NEW YORK :National Football League teams voted in favour of a resolution allowing their players to compete in flag football at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, the NFL said on Tuesday.
The league itself had long been on board with players competing in the Games, while multiple athletes – including two-time MVP quarterback Patrick Mahomes – said they wanted to play.
The plan cleared a key hurdle on Tuesday, as team owners gave their blessing at a league meeting in Minnesota.
“It’s an incredible honour for any athlete to represent their country in the Olympics, which is the pinnacle of global sport,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement.
“I know first-hand that the inclusion of flag football in the Olympics has sparked a tremendous amount of excitement among NFL players interested in the chance to compete for their country on the world stage.
“We are thrilled that they will now have that chance.”
The league, NFLPA, Olympic entities and the sport’s global governing body IFAF will now be left to work out the fine details, including injury protection measures, standards for field surfaces, as well as players’ workload and schedule management.
NFL players would be expected to go through a tryout or qualification process in order to compete for their national team like any other Olympic hopeful, the league said.
NFL team owners voted unanimously in favour of the resolution, according to NFL Network.
The announcement raises the tantalising possibility of a new “Dream Team,” 36 years after the gold-medal winning U.S. basketball team laden with NBA stars.
“Reverting back to being a kid and watching the track and field meets, watching basketball win the gold medal, so that’s something that as a kid I always wanted to be a part of, but football wasn’t global,” Minnesota Vikings receiver Justin Jefferson said at a press conference.
“So now we’re expanding the game, it’s pretty cool.”
“Dream Team” or not, the move is expected to give a major injection of star power into the flag football competition, with the potential to bring U.S. sport’s biggest names to their home Games in a country where the NFL reigns supreme in popularity.
“It really takes us a step closer to fulfilling our promise to have these be the greatest games that America is capable of hosting,” Casey Wasserman, the LA28 chairperson and president, told Reuters.
A lifelong Cleveland Browns fan who was a ball boy for the team when he was a kid, Wasserman said he was keenly aware of the spotlight that the NFL players could bring to the Olympic stage.
“These athletes, yes, they will bring an immense amount of attention to the flag football tournament, but they will bring in an immense amount of the attention to the entire Olympic programme, because this will be truly life-altering for them as well,” he said.
The NFL has ramped up its promotion of the sport, a non-contact format of American football, since the IOC approved it for the LA28 programme in 2023, with an eye toward drawing more women into an arena long dominated by men.
The Olympics will also go a long way towards boosting the NFL’s longstanding international ambitions, as the league has moved to globalise the game.
Six men’s teams and six women’s teams are expected to compete in flag football at the 2028 Los Angeles Games, with 10 players per team competing in a five-on-five format.
