Pop Warner football has been around since the inception of the league in 1929 by founder Joseph J. Tomlin as a four-team conference in Northeast Philadelphia. Since then, participation has steadily increased to today's record numbers. Over 240,000 youths participated in Pop Warner-sanctioned football programs in 2004, and those numbers are continuing to grow.
Safety First
Kids compete with kids of similar age and size. Pop Warner is the ONLY youth football program (local, regional and national) that sets and enforces a strict AGE & WEIGHT MATRIX that reduces the risk and reality of injuries.
Did you know that Pop Warner football is safer than soccer? Pop Warner football has 12% fewer injuries per capita among 5-15 year olds than organized soccer in the same age range! (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, NEISS)
Why There Are No Personal Statistics
Pop Warner exists to use football, cheer-leading, dance and a respect for education to develop strong, smart, responsible, healthy young men and women. We give them experiences that build their appreciation for and understanding of leadership, teamwork, and discipline.
While individual statistics may be more common, particularly among older football players, Pop Warner only recognizes the athletic accomplishments of the team, not the individual. We don't track personal tallies of touchdowns or yards rushing per game. We don't count sacks or blocked kicks. We applaud the athletic efforts of the team to reinforce the importance of teamwork, with each member.
We don't try to build stars. We don't want to over-inflate a young ego, nor do we want to risk injuring the self-esteem of a young person. Whether our kids have good days or bad, they are still an integral part of our team…and always will be.
Getting to The Pop Warner Super Bowl
The road to the National Championship is a long one for the football players, cheerleaders and dancers of the Pop Warner Little Scholars program.
Players begin practicing on August 1 in preparation for their season openers, usually held during the last week in August or first week in September. A participant can be considered eligible for the season when he/she has met the four basic criteria for participation: A candidate must provide proof of age, parental consent, a medical examination, and academic fitness.
What makes Pop Warner unique as an organization is our commitment to academic excellence among our participants. A participant must maintain a 2.0 Grade Point Average/70 percent in school in order to participate during the season.
If a child doesn’t reach the 2.0/70% requirement, a Scholastic Eligibility Form is filled out by that child’s school to determine whether or not the PWLS program is beneficial for him/her. Once this is determined, the child’s grades are monitored throughout the season. Our objective is to build sound minds and bodies for our leaders of tomorrow.
A football team plays a 7 to 9 game schedule and at the end of the regular season, usually during the last week in October, a team prepares for league playoffs. Playoff games are only for the Junior Peewee, Peewee, Junior Midget, Midget, Junior Bantam and Bantam levels. We do not have playoffs at our Mitey-Mite level.
Once a league champion has been decided and a team has won the right to participate in regional championships, all report cards are verified to ensure that all the players are academically eligible. Those teams that win at the regional championships are invited to Disney’s Wide World of Sports™ to compete for a national championship in their division. In 2000, more excitement was added to Pop Warner football when a Division II national championship was added and in 2005, Pop Warner began crowning overall Division I champions for Jr. Pee Wee, Pee Wee & Jr. Midget.