A Deep Dive into the Rapper’s Unexpected Gridiron Ambitions
In 2005, Snoop Dogg—international rap icon, cannabis entrepreneur, and occasional Martha Stewart collaborator—made the logical next step in his multi-hyphenate career: youth football coach.
Not content with merely cheering from the sidelines, Snoop founded the Snoop Youth Football League (SYFL), a nonprofit organization designed to provide opportunities for inner-city kids to play organized football. As commissioner, founder, and sometimes head coach, Snoop took an active role. He wore a headset. He studied playbooks. He yelled at referees. He referred to himself as Coach Snoop.
The SYFL was not a vanity project. Since its inception, the league has helped produce real NFL talent, including wide receiver John Ross and cornerback JuJu Smith-Schuster. Despite his status as the voice behind hits like “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” Snoop took his coaching duties with the seriousness of a man auditioning for a role in ‘Remember the Titans 2.’
Sometimes Snoop would fly from a concert in Paris straight to a Pop Warner game in Los Angeles. At times, he’d handle gameday logistics in a fur coat. Practice drills were occasionally punctuated by unexpected freestyle sessions. Opposing coaches had to make peace with the fact that their team’s defeat might go viral on a rapper’s Instagram story.
In 2018, the SYFL was featured in the Netflix docuseries “Coach Snoop,” chronicling one of the most sincere juxtapositions of hip-hop bravado and genuine grassroots community engagement. Throughout the series, Snoop can be seen diagramming plays with the same intensity one might reserve for a Grammy performance.
While it remains unclear whether Snoop ever considered a moonlight job as an NFL offensive coordinator, his legacy as a football coach is real, quantifiable, and tax-deductible. In a world where athletes try to rap and rappers try to act, Snoop Dogg became a football coach—and perhaps most impressively, no one was all that surprised.