There was a time when the thought of a coach’s criminal background didn’t cross the mind of parents of youth football players.
That time has long passed.
That’s why USA Football, the national governing body of America’s favorite sport on the grassroots level, became a torchbearer for the safety of its youth football-playing membership in 2007. USA Football has dedicated $500,000 through 2008 to subsidize gold-standard criminal background screenings for youth football leagues.
How important is USA Football’s financial commitment?
“It was a godsend,” said Clifford Williams, league president of the Mon River Pop Warner Youth Football Conference in Swissvale, Pa. “Our player registration numbers went up because we implemented USA Football’s program. It’s very valuable, and I’ve heard from a lot of other organizations around here who are looking to follow in our footsteps.”
As part of its subsidy, USA Football donates $10 per applicant to help defray the cost of the background check.
“We also had our board members, other volunteers and cheerleading coaches sign up for the background check,” Williams said. “League-wide, we had about 120 background checks performed. The coaches were honestly excited about the donation from USA Football. These folks are all volunteers, and they spend plenty of their own money as it is on these kids. So when they feel appreciation from someone outside the local football organization, that makes them feel good. They were going to spend the money on it, but to have to only spend $15 because of the USA Football donation really went a long way.”
USA Football is the only youth sports organization providing a discounted program like this in the fight against sexual predators. The background checks are provided by the National Center for Safety Initiatives, the official check screening company of the United States Olympic Committee.
NCSI has already performed thousands of checks thanks to the USA Football initiative.
“It’s a great program, and it’s much-needed,” Williams said. “It works real well for us. With this check, we got a lot of information on people that we needed to see that we weren’t getting previously with our local criminal background checks. It really reinforced to our parents the concern we have as far as the safety of their children.”
NCSI is able to provide the service with a turnaround of 10 days or less. After a league administrator becomes a member of USA Football (it’s free at USAFootball.com), coaches are provided with NCSI online registration information. The form takes about five minutes to complete online.
NCSI performs searches in two national criminal databases as well as all state sex offender registries. The search also includes county records.
Each applicant has a report, and the report is then compared to the set of guidelines provided by the football organization. Some organizations want lifetime records to be considered, and others choose to set a time frame for when the crimes took place. Types of crime to be considered also must be chosen by the organization. For example, the association could request that NCSI only consider crimes that happen in the past five years. A youth league can set its own crime and time parameters with NCSI.
After the report is complete, each applicant is tagged with a green flag (OK) or red flag (not OK). For red flag applicants, NCSI then contacts the applicant to allow the individual to explain or dispute the record. After that discussion, NCSI makes its decision and notifies the league of the green flag and red flag applicants. No confidential information about the applicant is passed between NCSI and the local league administrators.
Thus far, about four percent of the checks conducted with USA Football’s help result in individuals being red-flagged, or eliminated from the coaching pool.
For USA Football, the NCSI checks for felonies and lesser crimes committed with force and with the threat of force; sex crimes and lesser crimes -- including lone individual sex crimes (i.e. pornography-related); and crimes involving cruelty to animals.
The support is apparent, on a local and national level, for USA Football’s forward-
thinking approach to the background checks.
A study from April to May of this year by The Bonham Group – a top research company hired by USA Football – unveiled that 83 percent of parents say background checks on youth sports head coaches are important. Ten percent said it wasn’t important, and seven percent said they were unsure if they were important.
Further, 69 percent of parents said they were more likely to enroll their kids into a league that conducts background checks on its volunteers. Additionally, 18 percent of parents said that they were not more likely, and 13 percent were not sure.
According to NCSI, one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually victimized before adulthood.
It’s those kind of numbers that parents take into account after they realize their team’s coach won’t be back with the program.
“We did have some coaches who were reluctant to have the check done,” Williams said. “Some had a history and wanted us to go in a different direction. But our board agreed that there are some things we can’t overlook. The lives of these kids are in our hands. We had a couple of circumstances where we had to let the coach go. Some parents were upset, but once we explained to them what it was all about, they realized, ‘Hey, they’re looking out for the safety of my child.’ And no one is above that.”