Justin Jefferson
Getty
Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson.
Imagine you’re a television executive. You work for NBC and you’ve been put in charge of putting together television programming for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
One day, some years ago, you get a call from someone from the NFL. This person tells you NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, the most powerful man in professional sports, has some ideas he wants to share with you and some members of the Olympic committee.
The NFL holds $110 billion in television contracts alone, including with NBC. This means you will listen to what he has to say and move heaven and earth to do whatever it is he says he wants done.
The people from the NFL tell you they think adding flag football to the 2028 Olympics is a good idea. They think maybe their top stars could play. That means you think it’s a good idea, too, no matter how ridiculous it will actually look like when Patrick Mahomes and Justin Jefferson are dicing up the Iceland secondary in the semifinals.
In 2022, the International Olympic Committee officially made men’s and women’s flag football an Olympic sport.
Goodell and the NFL have long stated goals of bringing the NFL to the rest of the world. Every year they play more and more international games — 7 in 2025 in London, Berlin, Madrid, Brazil and, for the first time, Dublin.
“(The NFL) wants people outside this country to care about football,” Puck co-founder Matt Belloni said on “The Town” podcast on May 16. “They want kids to play football. That’s why they’re doing flag football stuff … they’re strong arming the Olympics into adding flag football in L.A. (in 2028) … they know the growth areas and they’re going after them.”
NFL’s Most Powerful Owner Backs Olympic Play
The most powerful owner in the NFL and the man behind the most valuable professional sports team in the world, Jerry Jones, has put his influence behind bringing flag football to the Olympics.
“Owners will gather Tuesday and Wednesday in Eagan, Minnesota, to consider the resolution among other league business at a previously scheduled league meeting,” ESPN’s Kevin Seifert wrote on May 15. “Commissioner Roger Goodell, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and other key league officials made their support for participation at the Olympics clear during their most recent meetings in Palm Beach, Florida, last month.”
What Flag Football Will Look Like in the Olympics
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback and Super Bowl MVP Jalen Hurts has been named the global flag football ambassador for the 2028 Olympic Games, introducing the sport in a commercial that showed him throwing a flaming football into L.A. Memorial Coliseum and lighting the Olympic cauldron.
The Olympics would feature the NFL’s most popular players, in theory, because it’s 5-on-5 on a 50-yard field with no linemen. That means the players who are traditionally the most popular — quarterbacks and wide receivers — will be on full display.
Of the NFL’s Top 10 players in terms of jersey sales in 2024, only 2 of them weren’t skill players — Cowboys edge rusher Micah Parsons and Pittsburgh Steelers edge rusher T.J. Watt.