Flag football was only recently considered a professional sport because it was seen as girlier than regular football.
Flag football was created as a recreational sport for soldiers who enjoyed the game but didn’t want to threaten violence in already dangerous times. Removing the tackling and replacing it with flags changed the game’s culture and opened the sport up for criticism derived from comparison.
Because it’s football without tackling, it takes different skills and strategy than tackle football. There’s less padding and less reliance on physical force, which is changing the game’s culture overall. These differences must be evaluated based on merit and not in comparison to games like it.
It’s similar to men’s and women’s lacrosse, with men’s lacrosse including thicker padding and helmets for body checking. In comparison, women’s lacrosse includes less padding and only provides for stick-to-stick checks. Checking is when a player takes their lacrosse stick and contacts another player’s stick or body. Where one sport can make plays using that physical force, another sport must use different skills to compensate.
Removing one crucial part of tackle football lends flag football to comparison by its predecessor because it’s seen as tackle football without the essential part. That removal doesn’t equate to emptiness, as it was replaced with something equally defining. It just means that how people interact with the game must also change.
