Michigan women’s flag football pushes for recognition

In December, the University of Michigan’s women’s flag football team was practicing outside amid freezing temperatures in the dark and the snow. They had no funding, no indoor space and no University support. Nobody asked them to, but they showed up.

Rackham student Jordan Landis, president of the Michigan women’s flag football team, believes that’s what women’s flag football at the University is all about. Now, just three months later, Landis preps playbook wristbands during a Thursday night practice on North Campus. The team is preparing for its first standalone game, a matchup against Indiana University. Landis believes it will be a landmark moment for women’s flag football: The game will be the first Big Ten Conference women’s flag football game in the Midwest.

The numbers alone tell a remarkable story about the sport’s unprecedented growth. USA Football has reported that, from 2015 to 2024, the number of girls aged 6-12 that are playing flag football has increased by 283%, while participation among girls aged 6-17 increased by 57%. More recently, the number of young women playing on high school teams increased by nearly 60% from 2024 to 2025. For this upcoming spring season, more than 100 new teams will compete among more than 200 clubs. 

The driving force behind much of this exponential growth is the sport’s impending introduction at the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Additionally, the National Collegiate Athletic Association designated the sport as a 2026 Emerging Sport for Women in January, a primary step to earning official NCAA championship status. This recognition is a tangible step toward ensuring the sport is taken seriously.

For many college teams, institutional support followed. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln announced it will become the first Power Four conference school to add flag football as a varsity sport, and similarly, the Big South Conference announced it would add women’s flag football as a varsity sport starting with the 2027-2028 season. Additionally, the Big 12 Conference is looking to formally sponsor women’s flag football beginning in 2028. 

Such ventures are also backed by the National Football League, which plans to develop a flag football league for men and women. Through a new partnership with TMRW Sports, the league is expected to launch in 2028. Football legends like Joe Montana, Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are among investors in the league. In addition to NFL players, legendary athletes across various sports such as tennis players Billie Jean King and Serena Williams and soccer player Alex Morgan have been involved in league investments.

The sport’s exponential growth, increasing institutional backing and widespread league investments have all been an inspiration for Landis. Landis grew up in North Carolina, is a lifelong Michigan football fan, and regularly went to games at the Big House with parents who attended the University. 

“I always wanted to play football as a kid, and I would always go in the living room, and I would do drills, and I would tackle pillows,” Landis said. 

To close that gap, Landis looked within her own community at the University. 

“I put posters up around campus, and invited girls out to a really low-key practice,” Landis said. “We’ve been playing all these different sports — like rugby and ultimate frisbee — to try to get as close to football as possible. So, we all came together, and were like … ‘This is awesome, we should start a club’ and co-founded this organization late last year.”

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The University boasts 12 national football championships, more wins than any program in college football history and a stadium that holds more than 100,000 fans. It is home to one of the most athletically decorated programs in the country. And yet, its women’s flag football team still can’t use the University logo. 

Since their founding, the team has been turned away by both the University’s club sports department and the University Athletic Department. Their flag belts, wristbands, mouth guards and gloves have all been funded through a team Venmo account with donations pooled together from family members and fundraising tailgates. 

In an interview with The Daily, Rackham student Julia Radhakrishnan, vice president of women’s flag football, said, “All the [club] teams in the Big Ten are officially sponsored except for us…It’s embarrassing that we’re not able to use the Block M logo.”

Since their founding, the team has developed resilience quickly.

“Practice space was expensive and limited, and we really had no way to work around it,” Radhakrishnan said. “We were practicing outside in December and January, in the dark and the snow. … If that tells you anything about the commitment of this group, I think it really speaks to how much we were willing to do to get to this point.” 

Being recognized as “legitimate” has proven to be an ongoing hurdle for the team. 

“Women’s flag football is such a new concept to a lot of people, where men’s football has sort of existed in a realm of its own,” Landis said. “The Olympics is a good pushing point for us, because it’s finally being internationally recognized as a legitimate sport. … We want people to actually recognize that it’s a sport. We have to wear headgear, because it can get physical. We have to wear mouth guards. We have to design plays and run them.”

The team’s physical and mental toughness has carried them through administrative challenges and brought them closer together as a community. 

“We’re trying to grow a community around the sport … so that (the University) knows that it’s impacting their students and they want to make a change,” Radhakrishnan said. 

While calling for change from the University, the team continues to serve the community and give back to youth programs. Before the game against Indiana, there was a showcase for youth players to emphasize opportunities to play at the collegiate level.

“Girls from the high school level are … vying for an opportunity to play flag football in college, and that’s been sort of secluded to those small Division II and Division III schools. As bigger schools like Nebraska … are coming up, these girls are like, ‘I want to get involved,’” Landis said. 

For Landis and Radhakrishnan, who coach youth flag football, the community is at the heart of what they hope to build. Since launching their Instagram last fall, they’ve been flooded with messages from incoming freshmen, graduate students and prospective players eager to get involved. The door, they say, is always open.

“We’re really trying to build something that is gonna be here after any of us graduate,” Radhakrishnan said. “The team means a lot to all of us. … If there are girls on campus who maybe haven’t heard of us yet, or would be interested in just trying it out and seeing what it’s all about, we are always so excited to meet new people and bring them into this community. We’re really trying to build something that is going to be here after any of us are.”

Later this month, the team will travel to tournaments against varsity teams from Wittenberg University, Heidelberg University and Bowling Green State University, which launched their women’s flag football club in fall 2025. They’ll also compete against Siena Heights University in a matchup that will mark the program’s final tournament before Siena Heights University’s closure, passing the torch to the University of Michigan from the only other women’s flag football program in Michigan.

The team accepts donations through their Venmo, @Flag_Umich.

Staff Photographer Emily Alberts can be reached at ealbs@umich.edu.