Feel-good Story: Snoop Dogg's LA-based football league alums in state championship

It's the holiday season and as such, we'd like to bring you some feel-good celebrity news. In 2005, rapper Snoop Dogg (real name Calvin Broadus) used $1 million of his own money to start a youth football league in the greater Los Angeles area, after he noticed a lack of youth sports opportunities and the overwhelming gang presence.

This year marks the first year that the inagural players in Snoop's league are playing varsity high school football -- 9 of them play for the Crenshaw High School Cougars, who are undefeated and headed to the California state championship next week.

According to the Associated Press, a large part of the league's success is allowing fathers with criminal records the opportunity to coach, which they cannot do in other leagues.


Sex offenders and domestic violence convicts are not permitted to coach, but the league looks at other offenses, the nature of the offense and how recent it was, and allows fathers who have criminal records coach.

Many of the fathers are or were rival gang members, from the Bloods and the Crips. But they must agree to keep that animosity off the playing field. League commissioner Haamid Wadood says, "This is kind of like a peace treaty. Everybody wants something better for their kids."

Good luck in the state championship, Cougars.

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Photo credit: AP. For more photos, click here.