{"id":61908,"date":"2025-05-19T09:03:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T09:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/61908\/"},"modified":"2025-05-19T09:03:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T09:03:11","slug":"after-decades-of-failing-to-capture-deep-global-interest-the-nfl-has-an-answer-to-a-daunting-problem-olympic-flag-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/61908\/","title":{"rendered":"After decades of failing to capture deep global interest, the NFL has an answer to a ‘daunting’ problem: Olympic flag football"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly eight years ago, sitting on a couch in a hotel room in California, Dallas Cowboys<\/a> owner Jerry Jones had the concept of Olympic flag football<\/a> on the tip of his tongue and just couldn\u2019t find it.<\/p>\n

In an expansive 1-on-1 interview with Yahoo Sports in the summer of 2017, Jones was discussing the growth of the NFL as a globally consumed sport when the subject of untapped markets was broached. At the time, the league was positioning itself to continue a robust international expansion of games in the U.K., mainland Europe, Canada and Mexico, with the ultimate goal of creating a 33rd NFL team through an international aggregate of games \u2014 in the hopes of eventually having what amounted to a full season\u2019s slate of matchups played outside of the United States each season.<\/p>\n

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It was a shoot-for-the-moon dream that Jones and his fellow NFL team owners thought could be achieved with persistence and measured purpose over the span of decades. But there was still a hanging thread that Jones couldn\u2019t stop thinking about. Specifically, how to get traction for the NFL in places where it was nothing more than an oddity. It was a question that, back in 2017, was being focused through China<\/a> \u2014 largely because the English Premier League and the NBA had cultivated that country\u2019s hundreds of millions of potential fans in a way that the NFL could only dream of achieving.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have a good answer on China,\u201d Jones said in 2017. \u201cIt\u2019s daunting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe numbers are there [to draw the NFL in]. But what our challenge is \u2014 whether it be London or Mexico City, which I think are prime areas for expansion \u2014 our real challenge is how to whip things up and see if Shanghai wants to beat Beijing. Can it rile them up and can they have that kind of competition? If you\u2019ve got a culture that can create that, then we\u2019ve got potential.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later in the interview, Jones speculated that the answer might not be an NFL-down approach at all. That simply playing NFL games in the country isn\u2019t enough to seed sustainable enthusiasm. Maybe what was needed was to find a way to simply introduce China to football in the most easy, organic way possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt might be giving people a reason to pick up a football for the first time and just go outside to play with it,\u201d he said. \u201cWhich really isn\u2019t simple at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

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What Jones was getting at was a singular idea that has long created the wall between true global interest in the NFL versus the aggressively targeted international traction that currently exists: Getting people interested in the game itself \u2014 or some version of it \u2014 rather than getting people interested specifically in the NFL.<\/p>\n

Enter flag football and the grand stage of the 2028 Olympic Summer Games in Los Angeles. It’s arguably the best answer the NFL has ever had to motivate the entire world to pick up a football and play with it \u2014 especially if some of the people picking up a football for their country also happen to be NFL players.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what\u2019s at stake during this week\u2019s NFL spring meetings in Minneapolis, when club owners will consider a proposal to allow the league\u2019s players to try out for flag football teams in the 2028 Summer Games. If the proposal gains enough traction for a vote, 75% of the league\u2019s team owners \u2014 24 of 32 \u2014 would have to approve the measure. And right now, when you talk to C-suite executives across the NFL, there appears to be some definitive support that goes beyond NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a good of the game issue maybe more than the good of the team,\u201d one NFC team president said. \u201cBut that\u2019s what the league has always been built on. \u2026 It\u2019s a great opportunity around the [Olympic] Games and gives the NFL unprecedented growth [opportunities] as well as an amazing lead into training camp.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Added an AFC team president: \u201cIt\u2019s a smart way \u2014 and I honestly believe a carefully thought-out way \u2014 to finally be part of that global stage every four years. I get the injury [concern], but every other major professional sport in America has been part of the Olympics for 30 years or more now. The NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball have all been able to shoulder that risk. Now [the NFL] can be a part of it with moderately less risk than what happens on an NFL field.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the logistics of making an Olympic flag football team while also playing in the NFL aren\u2019t yet known, some of the guardrails are, among them:<\/p>\n

The league would allow one player on each NFL roster to try out for one country\u2019s Olympic team \u2014 leaving the door open for multiple players on a single team to play in the Olympics if they are eligible for non-U.S. rosters. For example, one player could try out for the U.S. team, while another could try out for the Canadian team if they meet ancestry requirements. Each team\u2019s international pathway player could also try out for their country\u2019s team.<\/p>\n

