Even before the variant was announced as part of the 2028 Olympic Games schedule, the NFL had been pressing on with its promotion of flag football.

But to what end?

From the early days of its health and welfare initiative Play Football, the league harboured the desire to make the game more accessible, especially to children and regardless of age or gender. The first flag football sessions were introduced, during youth camps in New England just over 30 years ago, and the sport has boomed since then, exploding from local games in Massachusetts to now encompassing all 50 states.

And that is just in America.

Today, there are estimated to be in excess of 750,000 flag football participants in the US alone, where the sport not only caters for youth sides, but also as an opportunity for female athletes to play in college and established tackle football players to compete in the offseason. With an estimated 1800+ leagues ‘from sea to shining sea’, the domestic NFL FLAG operation is hardly small, but is dwarfed by the numbers from overseas where, admittedly as one lump sum, it is reckoned the sport is currently being played by over 20 million people in more than 100 countries, with Australia, New Zealand, Canada, China, Germany and the UK already on board with dedicated NFL FLAG programmes, and various African nations appearing poised to join them in short order.

Flag football’s addition to the Olympic roster from the next summer Games in Los Angeles three years from now had long been campaigned for by the NFL, and rightly serves as a glistening prize for anyone who dreams of representing their country on the biggest sporting stage in the world.

But, while everyday Germans, Britons, Ugandans, Kenyans, Ghanaians and the Chinese, amongst others, can continue to dream the dream, can the same be said for the countless Americans who pledge themselves to the non-tackle version of the game now that the NFL team owners have voted to allow the league’s superstars to chase gold medals?

Unsurprisingly, the United States of America is the reigning world champion when it comes to flag football, and have been for consecutive years in both the men’s and women’s game. Victory — over Austria and Mexico respectively — at the latest IFAF World Championships, in Finland last summer, made it five straight titles for the US men (six in all, separated by a shock silver in 2012) and three-in-a-row for the women, to build on back-to-back-to-back second places between 2010-2014. While the female team won’t be directly affected by this week’s announcement from the Spring League Meeting in Minnesota, what about the male participants who guided the Stars and Stripes to the top step of the podium on countless occasions?

The likes of Minnesota Vikings WR Justin Jefferson, Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes and Philadelphia Eagles counterpart Jalen Hurts — who featured prominently in a football-themed handover video between 2024 host Paris and Los Angeles — have all expressed an interest in participating in the Games, and they are far from alone. While the proposed NFL involvement looks likely to be limited to a single player from each franchise (with international players obviously eligible to represent their own country of origin), there appears to be more than enough interest to easily fill the 10-man roster mandated by the International Olympic Committee. That, of course, prompted a torrent of think pieces and chat show talking points discussing who should make the squad, with NFL insider Jeff Darlington telling the Kevin Clark show This Is Football that he wanted to see nothing short of football’s equivalent of the NBA ‘Dream Team’ sent to dominate the Olympic hard court from 1992 on.

“I want complete and utter domination,” Darlington admitted. “We invented the sport, we need to own it. I want the Dream Team. I want my child — at 10 years old — to have the same feelings about this time that I maintain about the Dream Team. The original O.G. Dream Team.”

While the announcement put out by the NFL following the conclusion of the vote on NFL player participation in the Games hinted that the professionals would be subject to the same sort of tryout as anyone else thinking they were good enough to play for the nation, does anyone really believe that the US Olympic Committee and team selectors would shy away from the chance from fielding the best catch and throw merchants on the planet if they thought they would guarantee gold?

Current Team USA flag football quarterback, 35-year-old Darrell Doucette, clearly believes that he has a case to make for his own inclusion, telling TMZ Sports that he thinks he’d be a better asset than his Kansas City counterpart.

“At the end of the day, I feel like I’m better than Patrick Mahomes because of my IQ of the game,” Doucette insisted. “I know, right now, he’s the best in the league. I know he’s more accurate. I know he has all these intangibles but, when it comes to flag football, I feel like I know more than him.”

Doucette, who goes by the nickname ‘Housh’, is a multiple champion on the international stage, having claimed titles for the USA at the 2022 World Games, 2023 IFAF Americas Continental Flag Football Championship and both the 2021 and 2024 IFAF Men’s Flag Football World Championships. His opposition to stars from the NFL being handed the keys to the Olympic team dates back almost a year, following Hurts’ claim that ‘It’s our turn’ as he fired a football in the L.A. Coliseum, lighting the Olympic flame along the way.

“I think it’s disrespectful that they just automatically assume that they’re able to just join the Olympic team because of the person that they are,” the New Orleans native told The Guardian in August 2024. “They didn’t help grow this game to get to the Olympics, [so] give the guys who helped this game get to where it’s at their respect.”

He’s also adamant that the differences between the NFL game and flag football are big enough that the pros might find it hard to adapt. Flag football has been a part of the revamped Pro Bowl Games in recent years, but the end-of-season event remains a laid-back affair.

“Some of the things that they do in the NFL, that they call trick plays, we’re accustomed to seeing them on an everyday basis,” he pointed out, having starred on both sides of the ball in the biggest moments. “We don’t just think they’re going to be able to walk on the field and make the Olympic team because of the name, right?” he said. “They still have to go out there and compete.”

With the LA28 Games still three years away, there is plenty of time for a lot to change in the discussion over whether NFL players could — and should — represent their country of birth in what used to be the pinnacle of amateur sporting endeavour. With that myth long since busted, however, with the gradual seep of professional soccer, tennis and golf stars, amongst others who now take the silver dollar for their participation, it might only be the prospect of Jefferson, Mahomes and Co suffering serious injury while on flag football duty that deters owners — including those seemingly ‘all in’ on the venture amidst a unanimous ‘aye’, like Dallas Cowboys sheriff Jerry Jones — from ultimately consenting to the construction of another Dream Team.

At present, national flag football body USA Football screens candidates for trials, where the pool of players is trimmed to 60 ahead of training camp. It is there that any final Olympic roster will be determined — although executive director Scott Hallenbeck concedes that going for gold might see some tweaks to the process.

“If NFL players are eligible, we’re ready to help create opportunities for these athletes to showcase their skills and be included on the national team,” he told ESPN. “USA Football’s ultimate goal is to bring home two gold medals in flag football, and we’re committed to exploring every path to build the strongest Team USA possible.”