Finished With ‘Dance Moms?’ Check out ‘Friday Night Tykes’

There’s a whole subculture of documentaries that I internally label as “Things to be offended by.” Some of these offense-causing docs are made with the intentions of shedding light onto a glaring but ignored problem, you know, like documentaries are supposed to do. Making a Murderer’s portrayal of an unfair legal system and Blackfish’s expose on the horrible living conditions animals at SeaWorld face firmly fall into this first category. Then there’s the second category, which induces just as much outrage but for an industry or element of life that is most likely not going to be changed anytime soon. That’s where Friday Night Tykes lives.

Friday Night Tykes is a docu-series that follows several youth football leagues as they train through the season, and it is all sorts of disturbing. The show’s first season is more in line with the exposing and difficult-to-watch docu-series format we’ve learned to shamelessly trust and love, but the series dips into reality TV-land in Season Two. However, that first season is definitely worth the binge.

Watching eight and nine-year-olds play full-contact football with all of the tackling, injuries, and tears that go with the sport is horrifying by itself. But when you add in the show’s grueling practice sessions, coaches with anger management issues who spend most of the series screaming profanity at these children, and parents who are shockingly on-board with this entire process, warts and all, it creates a show that is disturbingly hard to watch.

The series does a great job of combining great plays that demonstrate the ferocity of one of our nation’s favorite sports with shots of hopeful kids. In the show’s first episode, there is a boy, Jaden, who starts the season behind his team because he went on vacation over the summer instead of staying to train. While the rest of his team runs plays, the camera follows Jaden running back and forth on his coach’s orders. He’s not allowed to stop until his coach says so. Throughout the series, the parents and coaches boast about how the sport is teaching these kids the meaning of hard work. They praise the benefits of team sports and athletics in general, and while it’s easy to agree with these well-versed arguments, it’s hard to understand why pushing a sweet kid to tears is a good thing. This is what Friday Night Tykes relentlessly is, and unfortunately, this is how those household athlete names are made.

Perhaps what makes Friday Night Tykes more disturbing to me than Dance Moms is the prevalence of this aggressive sport. Football has been a part of my entire life. Whether high school me was hanging out in the bleachers, comparing outfits, or college me was screaming on my Clemson Tigers like the unstable madwoman I secretly am, football has always been woven into my social (and sometimes professional) life. With the rise of ESPN’s 30 for 30 series, which covers all sports, and the attention Will Smith’s Concussion has been receiving, there’s been a lot of discussion about the effects of football. However, few people are talking about how the football sausage is made, so to speak. Friday Night Tykes answers that question in all of its cringe-worthy glory.

And that’s where the show transforms from merely a shock-inducing docu-series to a depressing reflection of our country. Almost everyone in America has been affected by football in some way. Even if you hate watching live or streaming games, did you like Friday Night Lights? What about The Blind Side? Remember the Titans? Even if you hate all football related shows and movies, our pop culture representations are in part defined by the football-playing jock. This sport has an incredibly strong presence in not only how our shows and movies are shaped but how we as Americans relate to the world. To see its grueling, kid-fueled backstory is shocking. But what makes it depressing is knowing that the system isn’t going to change anytime soon.

Since its release, the Texas Youth Football Association has suspended several coaches as a direct result of what was shown in the docu-series. But let’s be honest for a minute. The series follows a handful of teams for a sport that the entire country participates in. Slapping four coaches on the wrist is not going to do much. Though officials and critics are worried about “the war against football,” it’s a war that can better be categorized as nonexistent. There’s currently too much money wrapped up in the sport and not enough widespread disapproval for anything to change anytime soon. Now, whether or not there needs to be a war on the sport that leads to better regulations and safer games is another matter entirely.

Overall, Friday Night Tykes puts a smiling, innocent face to the violent, aggressive, and painful world of football, which can only be described as disturbing. However, as the show’s coaches and parents are prone to say during the most injurious moments of the sport, “It’s football.”

[Where to stream Friday Night Tykes]

You can watch Season Three of Friday Night Tykes Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET 8 p.m. CT on Esquire.