A bit more of a complete story:
Looks like he was allowed to pick off the pepperoni but still forced to eat pizza with pork grease still on it. I’m sure these bigots thought themselves incredibly tolerant for the gesture.
Also, the article says he’s a tackle, so not exactly a critical position, but at the high school level, you don’t want to lose any starter.
Why would a high school need 8 football coaches?
To have enough inches for one big prick.
Head coach, o coordinator, d coordinator, o line, d line, linebackers, dbs, running back, and receivers. Actually that’s 9 so the head coach is probably the o coordinator too. Our staff in high school was probably closer to 20 at a small private but athletically successful school, a lot of those coaches were volunteers though.
As Oredigger said, it’s normal for a team to have one head coach but numerous assistant coaches with sub-specialties.
Well, I mean, at least we know football coaches are real and actually do have a relationship with some people.
BTW, that article describes the kid as “of the Hebrew Israeli faith”, which might mean Black Hebrew Israelite, which doesn’t seem to be the same as Jewish.
Just by the way, from the linked articles, it appears that the player is a Hebrew Israelite, which isn’t quite the same as being Jewish. I don’t think any mainstream Jewish organizations consider them to be Jewish, and many Hebrew Israelites apparently don’t identify as Jewish. And they’re African American.
So, there probably wasn’t any anti-Semitism involved (although there may well have been some religious bigotry).
None of that, of course, in any way excuses or diminishes what these coaches did.
*ETA: partially ninja’d by @Dewey_Finn.
Then why this weird “You gotta eat the pepperoni pizza to stay on the team” crap? They were trying to punish him because of his stated faith, whether they knew any details about it or not.
If he said anything like this is against my religion/diet/whatever, they’re assholes. Well, they’re probably assholes anyhow, but that would have made it certain.
Out of curiosity, I’m trying to figure out how many football coaches my old HS had/has. Looks like maybe three?
You snipped out the rest of that sentence, as well as the following sentence.
I very explicitly (and I thought clearly) stated that religious bigotry may well have been involved, just probably not anti-Semitism per se.
As well, we only have second hand reports from one side on what actually happened. We don’t actually know anything about what the coaches knew about the player’s religion, much less what they think about it.
Again, I am NOT excusing what the adults did. If they knew that his religion forbade the consumption of pork, their behavior is inexcusable. (For that matter, Hebrew Isrealites are apparently also supposed to be vegan, which would make eating the cheese on the pizza forbidden as well, so what they made him do might be even worse).
But if they didn’t know, their behavior makes no sense at all.
What are they going to do next, make a peanut-allergic kid eat a Butterfinger?
This is wrong on so many levels.
Look, this story is weird no matter how you slice it. But, again, we only have second hand accounts from one side (really, third hand accounts by news services). And even those accounts don’t claim, as far as I’ve seen, that the coaches made him eat a pepperoni pizza because his religion forbade pork, just that they made him eat it despite his religion.
Having a teenage boy, especially one big enough a star football tackle, eat a whole pizza sounds less like a punishment and more like an early dinner. But maybe the idea was to have him eat greasy food and then run laps until he puked it all back up. Which would still be abusive, but not bigoted.
Or, of course, maybe the idea was to force him to violate the tenets of his religion. But then why let him pick off the pepperoni? They wanted to force him to eat pork - but then let him not eat the pork, and just made him eat the greasy residue? That doesn’t really make much sense, either.
Or maybe something else entirely was going on.
None of which excuses what the coaches apparently did.
Well, nice to know that there’s an asset for the judgment lien. 
Those coaches are real pieces of work, I tell ya.
Not to mention that they’re still three months away from football season. It still wouldn’t be an acceptable excuse, of course, even if they were in the middle of a playoff run.
Just guessing, but it sounds like the idea was to humiliate him in front of his teammates, to create peer pressure. The articles said the coaches told the young man that if he didn’t finish the entire pizza, the whole squad would have to run punishment drills. That sounds like his squad - probably, the other offensive linemen on the team - were present to watch the punishment. “Young Mr. X here is going to eat an entire pizza, while the rest of you watch. If he doesn’t finish every bite, all of you will be punished.”
ETA: according to an updated story, the player’s teammates participated in the punishment:
Religious bigotry could have played a part as well; if the coach were an evangelical Christian, as many are, he might not have taken the player’s non-mainstream religion seriously.
Our high school has a difficult time getting enough students who want to play football (I believe they’ve dropped JV because they only have enough interest to field one team). Eight coaches would be overkill for “yeah, I think we have a football team.” (It isn’t a small school either - about 2000 students).