
For starters, this was not my idea. I borrowed this from a good friend of mine, Jim Hill. Jim is a retired Scottsdale police officer who now serves as a police officer with the Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) and heads up the Battle of the Badges football game to honor our local heroes in the law enforcement community. I saw Jim’s idea on a Facebook page this past Memorial Day and I decided to run with it. I consider myself to be a very novice sportswriter to say the very least. I have written a 24-page report on why long time Pittsburgh Pirate manager Danny Murtaugh should be the MLB Hall of Fame and a 26-page report about the parity, or lack thereof in college football back in 2020, (before the transfer portal and NIL) on my breaks while serving on the personnel protection detail to a foreign ambassador to the U.S. living in Washington D.C. I was also a freelance college football scout from 2015 to about 2021, helping thousands of high school football players get their information to the near 900 colleges and universities in America. The MCCCD is the governing body that oversees the 10 community colleges in Maricopa County.
Depending on what publication or website you see, 3 sports are the fastest growing in America for girls. Wrestling, rugby, and flag football. During the year 2023, nearly half a million girls between the ages of 6 and 17 played flag football, with 43,000 played the sport in high school. However, sadly there is a very limited number of colleges and universities who currently offer the sport for those girls after high school. Some AI sources say there are only 65 of those college and universities that offer flag football, with many more coming in the next year or two. Due to the NCAA recommending that all schools within their 3 levels add the sport as part of their “Emerging Sports for Women” program, that number is expected to grow quickly. In fact, our very own Arizona Christian University in Glendale and Ottawa University in Surprise will be fielding girls flag football teams for the 2026 season and even Arizona State University will have their first girls flag football as a club sport starting this fall, playing teams from the Conference Carolina conference from North and South Carolina. However, ASU flying their young ladies to the Carolinas takes some money to do, but if a few of our Maricopa County Community Colleges had a girl’s flag football team to play against, money will be saved on transportation, among other things.
The state of Arizona has had some very good success with girl’s flag football since the sport became official. During the 2024 fall season, we had 3 state high schools finish in the final top 25 national rankings. According to USA Today, Hamilton finished at #3, Mountain View High School at #15, and Marana High School in Tucson finished the season at #23 in the entire country. That’s pretty darn good considering
there are more than 1,600 high schools across America that fields a girl’s flag football team. When you have a record of a combined 48 wins and 5 loses as those 3 teams did, you have some serious talent here in Arizona. According to AZPrep365, 130 high schools across Arizona have a girl’s flag football team across the 3A, 4A, 5A, and 6A classes.
The popularity of girl’s flag football is so high in demand that the sport will debut at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics for both men and women. Even the NFL has taken a great interest in the sport. According to the website www.nflflag.com, “Today, with more than 750,000 participants, NFL FLAG continues to evolve. It’s a pathway for female athletes to play in college, as well as an outlet for tackle athletes to compete in the offseason. But as NFL FLAG grows, one thing stays the same: It’s a place for every boy and girl to play football.” Speaking of NFL teams and college flag football, the Minnesota Vikings is sponsoring (and paying for) girls flag football at six NCAA Division 2 and Division 3 colleges and universities, taking the field during the 2025 season. This could be a huge investment opportunity for our Arizona Cardinals to run with our high school aged female students with the ten Maricopa County Community Colleges.
Flag football, especially girls, may seem like it has only been around for a couple of years. I was surprised that during the 2020-2021 season, twenty NAIA institutions fielded flag football for girls. Since then, out of the near 900 colleges and universities that field men’s tackle football teams, approximately only 60 carries the sport for the girls, as stated earlier. I am not sure how many girls play flag football at all levels in Arizona, but wouldn’t it be nice for them to have opportunities to play the sport after high school. Some high school athletes play their sports in high school only to have something to do, while others play in high school with hopes of earning college scholarships. With the sport now an Olympic sport, that should make it easier for more professional flag football leagues to start popping up nationwide. This could turn out to be profitable to large cities like Scottsdale, Phoenix, Glendale, Flagstaff, and Tucson to jump on that train should it happen.
I have been a champion of women throughout my entire professional career, especially while in the military. Always recommending females to be put in leadership positions for no other reason than they deserve it, and that they were the right PERSON for the job, and they exceeded expectations. While I was the head of security for President Trump’s 2020 national campaign headquarters in Virginia, I brought females into my team to serve as personal protection agents for people like Kayleigh McEnany and other females that were high up in the campaign. I want to push girls flag football at the MCCC campuses for no other reason than to give young women that extra pathway to help them succeed in college and life, to give them something else to look forward to while they are in school besides school, homework, and possibly jobs while in school.
The more opportunities we give each other to succeed, for the most part, we will all succeed.
In 2018, the Maricopa County Community College District ended football at 4 campuses (Glendale Community College, Mesa Community College, Scottsdale Community College, and Phoenix College). However, several other 2-year institutions throughout the state had college football teams as well like, Arizona Western College, Eastern Arizona College, and Pima Community College. If I wanted to help bring back men’s college football back to those campuses, this would be an easy tasking, but let’s face it, that type of football is never returning. Don’t get me wrong, boys and men’s tackle football from grade school to college (not a big NFL fan) is the greatest sport invention of all time. All those campuses still have men’s and women’s soccer teams who play on the old football fields. While it would take some money to update the playing surfaces, it is not like starting with a blank canvas, and while it may be a slow process to bring success to our smaller campuses, fielding girls flag football teams could be the door that opens unlimited potential for many generations of Arizonans. Some of the most important people of my life have come from my football playing days. We owe it to the young women of Arizona to give them this opportunity as well, with the same passion. The best way to keep the level of talent (not only athletic, but more importantly in the classroom) here locally, is to give our future female doctors, lawyers, business owners, community leaders, politicians, etc., more opportunities to go to our local colleges and universities and to keep them from leaving our state for higher learning opportunities.
I have started to reach out to the girl’s flag football leagues across the state to get their inputs on the topic and have received some good feedback, but I would like to get the buzz of this idea out into our communities. I will also try to reach out to those within the Arizona Cardinals organization who run their girl’s flag football program for input, interest, and any possible funding they may be able to provide to help the sport get off the ground at the local community college level and see if they have any reasons not to assist in making this dream a reality for every young female flag football player in Arizona. I have been a full-time student at Glendale Community College since the summer semester of 2024 and recently started my 4th full semester here. I full heartedly believe that bringing girls flag football to the Maricopa County Community Colleges would be a huge factor in keeping our future female leaders of our local communities right here throughout Maricopa County and the rest of Arizona.
If you are interested in helping this become a reality, I have started an online petition to gather signatures to possibly present to the MCCCD governing board at a later time. Please visit and sign the link here: [https://www.change.org/p/bringing-girls-flag-football-to-maricopa-county-community-college-campuses](https://www.change.org/p/bringing-girls-flag-football-to-maricopa-county-community-college-campuses). Thank you.