“Flag Football: The Double Standard, the Money, and the Death of Non-Revenue Sports"

In 2008, I boarded a plane to Boston for the Gender Equity Forum hosted by the NCAA Equity and Inclusion office.

At that time, I worked as the Emerging Sports Program Manager for USA Rugby. My job was to expand opportunities for NCAA Women's Rugby by campaigning and targeting athletic directors and presidents to add the sport. Women's Rugby was 6 years into its tenure on the Emerging Sports list and in good company with our longest-running fellow sport of Equestrian who had also been lobbying to expand their membership since 1999. My colleague and I met with the NCAA Committee on Women's Athletics armed with stats, video, proof of expansion, FAQs, prospective divisional budget sheets, competition options, and conference-specific targeted proposals answering each of their unique needs.

After years of cold-calling, following up on leads, creating content, marketing material and attending conferences where I was literally patted on the head numerous times and called "sweetie" by old, white male athletic directors, my colleague and I devised a strategic plan of attack for this particular meeting.

That year we vowed to go big. We would outright ask the committee for their help. We would create an eye-catching campaign and appeal to our audience by showing them the power of supporting women in their pursuit of full-contact competition in the sport of women's rugby. We crushed our presentation.

Our team answered every question and boldly showed the expansion of our sport nationally at the high school level, something we had been required to compile for the committee. At the close of the presentation, I stared out into a group who looked less likely to add any sport and would be more likely to "plan to plan". I addressed the then-chair of the committee and former Commissioner of the America East Conference, Patrick Nero. I asked him directly for the committee's help and for any volunteers willing to become a liaison for rugby to distribute information to any interested conferences or presidents.

The room went silent until Nero responded.

"We appreciate your presentation, but I don't think any of us know enough about rugby to be able to talk about it to others."

Me: "Thank you for your feedback. Your statement is exactly why we should have a liaison from the CWA to serve as someone on the inside that we can educate and utilize for expansion and networking."

The conversation was interrupted abruptly and cut off by the then-Emerging Sports Program Director who thanked us for our presentation and the committee attending.

My colleague and I stood puzzled and slightly deflated at the swift dismissal. This was a forum to educate and support women's sports, but it was painfully clear that this was not the objective of the body.

Following our presentation, it was now sand volleyball’s turn.

The spokesperson for sand volleyball was unlike the rest of us. She didn’t appear to need a presentation, data or proof of participation. She had administrative NCAA friends in the room while the rest of the us looking for a seat at the table were not afforded a place in the circle of NCAA nepotism.

The representative worked the room with existing administrative relationships from the sport of indoor volleyball. Even if they didn't want to add the sport of sand volleyball at their schools, they were more than willing to be ambassadors for it. Sand volleyball was later rebranded beach volleyball and granted full championship NCAA status in 2015 after less than 5 years on the list.

We watched beach volleyball’s 2.5-minute speech with zero stats or data as they invited ADs to speak with them after in a breakout session. The attendees assembled quickly on the beach volleyball side of the room at the close of the conversation. My colleague and I had two ADs at our table in total, four for equestrian and one for synchronized swimming (removed off the list in 2010)

Relationships are key to any business expansion but, in this case, this was a forum explicitly designed to bolster equity in athletics and where each sport was promised a fair shot. It was then that I realized the NCAA Emerging Sports Program had?far less to do with proven interest; high school or national participation, and if rugby or any other sport were going to ever succeed it would be about who or what sport was in the cool club and/or how much money they brought to bear.

If you are not familiar with what the Emerging Sports initiative is, the short lesson is that this program was designed to carve out space for burgeoning women's sports in the NCAA. Each sport was offered the opportunity?to enter into the process and onto the list in the long slog to achieving 40 teams, to then be considered for? NCAA championship status.

Women's ice hockey, water polo, bowling, and rowing were the first Emerging sports in the mid-90s; the halcyon days of the initiative.

Before you stop reading this piece, indulge me in offering you the history of why Emerging Sports even came about; it's going to answer a number of questions for you on why you are seeing girls' flag football pop up in every state high school association and now as the NCAA's newest emerging-non-Emerging Sport darling drenched in free messaging, marketing and endorsement by a who’s who that would catapult any of the other sports well past 40 with a fraction of the former.???

1. The Emerging Sports Program was always about preserving football and flag football is a Trojan Horse.

Following the federal legislation passage of Title IX in 1972, the next 10 years would be prosperous with the introduction of scholarships, coaching positions, and more resources for the women's side of the house. But the tipping point was actually in 1992 when the Supreme Court put teeth in Title IX granting plaintiffs the right to sue for damages.?

Simultaneously, universities were deeply ensconced in the arms race of the football industrial complex. The buttressing of campus football cathedrals found those same institutions clamoring for solutions to the Title IX discrepancies they had amassed over the previous decades.

The 85-115 athlete football rosters created disparity gaps, rattling the proportionality prong with fervor. In the rush to balance the outlandish investments and stay out of court, athletic directors sought out new women's sports to add.

Cue the Emerging Sports Program brought to you by the Gender Equity Task Force in 1994.

Of the aforementioned sports all achieved full championship status in only a few years. The Clinton administration ushered in expansion in women’s intercollegiate sports opportunities which came to a screeching halt ca. 2000 under the Bush administration. Equestrian and rugby both became Emerging sports in the early 2000s. Yet, the same energy we saw in the ‘90s-rush to add, was nowhere to be found as the Office of Civil Rights was the only watchdog in the equity game. Understaffed and languishing response times, not so dissimilar from what we read in last week’s GAO report, the sole burden remained on students and private citizens as whistleblowers to hold their institutions accountable. With little oversight and absence of federal enforcement, schools were quickly emboldened to settle back into high percentages of disparity in their proportionality. Meanwhile, the slow expansion for both equestrian and rugby wasn't because schools weren't adding those two sports, it was because schools were not compelled to add anything.

