Kalan HooksJan 28, 2026, 09:00 AM ET
ATLANTA FALCONS RUNNING back Bijan Robinson got a meaningful surprise last September when Mary Crippen showed up at Mercedes-Benz Stadium to volunteer for his "Bijan Reads" book fair.
The event was vital to Robinson, whose goal was to help children, specifically those at a third grade level, know exactly what they were learning to help set them up for a better life.
"I think it's really important for me as a role model for them to make sure that they're getting all the right learning materials, the right learning, just people to help them out so they can really be [better off] when they get older," Robinson told ESPN.
As Robinson put the event together, his aunt, Cleyrissa Robinson, suggested that he ask educators to participate. Crippen, a third grade teacher at Pinecrest Elementary School in Miami who is known for using the NFeLementary class curriculum, was a perfect fit.
"I didn't even know she was coming," Robinson said. "They surprised me and they surprised a whole bunch of other people. So, when I saw her, it was the coolest thing ever."
Robinson already had taken notice of Crippen, whose approach has influenced teaching in grade school classrooms around the country. Crippen and her Miami third graders regularly go viral for working with the NFeLementary curriculum, which uses the NFL season and football to help students learn.
"So, with her, how she is making sure that her kids are having fun, first and foremost, but enjoying learning and enjoying wanting to be at their best, and even them competing against each other in terms of school, that's how you become smart. That's how you become a great student. So that's why I think that she's such a great teacher," Robinson said.
"CLASS, CLASS!" CRIPPEN calls out to her students before they respond, "Yes, yes!" to start the day.
Mondays and Thursdays are the students' favorite days. Their eyes are immediately drawn to the board at the front of the classroom listing homework, the day's agenda -- and, most importantly, that week's "Monday Night Football" or "Thursday Night Football" matchup.
Before the NFL season got underway, students used to enter the classroom in a calm, quiet manner, but that changed when the season began.
"They're coming in hot. [Saying] 'I beat you. Did you see that tackle? Did you see that?'" Crippen told ESPN. "It's so cool to see them come in and have that community and have that bond with each other over the game of football."
Crippen's teaching style isn't typical. Neither is the football-based curriculum called "NFeLementary."
Her mother, Donna Martinez, began the program in 1999 and taught for 38 years. When a group of male students failed to complete their math homework, Martinez wanted to find a way to encourage them to learn. Martinez, who taught fifth grade, sought inspiration from the Miami Herald newspaper to incorporate current events into lesson plans to fuel her students' learning. She called her new curriculum "Gridiron Geography."
"We drafted football teams and I incorporated what I needed from math and I started seeing the progress," Martinez told ESPN. "I needed something that I could and they could love. And they started seeing my passion."
"Gridiron Geography" transformed into something that helped students learn to use context clues and apply them to current events found in the newspaper.
Martinez says she began to see parents engage more in their children's learning. And though she retired in 2018, she still receives text messages and phone calls of gratitude from her former students.
"It's the water cooler talk on Monday morning. The adults love football -- they love the NFL ... and then all of a sudden you realized, the dads and daughters started connecting," Martinez said.
Years later, Crippen put her own spin on the program, which involves her Miami Dolphins super fandom, popular NFL storylines and educational skills.
She began posting her NFeLementary content in 2023 and now boasts more than 599,000 followers across social media platforms. Thanks to her platform, the curriculum is being used by roughly 350 teachers in North America.
CRIPPEN IMMERSED HERSELF in football early. Her family had season tickets for the Dolphins and Miami Hurricanes.
She wanted to play tackle football but there were no leagues for girls. So she played volleyball, softball and ran the 800-meter in track and field throughout her grade school days. She earned the opportunity to play volleyball at the collegiate level but ultimately decided to stop playing as a high school senior.
"I was like, there is no after college for me with volleyball, you know. I didn't see myself making it to the Olympics," Crippen said. "I wasn't, like, 6 feet tall. So am I really going to go to a school and devote my entire time to be on a team when I want the college experience."
Florida State University gave Crippen that college experience -- and more.
At FSU, Crippen said she hit a phase of uncertainty: She didn't know what she wanted to do professionally and struggled with others' opinions of her.
So she joined a sorority, Delta Gamma, and found a community that catered to her in a way she didn't expect. And when she discovered that her sorority also participated in an intramural flag football league, she felt it was her calling.
