Flag football

I've seen a lot of pro players say they'd be interested in playing on the olympic team.

Does anyone else play flag football? or have experience playing/watching? 

Not to say nfl players wouldn't be good, but personally I don't think any active nfl players would risk the injury, and it's a lot different. Especially defensively where you can't grab or hold a play to pull of their flags. Flag pulling is a pretty underrated skill, I personally think given pro flag players have similar athleticism it might be better to have those guys on an olympic team then to have a bunch of all-pros together.

I used to play every weekend. Risk of injury is EXTREMELY minimal, especially for a conditioned pro athlete. I'm 31, worst thing I've ever done is tweaked my hamstring sprinting to cover a streak. Flag pulling isn't as hard as you would think, just grab towards the hip and you're probably gonna get it more often than not.

LeftHandUp said:

I used to play every weekend. Risk of injury is EXTREMELY minimal, especially for a conditioned pro athlete. I'm 31, worst thing I've ever done is tweaked my hamstring sprinting to cover a streak. Flag pulling isn't as hard as you would think, just grab towards the hip and you're probably gonna get it more often than not.

I've played for 13 years, have torn both acls and broken my collarbone. maybe I'm just unlucky. Flag pulling is the biggest adjustment for players going from tackle to flag, and that's at a rec level. professional athletes move much faster and move in very unique ways to avoid flag pulls. not saying they wouldn't be good but it's a lot more complex than just grabbing at the hip, like everything there's a much detailed technique to it. check some highlights of what are considered to be flag pros, you might be surprised.

I played a few years when I was in the military. Think I did 2 years of it, we won the base championship in 2011, then in 2012 I started the season then we got pulled to an exercise in the field for 2 weeks so missed the rest of the season.

Started the year as an outside linebacker,  but one of our WR’s was having issues catching anything so I split drives with him on defense. I took over as WR2 full-time then me and him alternated linebacker every other drive.

Bro dead ass you sound wild. Who gives a damn about a flag? Imagine some random "flag footballer" from ANY other country trying to guard Tyreek Hill on a fade. Not to insult you or any one who takes flag seriously, but NFL athletes are an entirely different breed. 

I mean especially considering other countries don't even take the game of "American football" seriously. American football is probably the least popular sport in the world as a whole (outside of our country where it's obviously number one)

Okay I took the liberty of including a top 10 ranking of the most popular sports ranked by amount of worldwide fans and as expected, our beloved game doesn't even appear. PING PONG is more fucking popular. 

So basically my argument is that no one from another country is about to have a chance against an American all pro. This is OUR game. I have faith that we would be extremely well represented by any NFL players who decided to play in the Olympics. 

Also going to disagree with the part where you said you don't think any active players would risk the injury. USA Men's basketball is always made entirely of NBA players. They're actually playing basketball. And how many non contact injuries have you seen occur in the NFL? I'm not  saying by any means that they don't occur, but they're pretty rare. I don't think a lot of players would see it as a big risk.

The aforementioned chart:

Rank

Sport Name

Amount of Fans

1

Football (Soccer)

3.5 Billion

2

Cricket

2.5 Billion

3

Hockey

2 Billion

4

Tennis

1 Billion

5

Volleyball

900 Million

6

Table Tennis

850 Million

7

Basketball

800 Million

8

Baseball

500 Million

9

Rugby

475 Million

10

Golf

450 Million

I feel like professional players wouldn't risk injury unless there was good money involved.

I think a lot of NFL players would be able to run circles around a lot of flag football players, but I don't watch flag so I'm not in the know about the sport.

StrikeFromAbove said:

I feel like professional players wouldn't risk injury unless there was good money involved.

I think a lot of NFL players would be able to run circles around a lot of flag football players, but I don't watch flag so I'm not in the know about the sport.

Little background I’ve been playing what’s known as “competitive flag” for about 7 years now. Switched to flag right out of high school 13 years ago. A lot of tournament break things into a few divisions pro, competitiv, rec, if it’s really big they’ll do rec 1/2/3. I haven’t been to Tampa to see worlds but I’ve played against 2 teams that have played there in smaller tourneys. One team legit had multiple players that were on NFL practice squads, so it’s not just a common group of joes running around. 
 

Not to say that nfl players aren’t better football players, and wouldn’t go get the USA a gold Medal. People are missing the point. I’m saying that the pro flag players at these tourneys, if they came together to play against a potential nfl squad of flag guys. It wouldn’t just be a cake walk because defensively flag is a lot different, and depending on the format offensively is wack too because a lot of good teams use 2 qb systems. 

Plus the maneuvers you make to break a tackle vs avoiding a flag pull are different and it’s not like you can just grab ahold of a guy and then pull his flag off that’s a penalty, you’ve gotta get the flag clean. When you have an nfl caliber athlete moving at top speed the window of time to snatch that flag is less than a half second. Pro flag players also have the flexibility to dip their hips and bend their knees to damn near 2 inches off the ground to go under and between defenders as opposes to a regular Juke or spin move (which makes the flag fly up and is easier to grab). 

I’m just saying there’s pro flag players that would belong on an Olympic team, it wouldn’t just be all nfl guys.