NFL still pushing for Olympic flag football with a chance ahead

The NFL is still pushing for flag football to join the Olympic program. Though football hasn’t made significant public progress for inclusion in nine years, its best chance in many years may be on the horizon.

“If flag football becomes an Olympic sport, more countries will invest in playing that sport,” NFL International CEO Damani Leech said, according to CNBC, which builds on reports dating to at least last April about flag football’s push with the NFL’s backing.

The last significant step that football (in general, not specifically flag) took toward Olympic inclusion was in 2013. The International Olympic Committee provisionally recognized its international federation. IOC recognition does not equate to eventual Olympic inclusion, but it is a necessary early marker if a sport is to join the program down the line.

To get a sense of how far it must still go, football is still labeled as “provisional” on an IOC list of 35 international federations whose sports are not on the 2024 Olympic program. The other 34, many of which are not being considered for Olympic inclusion right now, do not have the “provisional” disclaimer for recognition. They include tug of war, life saving and korfball.

In 2015, IOC President Thomas Bach met with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell at the Super Bowl, though Goodell didn’t push for Olympic inclusion at the time.

An Olympic sport “must have a broad international representation,” Bach said then about football, though it’s not clear if he was considering the flag version. “This I cannot see in football. It’s a very American sport.”

The IOC added two sports on its own in the last 21 years with golf and rugby returning for the 2016 Rio Games. However, under rules instituted before the Tokyo Games,