Top
Although its participants are still in grade school, Pop Warner football is serious business in Miami, one of America's poorest and most culturally idiosyncratic cities. Local teams routinely advance to the national championships; 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. As parents dream of watching their children achieve NFL superstardom and coaches take the league to court, inner-city kids long only for a week in Disney World at the Pop Warner Super Bowl.
We Own This Game is an inside-the-huddle look into a world of innocence and corruption, where every kickoff bares political, social, and racial implications. Taking the reader beyond the field and into the homes of the parents and players and offering a shrewd look at recruiting, scouting, and competitiveness run amok, Robert Andrew Powell's brilliant reportage shows us how Miami's strange politics play out on the gridiron, among young boys who are hungry to break out of poverty and grab hold of some-thing to believe in. We Own This Game is an unforgettable drama that shows us just what it is to win and to lose in America.