2. The NCAA needs the NFL’s grant money and flag football as a remedy to their legal problems when (not if) schools choose to slash sports.

In January of 2024, President Baker performed his annual keynote to thousands of athletic director viewers virtually and in-person at the NCAA's membership convention. His presentation included the use of an intentional image of girls flag football as “the next biggest NCAA Emerging Sport for women”. Within hours, a flurry of buzz began over flag football as the next sport in the NCAA which even publicly appeared to puzzle the director of inclusion or at the very least, produced some performative outrage.

On April 29, 2024, I was in the audience for a sit-down talk with President Baker where the topic was "Hard Conversations and Dialogue". Amidst all of the uncertainty in the NCAA, President Baker made a stop at Quinnipiac University to speak about his life in politics, smile and promote his book. During the Q&A session, I publicly asked President Baker about his endorsement of flag football and the millions in cash that the NFL is infusing into the campaign.

I proceeded to ask him why he endorsed the sport to the entire membership when there had been other sports waiting for decades to receive even a whiff of support of that magnitude by the national office.

Just before I was cut off by the moderator, President Baker started to answer the question without answering the question. He briefly explained to the audience that flag football is an Olympic sport which, incidentally, is also true of rugby, equestrian,?triathlon and women’s wrestling. He responded as if he had no idea what kind of impact his endorsement of flag football would have on the actual Emerging Sports toiling away to tick every box and clear every bar instituted by the NCAA in 1994 that flag football has now summarily circumvented in 2024 . He claimed that his messaging was not intended to indicate favoritism for flag football.

This is untrue.

There is intent, and there is impact and the impact of?his endorsement, and that endorsement further being amplified in an email and tool kit to add flag football sent to the entire NCAA membership, wholly indicates that flag football is not only a favorite, but the favorite; that rules and processes only apply to some and only cool kids get a seat at the table.?

President Baker may have had an agenda that was too undercooked to talk about in public. I was less annoyed with his political response than I was by the fact that I knew what his response should have been.

He should have just said that the NCAA is on shaky ground and institutions know that if student-athletes become employees per the ongoing litigation in several cases, universities outside of the Power 5 (2) will not be able to financially shoulder wages. This could likely lead to cutting sports. I would have accepted that response over a feeble attempt to justify a new Emerging Sport that somehow bypassed the entire process and went right to press.

The elimination of sports, as we know from previous and current lawsuits, is not that simple. The law of Title IX and the NCAA sports sponsorship minimums will be a puzzle to solve for schools that host football yet want to drop non-revenue sports.

Enter girls’ flag football stage right, an NCAA solution to their existential problems. All other Emerging Sports and other non-revenue championship sports exit, stage left as this new roll-out is accompanied by two hard truths.

1. The NCAA and Charlie Baker may care about increasing women's participation, but they definitely care about money and the preservation of football.

The average NCAA athletic director who is being pressured by the latest press release will ultimately be swayed by this newly bank-rolled breeding ground for a constituency that can provide 85-115 female flag football athletes to balance out football and legally free up institutions to cut non-revenue sports.

On top of it, girls’ flag football remains as extra insurance to keep college women off the teams and fields of traditional full-contact football. Ladies, you can play football in high school, and you can even play it professionally in the WPFL. However, women's football is still a big nope in college athletics and the NCAA wants it to stay that way. Flag football provides a guarantee to tick that box.

2. The NFL cares even less about women's participation. They want future sons playing football.

Football from Pop Warner to high school is hemorrhaging and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell knows it.

“According to the latest NFHS survey conducted in 2023, the 2021-22 school year was the first on record with fewer than a million players participating in 11-player high school football in America since the turn of the century. The reported total of 976,886 participants represents a 12.2% decrease from a 2008-09 peak."

Flag football in high schools, colleges and universities are not intended to target the future female athlete of America to fall in love with the full-contact game, it is aimed directly at future mothers with the intention that their watered-down, non-contact participation in football will bolster their future sons to become part of the full tackle game. The same full contact sport they are actively being diverted away from as the NFL and Nike are offering $100,000 to each state high school association willing to add.

For those among you believing that intercollegiate athletics should be driven by the free market, given the current environment,? I will grant you that for the sake of argument. Let’s entertain that theory for a moment and allow me to introduce you to the real problem(s).? The actual Emerging Sports (by application and definition) have never been afforded the opportunity to match the money and meet the moment. This is the NCAA double standard at its finest.?

For the record, I am not an opponent of flag football, its female participants or its coaches. I am a firm believer that any participation for female athletes is positive. Team sports promote confidence, teamwork, problem-solving and lifelong connections. However, I am wildly dubious of any organization(s) using any girls' and women's sports participation, or a variation of a sport,? as a weapon to legalize disparity.

Be prepared to witness NCAA administrators and conferences collectively securing their positions and paychecks in this industry by investing feverishly into this next venture for all the wrong reasons. ?With every flag football program added, ADs will be making an intentional commitment to 1) sustain the men's football industrial complex at their institutions while 2) placating themselves as they walk their non-revenue sports to the garbage can with little fear of litigation.

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