You don’t need to be a huge lover of American football to know that it is a contact sport. Not only that, but at times it can look like a violent one in which people seem to get injured at an alarming rate. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this can be an off-putting factor for many people, who steer away from gridiron for fear of picking up a contract injury or two whilst they’re playing.
The good news is that there are alternatives to the full-contact version that you will no doubt be used to seeing if you’ve watched the National Football League, with flag football being the most obvious.
The History of Flag Football
You would be forgiven for thinking that flag football feels like a modern invention; after all, it seems like today’s generations have become more and more conscious of not picking up injuries and ensuring that everyone is able to take part if they wish to.
Likely Began During WWII
In reality, however, there is evidence that flag football actually began during the Second World War, allowing American service personnel to play it in order to keep fit without putting themselves at risk. It was known as ‘touch and tail’ football at the time, not taking on the ‘flag football’ moniker until after the end of World War II.
Fort Meade, Maryland
Fort Meade in Maryland in the United States of America is likely to have been the first location that flag football was played, becoming popular enough to mean that the National Touch Football League was formed during the 1960s.
National Touch Football League
There has even been an NTFL championship game in place since 1971, so any suggestion that it is a variation of the sport with modern sensibilities is evidently not true. In fact, the game that is played today tends to use ‘flag-a-tag’ belts with flags attached to them, the template for which were created by two teachers in Arizona called Porter Wilson and Norman Adams.
The Basic Rules of the Game
If you want to get into American football but don’t know where to start then you aren’t alone; any number of actual NFL players will have got their first taste of the sport by playing flag football. The first thing that you will want to do is get at least a vague understanding of the basic rules, even though the specific ones in play will vary from league to league.
Pulling Flags Instead of Tackling
They do all share one commonality, however, which is the fact that tackling is replaced by the pulling of a flag. As a result of this, many of the traditional rules of the game are modified in order to allow them to make sense.
Two Halves
If you are to play a standard game of flag football then you will still see the idea of a game being played across two halves, with the exact length of the halves being dictated by the league that is in charge of the game.
Ten Players Per Team
The majority of leagues see ten players play on each team, made up of five players in offence and five in defence. In the world of flag football, there is no punting team and all of the rules in play will be adapted in order to ensure that there is a limited chance of injury and the avoidance of physical contact, reflecting the fact that it is a recreational version of the sport.
Variations on the Theme
.jpg){kind=link}
In spite of the fact that the sport has been around for such a long time and it is played all over the world, there is no dominant organisation responsible for sanctioning it. As a result, there are numerous variations on the them based on where it is played and who it is played by.
Team Numbers
There can be as many as nine players on a team, for example, and as few as four. Some leagues will specify that they are single-gender, whilst others will be willing to allow both sexes to play together. You may take part in a league that allows punting and conversions or one that doesn’t allow it at all.
Field of Play
Even the size of the field that the sport is played on will differ from place to place, with some asking players to take to a Canadian Football League size field or a National Football League size field, whilst others won’t even be a third of that size. Sometimes, linemen may be allowed to catch passes and sometimes the game may follow the NFL’s lead in not allowing them. You might also want to keep an eye out as to whether or not the league that you play in is a ‘contact’ one or not. That will depend on whether blockers are allowed to try to stop the run of an opposition team member.
Player Position Rules
There are countless variations of flag football available, largely on account of the fact that the sport of gridiron itself has so many moving parts. Some games may allow the quarterback to take the ball past the line of scrimmage when running, for example, whilst others won’t.
Surfaces
Then there is the fact that the actual surfaces that the game is played on will often be dictated by where it is that you’re looking to play the game. Many will use a traditional grass surface, but it is not unheard of for the likes of the Asian Beach Games to see flag football played on a sand surface instead.
Flag Football Around the World
Given the popularity of American football around the world, it is perhaps not a huge surprise that the flag football variation is also popular in numerous different countries.
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, the game tends to be played as a five-a-side variant, with two main organisations responsible for games in the country. The first is the Outlaw Flag League, which is adult-only, whilst the second is the National Flag Football League. The NFFL is organised by the British American Football Association, so it has that feeling of being much more official than the Outlaw Flag League.
International Federation of American Football
The International Federation of American Football is responsible for the biannual IFAF Flag Football World Championship, which has been taking place since 2002 and has seen the men’s and women’s competition taking place alongside one another.
Summer Olympics
Flag football may also appear at the Summer Olympics as an ‘optional event’ in future years, which will no doubt allow for it to become more popular and also for players around the world to experience the sport more regularly. Flag football is already one of the sports played in the World Games, which has been the case for decades.
USA Football
Given the fact that it is based on American football, it will not come as much of a shock to anyone that it is hugely popular in the United States of America, where USA Football is the governing body. USA Football is responsible for the operation of the National Championships, as well as a yearly Club World Championships.
NFL
Then there is the fact that the National Football League has its own flag football, largely thanks to the sponsorship of leagues around the US in order to get people into the NFL as a sport, including flag football games at the yearly Pro Bowl from 2023 onwards.
Varsity Flag Football
In the US, there has been a drive to get young people interested in flag football and a desire to see women introduced to it particularly. It was confirmed in the May of 2020 that the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics was working with the NFL in order to add flag football to the world of varsity sports for female student athletes. They then became the first collegiate governing body to allow the sport to be played at the varsity level, beginning at the start of the 2020-2021 season as an emerging sport, with as many as 15 teams taking part in it that season.
Starting in 2023, the National Junior College Athletic Association sponsored flag football as an emerging sport for women. This, in turn, resulted in the Atlantic East Conference of the NCAA Division III announcing that five of its members would sponsor women’s flag football independently, beginning in there spring of 2025. That garnered the support of both the National Football League and the Philadelphia Eagles, proving that there is a desire amongst the upper echelons of the sport’s professional body to ensure that flag football becomes a more popular sport for women to take part in.