Super Bowl stars stake claims for Olympic flag football
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Team Japan celebrating during the game against Team Panama at the 2026 NFL Flag International Championship at Moscone Center South on Feb 3.
PHOTO: AFP
SANTA CLARA – The National Football League (NFL) pushed for years to get flag football into the Olympics, transforming its all-star Pro Bowl game into a showcase of gridiron’s tackle-free variation, and even shoehorning it into Super Bowl week for the first time this year.
“I think it’s one of the hottest sports in the world,” boasted NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who played a key role in accelerating the game’s successful entry into the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games.
“We’re seeing it on a global basis. And I think actually the Olympics are going to be a lot of fun, because it’s going to be a real competition.”
Indeed, after NFL owners voted 32-0 in May 2025 to let their players participate, the league’s biggest stars are jostling for a chance to represent Team USA in two years’ time.
New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye on Feb 4 told AFP it would be an “honour” to participate. Yet this week’s Pro Bowl – a traditional season-ender that pits the top players from the National Football Conference and American Football Conference against each other in semi-serious competition – was hardly an advert for flag football’s bona fides.
Despite the presence of top-tier stars like Joe Burrow, Jared Goff and Ja’Marr Chase, the game quickly descended into farce.
At one point, injured Green Bay Packers star Micah Parsons drove his mobility scooter onto the field, to the delight of the official broadcast’s excitable commentators.
It raises the question of whether NFL players are truly serious about playing flag football at the Olympics – and whether they should, given the US has a serial championship-winning amateur flag team.
“I’d be honoured and proud to play. But there are a lot of players that probably go before me,” said Maye.
The flag football drive is part of the NFL’s major push to capture new markets, encouraging young women at home and fans around the globe who might be put off playing the sport’s more violent popular form.
Flag is most noticeably different from regular football in the way tackling is performed – yanking a flag off the ball-carrier’s belt, rather than bulldozing them into the turf. Snatching these dangling fabric tags is itself a unique skill that dedicated flag footballers practise endlessly.
“I struggled pulling flags. I struggled with the contact rules,” said Team USA cornerback Mike Daniels, who played football at college before switching to flag in 2022.
It is typically played with five players per side, on a smaller field.
Quarterbacks must release the ball within seven seconds. Ball-carriers cannot jump to avoid being tackled.
“I struggled with the spacing. I struggled with the speed of the game. I still struggle with the IQ of the game,” added Daniels.
NFL players interviewed by AFP this week were adamant their professional colleagues would be best-placed to represent Team USA, in a sport for which anything less than gold would be a national embarrassment.
“Their skill sets are the best in the world,” Patriots linebacker Chad Muma said.
“You see it every single Sunday... the types of catches, the types of defensive interceptions. It’s something that we work at every single day.”
By contrast, most specialist flag footballers have day jobs.
It seems competition for those coveted Olympics spots will be intense.
“Who’d turn down the chance to be an Olympian? That’s pretty sweet, right?“ said Patriots linebacker Jack Gibbens. “If I could do anything in the Olympics, I would do it. It could be any sport. I’d try water polo.”
In other Olympic news, multiple Los Angeles officials have called on 2028 Olympics chief Casey Wasserman to step down, after the latest batch of files in the Jeffrey Epstein case revealed racy e-mails between the sports executive and the disgraced financier’s girlfriend.
Wasserman, chairman of the organising committee for the 2028 Games, apologised on Jan 31 after his 2003 e-mails with Ghislaine Maxwell surfaced in the millions of pages of documents released by the US Justice Department on Jan 30.
“Having (Wasserman) represent us on the world stage distracts focus from our athletes and the enormous efforts needed to prepare for 2028,” Los Angeles county supervisor Janice Hahn told The Los Angeles Times.
Hugo Soto-Martinez, a member of the Los Angeles City Council, also called on Wasserman to resign. AFP, REUTERS
