Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I guess Michael Malone is still salty about being fired by the Nuggets.
In today’s SI:AM:
🥇 NFL players at the Olympics 🤝 A win-win for NFL and IOC 🐊 Florida’s impact transfer
Leave it to the NFL to get everyone talking about the Olympics three years ahead of time.
League owners voted yesterday to approve a proposal that would allow NFL players to participate in the flag football tournament at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. But that’s just one piece of the puzzle. There’s still a lot to be decided about how NFL participation in the Olympics will work.
The big headline is that the proposal gives permission to any player under an NFL contract to participate in the tournament, something owners were previously hesitant to allow due to the risk of injury. The proposal seeks to mitigate injury concerns by purchasing a leaguewide insurance policy that covers players injured during Olympics-sanctioned events and providing a salary cap credit to any team that loses a player to a flag football injury. The league also wants the Olympic tournament to establish medical staff and playing surfaces that meet NFL standards.
Some elements will still need to be negotiated with the players' union and with Olympic organizers, but yesterday’s decision was an important first step toward allowing NFL players to represent their country and try to win an Olympic medal.
The biggest question—and one that will be left unanswered for three years—is who will be participating. The NFL proposal allows any player to participate in tryouts, but roster spots will be extremely limited. The current proposal also limits each NFL team to having no more than one player on each national team. (Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown couldn’t join forces for Team USA if the Olympics were this year, for example.)
The Olympic tournament will feature six nations: the United States (which qualifies automatically as the host nation) and five others. Each roster will have 10 players. The game is played five-on-five. The small rosters and the NFL-imposed limit of one player per NFL team on each national squad mean competition for spots on the U.S. team will be stiff. NFL players from other countries will surely want to compete as well. There are 26 active NFL players born in Canada, for example, but players eligible to represent other countries must first hope that those teams qualify for the Olympics.
The International Federation of American Football has not yet announced what the qualification process will be, but to give you a sense of the international flag football landscape, the current top six countries in the IFAF men’s rankings are the United States, Austria, Mexico, Germany, France and Italy. The NFL proposal doesn’t allow, for example, Haitian-born Washington Commanders defensive back Mike Sainristil to participate in Olympic qualifying tournaments in hopes of representing his birth country in Los Angeles. And if a player wants to represent a country they weren’t born in, IFAF eligibility parameters require them to hold a passport from that country. Famous paesano Tommy DeVito of the New York Giants couldn’t represent Italy unless he’s also eligible for an Italian passport.
Despite the undetermined factors, the owners’ decision to allow NFL players to participate in the Olympics is undeniably a good thing. The league has long been interested in expanding its global footprint, and showcasing its talent at the premier international sports competition is a big step forward in that pursuit. For players, it’s a welcome chance to be granted the opportunity to pursue an Olympic medal, something their colleagues in the NBA and NHL have been able to do for decades. That gold medal is about to become an even rarer prize than a Super Bowl ring.
… things I saw last night:
5. Former Nuggets coach Michael Malone’s not-so-subtle shot at Nikola Jokić while praising Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on ESPN.
4. Bobby Witt Jr.’s diving catch on a liner up the middle.
3. The Panthers’ crisp passing on this goal in the second period. Florida beat the Hurricanes, 5–2, in Game 1.
2. Back-to-backdeepthrees by Caitlin Clark.
1. Notre Dame pitcher Rory Fox’s wild behind-the-back grab to start an inning-ending double play after convincing his coach to let him stay in the game with more than 100 pitches.