The Internet can be a tough field of play, but Mary Crippen has managed to tackle it with ease.
After all, the Miami-based third grade teacher has gone viral with her playbook—er, lesson plans—packed with football-fueled content that has many of her 500,000 TikTok followers clamoring for a trade into her class.
“It's such a good corner of the internet to be on,” Crippen told E! News of her channel, which have amassed nearly 15 million likes. And while most comment sections are filled with behavior worthy of a penalty flag or two, hers has some of the NFL’s top players and mascots plus everyday fans cheering on her team, known as Class Class.
As for the content? It’s easily the most wholesome on your feed and more captivating than a last-second Hail Mary. Well, if you ask us.
“People will be like, ‘You’re teaching me the game,’” she said. “People are watching football because of what I’m teaching in the classroom.”
Welcome to NFeLementary, the biggest win for the NFL since Taylor Swift.
What began in the ‘90s as a small draft in her mom’s fifth grade class has evolved into a nationwide league of its own. Today, 350 teachers are running the NFeLementary curriculum—a savvy play meant to teach a wide range of academics and life lessons—alongside head coach Crippen.
“I've always used sports as a metaphor,” said Crippen, who grew up a casual fan but fell in love with football during college intramurals. “I used the lessons I learned on a team to share with my kids and connect with the game.”
She decided to run with it after she overheard her students debating the Kansas City Chiefs vs. the Miami Dolphins. Putting the hometown team’s schedule on the whiteboard, she began tallying wins and losses.
“When they won, we got 10 extra minutes of recess,” she explained of the Dolphins. And when they lost? Well, a post-game debrief broke down what happened and what could be learned for next time.
“It was such a fun way to connect with them,” the 32-year-old recalled. “They were coming in talking about the games, so it naturally became our Monday morning meeting.”
Suddenly, that weekly tradition—which went viral on X in 2023—expanded into tracking Tyreek Hill’s receiving yards, predicting outcomes, analyzing plays and learning place value, addition and subtraction.
When the Dolphins’ season ended and her students begged for overtime coverage, Crippen realized she had something bigger on her hands. So, she spent the summer dusting off her mom’s manila folder, drawing up her own playbook and trademarking NFeLementary.
Now, each school year kicks off with a draft where students blindly pick the team they’ll follow all season. From there, they’re drawing up the Xs and Os, studying rivalries and tuning in every Sunday to watch live.
“They’re asking their grown-ups to put on the games,” Crippen shared. “You’d think they’d need the Nickelodeon version, but no, they want the real thing. They want to watch the action.”
And now, they’re acting as coaches, too. “Grown-ups are seeing their kids latch on and they want to be fans,” she continued. “So, it’s brought families together. The kids get so excited to teach and share.”
As NFeLementary has grown so has its fanbase. Teams have sent Class Class tickets, signed gear and personalized messages. (Eli Manning and Peyton Manning even signed permission slips so students could stay up late for a game.)
But even with sideline access, Crippen keeps her class grounded. “I always tell the kids this is not the point of the program,” she admitted. “If you start expecting these things, you're in it for the wrong reasons.”
The real wins, she insists, are the life lessons: Dedication, heart and teamwork.
And in Florida, where third grade is a heavy test year, those messages are game changers.
“When they see the struggle of players, they know that it’s not the end,” she explained. “So, when they start struggling, they’ve learned you just have to keep going. They’re able to coach themselves through it. And that’s the coolest.”
And that’s just one teachable moment. When Jalen Carter’s spitting incident went viral, she talked about consequences. And when Baker Mayfield—once plagued by career setbacks—sent her student tickets to a Buccaneers game, they discussed perseverance.
“It’s a lesson of you can’t give up,” she said of the quarterback, “and sometimes you have to bet on yourself.”
Her endgame? Making NFeLementary the official education program of the NFL. She’s already on her way, building variations for kindergarten through high school plus adaptions for ESE and occupational therapy students.
The dream is for it to “be accessible for everybody,” she mused. “I feel like it can go to the moon.”
Until it's ready for lift-off, there’s more to be done on the ground. Because the offseason is just as packed.
In the spring, her class runs its own NFL Combine, analyzing results of their 40-yard dashes. Then comes the snack draft, where the kids are general managers, quarterbacks are fast food and running backs are drinks. “It’s the funniest thing going into the comments,” she said of her TikToks, “because people are like, ‘Man, I really wanted the Rams to go for Snickers.’”
Afterwards, her students dive into their team’s real first-round picks, turning in biographies on the soon-to-be star athletes. “Yes, the heavy load of NFL content dies down,” she said, “but there's still so much to talk about.”
This year, after the confetti falls at the Super Bowl, they’ll pivot from football to, well, football—the soccer kind—ahead of the FIFA World Cup.
“So many of my kids are soccer fans,” Crippen explained. “We’ll do projects on the host stadiums and the countries represented. It’s a cool way to end the school year.”
By then, her stats speak for themselves. “I've had perfect attendance more times that I can count, and I can directly correlate that to what we're doing in the classroom,” she shared. “The kids want to be here.”
“The mission,” she continued, “is to bring the learning to life and to make school fun.”
In that case, with all due respect to Josh Allen, she might be the real MVP.