We Own This Game, by Robert Andrew Powell

In the black neighborhoods of Miami, there's one game in town.  Miami journalist Robert Andrew Powell opens the curtain on the huge subculture of youth football in We Own This Game: A Season in the Adult World of Youth Football.  If you, like me, have not been exposed to this scene, you're in for an eye-opener.

These kids, post-toddler to teen, play football in a league that's as competitive and elaborate as many high school teams.  Some of their games have higher attendance than college games I've seen.  They tailgate, have DJs and snack bars, travel to games in charter buses, have corporate sponsors.  It sounds like a spectacle.

Powell follows on team through a season, introducing us to the coaches, players, parents, and sponsors who make it all happen.  As the subtitle suggests, the league gets so adult that I had to constantly remind myself that the players are little children.  It frequently seemed to me that the coaches could have used a reminder as well.  The way they push the kids, the language they use, the weight they place on the games all seem too intense.  I know I wouldn't want my kid in this environment.

Rapper and producer Luther Campbell, whose cash has bankrolled the league, talks about the importance of youth football to the black community: "We own this game.  I mean, you can take whatever you want to take—our land, our housing, our jobs, whatever.  But we got our dignity and our pride.  We might not have ever had any leader to lead us to the promised land, but at least we got our football. We own football."

The larger story in Campbell's quote, and in the book as a whole, is the story of blacks in Miami.  Despite being the oldest minority group in Miami, through discrimination and unjust treatment, poverty and segregation persist.  In spite of the success of Campbell and a few others, Miami has a very small black middle class.  In between the football games, Powell tells the story of segregation and injustice.

Yes, it's a book about youth football.  But on a greater level, Powell writes about the history and culture of blacks living in Miami.  It's an enjoyable, enlightening book.