island Pre-Teen Football League kicked out one of its teams after the coach reportedly allowed an adult to play in a game this weekend....

Oops, NFL-Funded Youth Football Program Doesn't Actually Reduce Concussions
Last year, the NFL and its functional youth football arm, USA Football, loudly touted the results of a study that showed its “Heads Up Football” program reduced concussions by more than 30 percent. It was good news for everybody, especially the NFL, which has a financial interest in reversing the pr...

Poll: The One Thing All Americans Can Agree On Is That Football Causes Brain Damage<em></em>
Eighty-one percent of American adults believe that it is either certainly or probably true that “there is a settled science that playing football causes brain injuries,” according to a new poll on perceptions of sports and concussions from the Center for Public Opinion. A slim simple majority of Ame...

Youth Football League Cancels Season Due To Violent Threats Against Officials
A youth football league in Mt. Pleasant, Penn., has cancelled its season in the wake of continued violent threats against league officials. The decision to cancel the season was made yesterday, after someone left a box full of ammunition shells with the names of league officers written on them at a ...

Little Football Players Abandon Game To Dance Like Champions
There’s an argument to be made that the more people learn about the inherent dangers of football, the less parents will be inclined to let their children participate in the game, thus leading to the eventual death of youth football. Thankfully, the Milford Mighty Mites have developed a plan to save ...

Mighty Mite Football Players Thwarted By Banner
The parents of players of the Wallkill (NY) Mighty Mites tried to do something nice for the first home game of the season, but alas, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It seems that they thought their 50 pound sons would be strong enough to break through a vinyl banner while emulating t...

Police: Dad, Football Coach Get Into Armed Conflict Over Playing Time
A man confronted a Kansas youth football coach over his son's playing time, and a group of men beat the coach before his wife pulled out of a gun of her own and fired a shot into the air, according to police....

Why Do We Let Kids Play Tackle Football?
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Youth Football Coaches Arrested For Running Gambling Ring
"Who the hell would ever bet large sums of money on little league football?" is a question that has only two answers: absolutely no one ever, and people in Florida. South Florida, specifically, where nine little league coaches have been arrested on charges of bookmaking for running a gambling ring t...

Five Pee-Wee Football Players Suffered Concussions In A 52-0 Loss
It is not as absurd a question as it would have been, say, 10 years ago: Would you want your kid playing football? You can point to the safety advances, and the increased awareness, and the character-building spiel—and then you can point to a Pop Warner football game in Massachusetts last month, in ...

Little League Football Assistant Coach Viciously Slaps Referee After Disputed Call
Meet Dion Robinson: a 43-year-old ex-con and soon to be former assistant football coach in a youth football league in West Park, Florida—weird. Specifically, Robinson has been arrested over 12 times and has pled no contest to charges including "cocaine delivery, indecent exposure and unlawful use ...

The Coach Of The Junior Pee Wee Red Cobras Has Been Suspended After Allegations Of A Pop Warner Football Bounty Program
Kids—10- and 11-year-old kids—allegedly getting paid for whatever the Pop Warner equivalent of knockouts and cart-offs are. Yeah. "Kill the head and the body will grow up feeble and addled." The going rate for successfully concussing a tween? Between $20 and $50. Christ, society....

This 8-Year-Old Football Player Can't Be Tackled
All we know about the little No. 34 in this video is that his name is Jayden Scott and he's eight years old, or one year for pretty much every defender who fails to bring him down....

"Hit 'Em In The Face As Hard As You Can," Then Pray: Pee-Wee Coach Shows Why Football Won't Be Getting Less Violent
A reader sent in this video of a Texas U6 team getting a pep talk from its coach before a game. He exhorts the Frisco Gators to push hard, be tough, and "hit 'em in the face as hard as you can." (One of his kids corrects him—"in the chest"—to nervous laughter from parents.) But before the face- or...

This Week's Florida Youth-Football Fight Involved A Cheerleader, Her Mom, Her Coach And Two Other Teens
"Yolanda Jones was the only adult arrested after the fight at JC Turner Field in South St. Petersburg. Jones told police she was trying to protect her cheerleader daughter who had come under attack. The coach, who is also Jones' daughter, said she joined the fight too. 'We started fighting, becaus...