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NCAA might be behind the 8-ball, or, mroe accurately, the flag football.
As college’s largest collegiate governing body moves forward with the process of creating a new championship sport, they’ll be doing it in the wake of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), an organization of small colleges, which just approved women's flag football as its 30th championship sport.
According to the website of Ottawa University (a NAIA member school), the sport has been elevated from invitational to championship status beginning with the 2026-27 academic year. This will culminate in inaugural NAIA Women's Flag Football National Championship in spring 2027.
NCAA, by comparison, has to wait for its annual convention in January to consider legislation in all divisions to move the sport forward. If legislation is approved by all three of NCAA’s divisions, the first championship in women’s flag football could be held in spring 2028.
At the NAIA level, the sport has grown rapidly. News reports indicate that women’s flag became an emerging sport in 2021. At the championship level, approximately 60 institutions are expected to participate.
In partnership with the NFL, the NAIA became the first collegiate athletics association to recognize the sport nationally.
The NAIA website notes that this year’s Women’s Flag Football Invitational was held May 7-9 at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida. A total of 35 schools participated, with Keiser University (Florida) emerging as the winner.
The National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) offers women’s flag football and while it has not reached championship level, it does offer an NJCAA Women’s Flag Football Invitational. This year, Florida Gateway won the event, taking down Daytona State.
Additionally, small colleges are looking to flag football as a means of boosting enrollment, coaches have told reporters at MSN. Those coaches look to the explosion of growth flag experienced at the high school level as their pipeline, and they say the surge in high school participation makes having a flag football team a powerful selling point
According to the 2024-25 NFHS High School Athletics Participation Survey, a total of 68,847 girls participated in flag football in 2,736 schools nationwide. (The new survey, covering this past school year, is expected late this summer.)
The announcement of NAIA making flag football championship sport comes two years ahead of its debut at the Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
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