"I did volleyball, but for some reason, I was just drawn to flag football. And so because of my background with football and going to games and knowing I could play. I played in the neighborhood all the time. I knew I was good at football."
She started as a wide receiver before her coach, former NFL safety Terrence Brooks, who played for the FSU football team at the time, persuaded her to convert into a two-way player and play cornerback.
"On the flag football field I felt like all the noise went away, where all of that kind of just stopped, where I felt complete, and I felt OK, and all those [struggles] didn't matter."
She said that because of Brooks' guidance and support, she was recruited to play for the Florida State club flag football team -- and not long after, Brooks was drafted 79th by the Baltimore Ravens in the 2014 NFL draft.
"I was still in my sorority house with all the girls. I remember how I was wanting to turn on the NFL on my own, not just because it was on at a gathering or on at my parents' house -- I wanted to watch Terrence, because he made such an impact on me as a person and a player that now I wanted to watch his journey," Crippen said. "I wanted to follow him."
After graduating in 2016 with a Bachelor of Science in early childhood education and teaching, Crippen met her now-husband, Tom, who led her deeper into her Dolphins fandom. He went to every home game and was a loyal tailgater.
"It felt like I was a kid again -- surrounded by all the boys, growing up in a neighborhood, everybody talking sports, talking ball, and I really loved it," she said. "I loved being in that atmosphere."
CRIPPEN DIDN'T ALWAYS dream of being a teacher. Though she grew up watching her mother teach, she was determined to carve her own path. At FSU, she dreamed of being a sports nutritionist with the Dolphins. She then took a chemistry course and her interest faded.
Crippen recalled being at a Miami Marlins game when the thought of becoming a teacher crossed her mind. She applied for an early childhood program.
She earned her certification in 2016 and began teaching kindergarten before making a jump to third grade in the 2022-23 school year.
"I remember vividly the first week of school in third grade. I hear my students talking about [Chiefs quarterback] Patrick Mahomes, and I was like, 'Oh, OK.' And it shocked me, because I assumed -- as coming from kindergarten -- they don't really have thoughts of that themselves," Crippen said.
She told her mom she was going to do NFeLementary with her third graders.
Martinez, who hadn't digitized her paperwork or lesson plans, gently passed the manila folder covered in football helmets to Crippen. She wasn't nervous in that moment, but emotional, overcome by the feeling of handing over her "everything" to her daughter.
"Handing her that manila folder was like a baton, and I handed her that folder and trusted her and she's taken [it] and created a garden, created a forest," Martinez said.
For the 2023-24 school year, Crippen's class first tracked Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill and his road to 2,000 receiving yards.
The students did the math on how many yards Hill needed to average on a weekly basis, the sum of his total yardage and what was remaining. They also added their own predictions about how many yards he would get in the next game.
Hill had 102 receiving yards in a 2023 Week 12 win against the New York Jets. One of Crippen's students estimated the yardage correctly, so they received a complimentary "no homework pass."
Though Hill fell 201 yards short of 2,000 yards with 1,799 receiving yards, it didn't affect Crippen's class. She turned the moment into a lesson about how Hill shot "for the stars" and still broke the Dolphins' record for receiving yards in a single season and led the league in receiving yards.
Crippen also recalled a 2024 moment when then-Dolphins tight end Jonnu Smith noticed a lesson she taught about the importance of advocating for oneself. Students already were given the task of learning about Smith's background and his career, but Crippen highlighted the tight end as the main subject for the specific lesson. She said he immediately reached out -- and eventually visited and taught a lesson to her class.
"It was the player that they learned about. And we connected it to the standard of theme -- the message or the moral of a story. And they learned about [Smith], we learned about what a theme is through his story," Crippen said. "And then he came to the classroom and got to share his side of the story and about his story, so that was really full circle."
At the start of the 2025-26 school year and NFL season, Crippen's students tracked quarterback Tua Tagovailoa's quest to reach 4,000 passing yards, with the Dolphins and the NFL taking notice.
"We are well aware of Mary and the great work she does using football as a teaching tool with her students," a Dolphins spokesperson said in a statement to ESPN. "We've engaged with her as an organization quite a bit over the course of the last several years."
Tagovailoa finished with 2,660 passing yards -- well short of the 4,000-yard mark -- and was benched in Week 16. But it didn't affect Crippen's class, as her students were also able to track their own teams.
