Flag Football

Making Football Feel Real

N Our Voice by Liz Sowers

Nebraska Flag Football 2027Scott Bruhn

Not long after I arrived at Nebraska, I went to a volleyball scrimmage. I looked around and the place was packed.

For a scrimmage.

Everybody already knows what football is here. That gym told me something else: people in this state will show up for women who compete. I sat there doing the math on what that could look like for flag football.

Our players are arriving on campus now, and we're all figuring this out together. There isn't a blueprint. Nebraska is the first Power Four school to add varsity women's flag football, and although our first competitive NCAA season isn't until 2028, we're jumping in and playing games this spring.

That's exciting because the Midwest hasn't had the same history with flag football as places like Florida. I think we're going to change what girls around here see when they look at a football.

For most of my life, a football under the Christmas tree was a thing people pictured for a boy.

Now I picture a little girl opening one.

The Helmet Under the Tree

I was about 8 when my dad brought home old football pads and a helmet for Christmas. He coached women's college basketball, and I'm fairly sure somebody was throwing the stuff out. Best gift I ever got.

I'd never owned anything that had to do with football. Putting that gear on made the game feel real.

My twin sister, Katie, and I took it straight to the backyard, made an end zone out of two trees and spent the afternoon trying to take each other out at the goal line. The neighbors got a show. For the record, I won. Katie will tell you otherwise.

We loved football. We'd call every boy on the street to come play, and we'd wear 'em out. Then around seventh grade those boys started joining actual teams. They got jerseys. Then high school jerseys.

We didn't.

Nobody necessarily told us no. It wasn’t that direct. It was fall, we were good at volleyball, our friends played volleyball, and there wasn't an obvious football path for us.

So I loved the game from the outside.

Finding the Game That Had a Place for Me

For a long time, basketball seemed like the obvious future because it was what I could see. I played four years in college and thought I'd become a basketball coach.

But, eventually, I found tackle football, then flag.

Playing flag for the U.S. national team in Panama changed how I understood the sport. The stadium was full. People were invested. There was a live band. We were on television. People stopped us for autographs.

Turns out I wasn't the only one who thought this sport was worth watching.

That realization eventually led me to Ottawa University, where I got the opportunity to build a program from scratch. Before taking that job, I'd been caring full time for my dad after he suffered a major stroke.

One day, after I'd gotten the job, I sat at our dining room table staring at a daunting list of recruits. One of Dad's former point guards, now a pastor, was sitting beside him talking about what he'd meant to her.

She talked about how he made his players feel like humans, not just basketball players.

Suddenly, that list in front of me looked completely different.

Those weren't names. Those were people.

Building Something People Can Believe In

At Ottawa we were asking players to sign up for something that didn't exist yet. They did it. Kids from Florida and Las Vegas packed up and moved to a small town in Kansas. Girls from opposite ends of the country, and the world, ended up as each other's best friends. We won five straight national titles. The friendships are what I'd bring up first.

Now I get to do it again with better resources, more experience and fewer illusions about what it takes.

At Nebraska, I want a program that operates like a well-oiled machine. Players who talk to each other, lead without being asked and treat everybody in the building well. That means recruiting for something besides talent. I want people who do the right thing when nobody's tracking it.

And yes, I want to hang some banners.

I get to do this with Katie, too. I run the offense, she runs the defense, and neither of us has ever lost anything gracefully. At Ottawa, the ride home from practice depended entirely on whose side won that day. Our players said we were an episode of The Office.

I'll take that as a compliment.

The Part I Didn't Have

The best piece of this job is a plain one. I can offer a young woman a scholarship to play football.

Basketball paid for my education. At Ottawa, however, even as our athletes competed at the highest level of flag football, it started wearing on me that some still carried school debt and financial strain.

Now I can sit across the table from a player and offer her something nobody could have offered me when I was her age: an actual path.

The timing makes it even more meaningful. Flag football is an NCAA Emerging Sport for Women now, and our first official season in 2028 lands the same year the sport debuts at the Olympics in Los Angeles. None of it is settled yet, which is the fun part.

Coaching football wasn't something I knew to want, because I'd never seen a woman do it. So I want women playing this game and I want them running it. What we're building shouldn't end when a player's eligibility does.

If I could get a minute with that 8-year-old in the hand-me-down pads, I'd tell her to quit waiting until she feels ready. The best things in my life happened because I took a chance before I had all the answers. Someday it'll all work out.

And someday a girl will open a football on Christmas morning and won't have to wonder whether the sport has a place for her.

She'll already know it does.