A football Dream Team? Maybe at the 2028 Olympics.
NFL stars eye the new flag football event in L.A.
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This Sunday in Orlando, Fla., the NFL's annual Pro Bowl festivities will culminate with a 7-on-7 flag football game featuring many of the league's best players. The NFL switched its annual all-star game to a flag format last year, but Sunday's will be the first since flag football officially became an Olympic sport.
Flag football won't be played at this summer's Games in Paris. Its Olympic debut comes in 2028 in Los Angeles, where local organizers asked the International Olympic Committee to add it to the program along with cricket, lacrosse, squash and baseball/softball. The IOC officially approved all of those choices in October.
How long flag football will remain an Olympic sport is questionable. Each host city can propose a handful of sports to supplement the permanent ones on the program, typically adding some local flavour. The 2032 Summer Olympics are in Australia, which has produced a few NFL players (mostly punters) but is not exactly a gridiron hotbed. So flag football could be a one-and-done.
Another key difference: many more women play flag football than tackle. For the NFL, this means an opportunity to create additional football fans from the half of the population that may have felt sidelined from the sport. It's big for the IOC too, which in recent years has aggressively pursued gender parity in the Olympics.
WATCH l Women's flag football players in Manitoba dream of competing at highest level:
A test run for the viability of flag football as an Olympic sport was conducted at the 2022 World Games in Birmingham, Ala. Both a men's and a women's tournament were held, with eight teams in each and 10 different countries represented. As expected, the U.S. won gold in the men's event. But the American women got trounced in their final by Mexico, which may have helped convince L.A. organizers and the IOC that flag football is enough of a global game to work in the Olympics.
Now that flag football is officially coming to the Summer Games, the obvious question is whether we'll see NFL players in the men's event four years from now in Los Angeles. The league is supportive, saying in October that it will work with the players' union on allowing active and former players to participate.
To answer the inevitable question, yes, Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce has also said he'd like to play. But he'll be 38 by the time the 2028 Games roll around, and Taylor Swift's boyfriend seems to already be planning his post-football life.
Like the vast majority of NFL players, all of these stars are American. So prepare for a possible football Dream Team in L.A. in 2028.
