The most notable of the many resolutions and proposals put forth at the league’s spring meetings this week was the one allowing NFL players to try out for Team USA’s Men’s Flag Football Team for the 2028 Summer Olympics. The vote passed unanimously.
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It remains to be seen when these tryouts will be held. Team USA just announced their 12-man roster for the 2025 International Federation of American Football Americas Continental Flag Football Championship in Panama this September. Those players will begin preparations with a series of exhibitions in June at USA Football’s International Bowl.
It’s likely that NFL players would displace most of those guys if they ended up trying out. However, opinions are very split on whether NFLers should attend the tryouts. It has quickly become a surprisingly polarizing issue, with First Take‘s Chris “Mad Dog” Russo saying that a gold medal for flag football wouldn’t mean as much as a Super Bowl ring.
“Nobody cares. You know what my thought is about the Olympics, when your sport’s championship is bigger than the Olympic gold medal, I was always bothered by that,” the analyst said.
“Because let’s face it, would you rather win the Lombardi Trophy, or an Olympic gold medal if you’re a football player? I think the Olympics should be for the athlete who’s mecca, who’s deal is that Olympic gold medal,” he added.
Russo also mentioned the possibility of scheduling conflicts. The Olympics are generally held around the same time that NFL teams are heading to training camp, so the flag football would have to be played in the first week of the Olympics for NFL players to be able to participate. And would those players be allowed to miss OTAs and minicamp?
Saying that a Lombardi is worth more to someone than a gold medal is quite the hot take, however. An Olympic gold medal is recognized worldwide as a symbol of athletic greatness. No one really cares about the Super Bowl outside of the USA and maybe Canada. Not to mention, you can only win a gold medal once every four years, which makes them even more scarce.
We do agree that the Olympics should be more about the sports for which the Olympics are the biggest stage, like athletics, swimming, gymnastics, etc.
Stephen A. Smith, however, was more worried about the possibility of players getting injured at the Olympics on the eve of the regular season’s kickoff in September.
“The bottom line is, if you’re playing flag football or whatever, you’re running. No, you’re not engaging in contact per se, but you are running, you are cutting,” he said.
“This is football. I don’t want them participating in Olympic competition, and having something happen to them where they end up tearing an Achilles, or an ACL injury or whatever. That’s the point of it, that’s the reason why we should be against this.”
Smith and Russo seemed confused and surprised at why the league and players would even consider doing this. For the league, the motivation is obvious: money. Putting their players on the international stage at the Olympics will help grow the NFL and the game of American football globally. That will lead to more revenue for the league and its 32 owners.
For players, it’s an opportunity to represent their country. Not to mention it’s an opportunity that they likely never thought would be possible. Their version of football is not an internationally popular sport, so becoming an Olympian wouldn’t be something any NFL player had considered. It would only be a small handful of players participating anyway: the team rosters are limited to just 10 players.
It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; who knows if they keep flag football on the docket past 2028. If we were NFL players and we had the chance, we’d take it in a heartbeat.