She kicks off each school year with an NFL draft-style lesson, letting each student choose a team to follow for the season.
Crippen said NFeLementary aligns with helping her students prepare for the MAP test, Florida's statewide standardized test.
And she takes learning a step further by using football as an educational tool and as a resource for life lessons.
"Can we compare our journeys to each other? No, because maybe what my problem with my team is probably different from what your team needs to solve, kind of like when they take a test and they get an F, yeah, a couple of you may have also got A's, but maybe you got questions wrong, and he got the questions that he got right," Crippen said.
"So can you compare what you're doing to what he's doing? No, it's your own journey, and we always have to figure out our own journey. So that's what I love about tracking teams."
EACH LESSON PLAN looks different depending on events that take place on NFL Sundays. Crippen keeps "RedZone" and "Sunday Ticket" on to track her students' teams -- and her Dolphins -- so she can be sharp on Monday mornings.
Every week, students write reports on their designated teams, including the game's score, kickoff time, weather conditions, point differentials, the quarterback's passing yards and the player with the most scrimmage yards.
She scrolls through X to find what piques her interest, then turns that moment into a lesson.
One of Crippen's students, Nathan, is a huge fan of soccer and wasn't as interested in the NFL until he joined her class. His father, Justo Garcia, said that since Nathan joined the class, he has seen an impact on his son's education, along with better football knowledge.
"I'll be watching 'RedZone' and he'll be like, 'This is going to be exciting because this team is going to be in first place in their division if they win.' So in terms of keeping up on the NFL and the standings in the divisions, it's wild how they're tuned into that," Garcia told ESPN.
Sometimes the lessons resonate well enough with NFL personnel that they'll reach out to teach a lesson themselves.
She turned the Philadelphia Eagles' Week 1 matchup against the Dallas Cowboys into a lesson about collecting information, referencing Eagles defensive tackle Jalen Carter's ejection for spitting on quarterback Dak Prescott. It was later revealed that Prescott spit Carter's way first. Bryan Neale, the NFL official who flagged the play, spoke to Crippen's class during Week 5 about the play, what he saw and the importance of officials.
Last season, Eagles receiver A.J. Brown went viral after reading a book on the sidelines during a 22-21 wild-card round win against the Green Bay Packers. In her class the following week, Crippen explained to her students what Brown was reading and why, emphasizing the importance of reading.
Martinez said Brown reached out to Crippen and personally thanked her for teaching her students the lesson.
The NFL, which has kept a magnifying glass on Crippen's work, said she inspired the league to get involved and help her foster relationships with all 32 franchises.
"When we heard this year, we began to engage with her in the league-side and connecting her with some of the different teams who the kids were fans of and it's grown and blossomed from there," said Ian Trombetta, NFL senior vice president of social and influence marketing.
In April, the NFL invited Crippen to its annual league meeting in Palm Beach, Florida, to demonstrate how her lesson plans have impacted her students and built relationships with team owners, general managers and presidents.
"It's been terrific to see the education that she's driving through football," Trombetta said.
THE OFFSEASON COMES around just as testing begins to pick up. While students get to highlight the lessons learned through NFeLementary on standardized tests, Crippen said the offseason allows the curriculum to become more creative and fun. Students participate in their own version of the NFL combine, where they run 40-yard dashes and shuttle runs to compare the times to players on their teams.
They also serve as mock general managers with research projects such as the NFL Players Association report card, where they grade teams and take part in the draft, writing mini bios on players their team drafted in the first round.
While Crippen's focus is her class, NFeLementary's reach and influence are widely felt. She created a private group on Facebook with 286 other teachers using the lesson plan to provide feedback, serve as resources and celebrate wins the program has created in classrooms.
Crippen said students as old as middle schoolers and as far away as California have reached out to her with interest in participating.
"It's so cool, because that's what this program is," she said. "It brings that learning to life, and it brings that excitement, and it brings the lessons to life and it creates magic."
And though Crippen's course work revolves around the NFL, she isn't limiting it there -- she's open to expanding the program to other leagues such as the NBA, MLB and NHL. Her priority never changes: designing the curriculum around what best serves her students' long-term success.
"It's about the kids and showing up for the kids and bringing the learning to life and not forgetting the 'why' behind it," Crippen said. "The biggest thing to protect is the mission of it, and it being for the kids and bringing the learning to life."