Flag football teams would need to meet a standard of medical care and playing surface mandates to be eligible for NFL players. It would also need to augment all parts of its schedule so that the player\u2019s NFL schedule would take precedent over everything else.<\/p>\n

Insurance coverage across the league to protect players in the event of an injury that derives from any flag football-related activities. Beyond that, a salary cap credit to any team that loses a player to a flag football-related injury.<\/p>\n

\"FILE<\/p>\n

Players like Jacksonville Jaguars receiver Brian Thomas Jr. (7) compete in flag football games at the Pro Bowl every year. Will we soon see NFL players in the Olympics? (AP Photo\/Chris O’Meara, File)<\/p>\n

(ASSOCIATED PRESS)<\/p>\n

That\u2019s still a rough outline of the hurdles to even make NFL player participation possible. And it clearly acknowledges that there will be some athletic risk involved \u2014 something that has also been shown in some youth flag football studies indicating injury rates to be far lower than contact football, but hardly injury free. Given that reality, there\u2019s a palpable reticence inside the personnel executives whose entire world is a team-first mentality.<\/p>\n

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\u201cPandora\u2019s box,\u201d one longtime and high-ranking AFC executive said. \u201cThink of the Robert Edwards injury years ago, blowing out his knee playing flag football on the beach.\u201d<\/p>\n

A 1998 first-round pick of the New England Patriots, Edwards put up 1,446 yards rushing and receiving and 12 total touchdowns as a rookie \u2014 only to have his career derailed after suffering a frightening knee injury playing flag football at the Pro Bowl. He barely avoided amputation after the injury and didn\u2019t play again until the 2002 season, when he had a brief one-season comeback with the Miami Dolphins that saw him play sparingly.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the flag football nightmare scenario for those who remember it, and it\u2019s why some NFL contracts have clauses written into them that prohibit any participation in flag football. Of course, for a league trying to solve remaining barriers to global consumption \u2014 and crack Jerry Jones\u2019 \u201cdaunting\u201d question of how to get people in China to pick up a football \u2014 the potential rewards sometimes mitigate the potential risk.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just the owners who are interested, either. George Atallah, a former high-ranking executive with the NFL Player\u2019s Association for the last 16 years, has been talking to NFL players for years about the possibility of the Olympic experience. His vantage? If there are coaches and front office executives out there assuming star players won\u2019t get on board with being an Olympian in flag football, they\u2019re wrong.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI disagree that stars won\u2019t want to play,\u201d Atallah said. \u201cNFL players would be geeked. My opinion, from talking to players the last couple years about this, is that star players absolutely want to participate. And if the closest high-profile analog sport is the NBA, almost all of the players who have won a gold medal who are superstars, point to that medal as one of the top two highlights of their careers. And I think the same is going to be true for American NFL superstars. The gold medal, it just hits different when you\u2019ve got the American flag behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In turn, Atallah noted, the sport itself hits different for the world population when it doesn\u2019t require the necessity of a large amount of expensive equipment. He pointed to soccer being a worldwide phenomenon, and the fast absorption of basketball across the planet \u2014 which was largely aided by only needing a ball and something to aim for with it.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe flag football opportunity gives the league a chance to grow the game with very little barriers to entry \u2014 for both players and fans,\u201d Atallah said. \u201cThat\u2019s the whole thing. Soccer, it\u2019s a field and a ball. Basketball, it\u2019s a ball and a hoop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Atallah also noted that flag football also takes away the gender barrier that has forever existed on the playing field in the NFL. So not only does it put a football in the hands of new fans watching it on the Olympics for the first time \u2014 it puts that ball in potentially every hand.<\/p>\n

Every hand \u2026 possibly every country \u2026 revisited and grown in between every four years of a worldwide Olympic audience. Allowing NFL players to be a part of that may not be the NFL\u2019s solution to finally breaking down doors to a truly global fan base, but it might be the best one yet. And that\u2019s why it\u2019s front and center on the agenda of NFL owners this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly eight years ago, sitting on a couch in a hotel room in California, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4133,257,4530,7,125,2883,251,249,6,19905],"class_list":{"0":"post-61908","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-brian-thomas-jr","9":"tag-dallas-cowboys","10":"tag-flag-football","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-jacksonville-jaguars","13":"tag-jerry-jones","14":"tag-miami-dolphins","15":"tag-new-england-patriots","16":"tag-nfl","17":"tag-olympic-flag"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114533695894066436","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}