SAN FRANCISCO — Inside the same convention center where Steve Jobs unveiled some of Apple’s latest and greatest inventions, a public address announcer came over the speaker system last week and declared, “What you just watched is the future of football.”
Whether or not flag football becomes as ubiquitous as the iPhone, one of the country’s fastest-growing sports was front and center during Super Bowl week in the Bay Area.
The only tackle football played last week took place Sunday at Levi’s Stadium. From the NFL’s official Pro Bowl to a glow-in-the-dark game refereed by Eli Manning, the week’s almost one dozen flag football events practically dwarfed the big game itself.
“I think for us,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said to kick off the week, “it’s meeting the demand of people who want to play this game.”
It’s also no coincidence that the flag football blitz is coming two years out from the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, where men and women will compete for medals in 5-on-5 flag football for the first time. Puka Nacua of the host city’s Rams and Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts were among NFL players who expressed a desire to participate.
The game now is more popular with girls, who were at the center of most of the NFL-sponsored events. Since becoming an officially sanctioned high school sport in California in 2023, it has grown into the eighth-most popular girls’ sport, with nearly 20,000 participants in 2024-25 — an 84% increase from the previous school year.
Just last year, flag football overtook golf, lacrosse, water polo and cross country among the most popular girls’ sports in California. If the trend continues, more girls will play flag football this coming school year than swimming and diving, tennis and basketball, too.
The sport is a non-contact version of American Football. During two 20-minute halves, the offense, using forward passes as well as runs, tries to drive the ball down a 70-yard-long field to the end zone. The defense tries to stop the offense by pulling flags from their belts.
Flag football is almost entirely responsible for the growth in overall girls’ participation in sports since 2023. Whereas boys’ participation in all sports has remained stagnant, the number of girls has jumped by 35,000.
Nicki Ewell, the NFL’s vice president in charge of events such as the flag football showcase, said flag football is “really that accessible touch point to our sport, especially for girls.”
The day of the Pro Bowl, the NFL hosted the top girls flag football players from around the country for a game on the same field located inside the Moscone Center. The following night featured some of the top players locally, as well as a clinic catered to members of the LGBTQ community.
“It’s all flag, all the time for us,” Ewell said, highlighting “how it just opens the doors to other people to our sport who may have thought, this isn’t for me.”
Manning echoed that sentiment. He recently began coaching middle- and high-school-aged girls where he lives, in New Jersey. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, a coach in the glow-in-the-dark game, said it gets him “excited” about the prospect of his daughter, born during training camp last summer, playing one day.
“It’s really just about getting everyone playing football,” Manning said. “It was not always the case that girls had the opportunity to play football.”
But with rising concerns surrounding the physicality of tackle football, the prevalence of concussions and the link to the degenerative brain disease CTE, flag football is emerging as an alternative for more than just girls.
California does not yet offer boys flag football at the high school level, but Justin Alumbaugh, coach of the De La Salle football powerhouse, said he would be “stunned” if it doesn’t soon.
“And it should,” he said. “It’s not the same as football, but it doesn’t need to be the same. … There’s a lot of really athletic kids that don’t enjoy contact football. That’s OK.”
The NFL honored its boys and girls flag players of the year during its annual award ceremony at the Palace of Fine Arts. The boys winner, Brysen Wright, is a five-star recruit with offers from SEC schools to play tackle football. He said he still preferred tackle but that flag offered “another way of playing football and having fun” and believed the two could “definitely” coexist.
Even within the walls of the tech-focused Innovation Summit, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, a former linebacker at Saratoga High School, shared that his son — like Alumbaugh’s — plays flag football. Growing up, Bosworth said, “I wish there had been flag because I wasn’t allowed to play tackle football until I was in high school.”
It’s a reality now. After all, the pronouncement over the PA system came at the conclusion of the one game featuring adult men, who made up the rosters of the U.S. and Mexican national teams.
The Americans emerged as 35-34 winners in a thrilling exhibition designed to gin up interest in the 2028 Games. The U.S. is ranked No. 1 in the world; Mexico is No. 3.
If NFL stars, such as Nacua, decide they want to compete on the Olympic stage, the rosters could look a whole lot different two summers from now. But Team USA coach Jorge Cascudo said NFL players would have to go through the same tryout process as everyone else.
“Hopefully they go and they show why they belong, and our players are going to show why they belong, as well,” Cascudo said, conceding size and athleticism would give NFL players an advantage. “We’ve got to cut it down to 10 (players), so you’ve got to earn your spot.”
Cascudo is a former collegiate baseball pitcher who began playing flag football and eventually became Team USA’s starting quarterback for a decade before going into coaching. The game today, he said, “is so much faster. … It’s like the NFL. Before, linemen were 220 pounds; now, they’re 380 pounds.”
While the high school game is played with seven players per team, the game will take on a 5-on-5 format in the Olympics. If the exhibition was any indication, it opens up the 50-yard field even more and puts athleticism at a premium. There were backward passes, deep bombs and spin moves aplenty to evade potential tag-pullers. Players wear tags on both of their hips, and Cascudo cautioned any NFL hopefuls “to take some time and get ready” because “it’s an adjustment” from tackling.
Is it, like the public address announcer bellowed, the future of football?
“One hundred percent,” Cascudo said. “Tackle football is great. I love tackle football. But the future is with flag. (But) there’s space for both. There’s space for tackle and flag football.”
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