NFL teams vote to allow players to compete in LA Olympics flag football tournament
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The plan cleared a key hurdle on May 20, as team owners gave their blessing at a league meeting in Minnesota.
PHOTO: REUTERS
NEW YORK – National Football League (NFL) teams voted in favour of a resolution allowing their players to compete in flag football at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, the NFL said on May 20.
The league itself had long been on board with players competing at the Games, while multiple athletes – including quarterback and two-time NFL Most Valuable Player Patrick Mahomes – said they wanted to play.
The plan cleared a key hurdle on May 20, as team owners gave their blessing at a league meeting in Minnesota.
“It’s an incredible honour for any athlete to represent their country in the Olympics, which is the pinnacle of global sport,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement.
“I know first-hand that the inclusion of flag football in the Olympics has sparked a tremendous amount of excitement among NFL players interested in the chance to compete for their country on the world stage.
“We are thrilled that they will now have that chance.”
Flag football is an abbreviated, five-a-side form of non-contact American football, where players “tackle” each other by grabbing a flag attached to the waist of opponents.
The league, NFL Players Association, Olympic entities and the sport’s global governing body IFAF will now be left to work out the fine details, including injury-protection measures, standards for field surfaces, as well as players’ workload and schedule management.
NFL players would be expected to go through a tryout or qualification process in order to compete for their national team, like any other Olympic hopeful, the league said.
NFL team owners voted unanimously in favour of the resolution, according to NFL Network.
The announcement raises the tantalising possibility of a new “Dream Team” – 36 years after the gold-medal winning United States basketball team laden with National Basketball Association stars.
“Reverting back to being a kid and watching the track and field meets, watching basketball win the gold medal, so that’s something that as a kid I always wanted to be a part of, but football wasn’t global,” Minnesota Vikings receiver Justin Jefferson said at a press conference.
“So now we’re expanding the game, it’s pretty cool.”
Dream Team or not, the move is expected to give a major injection of star power into the flag football competition, with the potential to bring US sport’s biggest names to their home Games in a country where the NFL reigns supreme in popularity.
“It really takes us a step closer to fulfilling our promise to have these be the greatest games that America is capable of hosting,” Casey Wasserman, the LA28 chairman and president, told Reuters.
A lifelong Cleveland Browns fan who was a ball boy for the team when he was a kid, Wasserman said he was keenly aware of the spotlight that the NFL players could bring to the Olympic stage.
“These athletes, yes, they will bring an immense amount of attention to the flag football tournament, but they will bring in an immense amount of the attention to the entire Olympic programme, because this will be truly life-altering for them as well,” he said.
The NFL has ramped up its promotion of the sport since the International Olympic Committee approved it for the LA 2028 programme in 2023, with an eye towards drawing more women into an arena long dominated by men.
The Olympics will also go a long way towards boosting the NFL’s longstanding international ambitions to globalise the game.
“This is a great opportunity for the sport,” Goodell added. “It’s truly the next step in making NFL football and (flag) football a global sport for men and women of all ages and opportunities across the globe.”
Six men’s and six women’s flag football teams are expected to compete in the 2028 Games, with 10 players per squad. REUTERS, AFP