Flag football should be sport’s future

I was excited to learn flag football will be featured at the 2028 Olympics. I gather the non-contact version of the sport was adopted at the international level for a variety of reasons, including costs. As someone who grew up watching the National Football League, I hope this safer alternative gains popularity both here at home and around the globe. It’s hard for me to enjoy tackle football now, knowing what we do about how the game frequently causes brain damage.

My father played the sport in high school and college. Of course, he was a fan as well. As a kid, I recall him telling me stories about New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath, who famously guaranteed his squad would win the 1969 Super Bowl. It’s been somewhat strange, since then, to see Namath, this semi-legendary figure in my mind, reduced in recent years to serving as a television pitchman for hearing aids and other products marketed toward the elderly.

When it came time for me to pick a professional football team to follow, my family was moving around quite a bit, so I didn’t really feel a geographic loyalty to a particular franchise. Ultimately, I settled on the Carolina Panthers. They were a new squad and I thought their logo looked cool. I dove headfirst into the fandom, watching games, following early websites, and doing everything I could to express my allegiance to the franchise while living in San Francisco.

I had branded clothing and other assorted merchandise, like a figurine of then quarterback Kerry Collins. I read books on the squad, such as Year of the Cat by Scott Fowler and Charles Chandler. I requested player autographs through the mail and eventually received some, including, if memory serves, signed cards from linebackers Sam Mills and Kevin Greene. I led my often-struggling franchise to glory while playing NFL Quarterback Club ‘98 on the Nintendo 64.

My dad mostly took me to see college games, assumably because they were more affordable. However, on at least one occasion, he took me to see the Panthers play the 49ers at San Francisco’s old Candlestick Park. When we were traveling, and couldn’t catch Carolina’s matches on television, my dad and I would sometimes listen to them on the radio. He waited on hold for quite a while after a particular game so I could give my take on a call-in sports show.

For a few years, I was interested in playing in a local Pop Warner league or its equivalent, but my mother had some prescient safety concerns and the athletic expectations were rigorous enough to discourage me. I‘ve never had the dedication necessary to become more than a middling competitor, so I was perfectly happy playing touch football with my friends at recess. As I recall, we’d play on an outdoor basketball court with no first downs.

I haven’t really followed football in decades at this point, but I continue to have a deep fondness for the game. I love the strategy, but perhaps more than that, I love the nostalgia the sport evokes. It reminds me of playing catch in the backyard with my dad, practicing routes on the beach with my cousins, and watching Thanksgiving games with my grandfather. I wish there was a way I could follow the sport without the guilt I now feel about player health.

That’s why I’m so excited about flag football at the Olympics. I hope the international competition might serve as a springboard for an alternative vision of the game. I’d love it, for instance, if the Carolina Panthers established a flag-football affiliate, which was covered by mainstream sports media. Among other things, I’d like to be able to watch their games with my young sons without having to actively discourage them from participating in the sport themselves.