Football: The Game Is Here to Stay

This morning, LA Times Voices published an article titled: “If tackle football isn’t safe for girls, why do we let boys play?” It landed in my inbox shortly after being sent my way by someone I’d only just recently met. No context in the email. No note. Just the full article.

I don’t know exactly what he meant by forwarding it, but I can guess. Maybe it was a gentle nudge toward the position that girls and women should only embrace flag football, the safer more accessible version of the game. Maybe it was meant to echo the piece’s central claim, that since tackle is dangerous, maybe it’s time to move the world away from it altogether. Or, maybe in fast that tackle football is bad business.

If so, let me be clear: he couldn’t be more wrong.

The article’s foundation is simple: tackle football is dangerous. Because it’s dangerous, maybe it should disappear.

But sports history proves that logic hollow. If we eliminated every sport where athletes risk injury, we’d have shut down gymnastics, where catastrophic accidents are part of the risk-reward equation. We’d have outlawed NASCAR, where crashes at 200 mph are inevitable. We’d have erased UFC, rugby, high diving, alpine skiing , and every sport where athletes push human limits and embrace the danger.

We don’t cancel those sports. We respect the athletes who play them. We evolve the rules, improve the equipment, and adapt the training. But we never erase the game itself.

Tackle football deserves the same treatment.

Flag Football Is The Fastest Growing Sport in the Country For Women and Girls

There’s no denying the numbers: participation in high school sports is on the rise, and that rise is being led by girls. When it comes to flag football, participation isn’t just rising, it’s BOOMIN. In 2024, more than 1.7 million youth ages 6–17 played flag football (a 37% jump in ten years). Girls ages 6–12 saw participation explode by 283% since 2015. Nationwide, 6.2 million people now play flag football, including 1.6 million women and girls, a 55% increase in a single year. 

Youth participation alone hit 2.3 million, propelled by girls’ growth from 419,000 in 2022 to 547,000 in 2023. NFL FLAG now organizes nearly 1M youth players across 1,800 leagues, with women making up 25% of athletes, the fastest-growing segment. At the high school level, girls’ flag football is breaking records with 68,847 players last year, a 60% jump over the year before.

Those numbers matter. They prove the appetite is real.

But here’s the truth the article ignores: girls and women already play tackle football, and have for over 100 years. From barnstorming women’s teams in the 1920s to today’s national and international leagues, women have been organizing, competing, and building this sport for generations. More than 14 countries now field women’s national tackle teams, and thousands of women suit up in pads every season in the U.S. alone.

So to write about gender equity in football without mentioning that history is more than an oversight. It’s erasure.

Flag Football Is Not Tackle Football Evolved

Another mistake is treating flag football as if it were the “evolved,” safer version of tackle, the natural replacement for girls and women. That’s simply not true.

Flag and tackle are related (cousins), but they are not the same game. They share a ball and a field, but they demand entirely different skill sets. Flag emphasizes speed, precision, and space. Tackle is built on the line of scrimmage, linemen, physicality, collisions, strategy, and complexity that can’t be replicated without contact and 22 people on the field at one time.

Flag football is not the next stage of tackle. It is its own brilliant discipline of the sport. One does not erase the other. They stand side by side, expanding the football universe. Real equity means respecting both versions of the game, and respecting the athletes, girls and boys, who choose one or the other.

This Isn’t About Safety. It’s About Investment.

Here’s what the article misses most: the biggest reason women’s football hasn’t developed at the same pace as men’s isn’t because it’s “too dangerous.” It’s because it hasn’t been invested in.

For decades, those with the money, the cameras, and the power decided women’s football wasn’t worth the risk. They didn’t fund it. They didn’t broadcast it. They didn’t market it. And then they turned around and called it “niche.” That’s not about danger. That’s about neglect.

What we’re seeing now, the rise of flag, the growing wave of professional women's tackle, isn’t proof that one version of the game is “safe” and the other is “too risky.” It’s proof that when you finally invest in what women do, when you finally put cameras on them and resources behind them, the growth follows.

Yes, tackle football carries risk. It always has. It always will. But the game isn’t static. Equipment improves every season. Training methods advance. Rules evolve to protect players without stripping the soul of the sport.

The answer to risk isn’t erasure. It’s evolution, and our game continues to evolve.

The most troubling suggestion in the article is that maybe boys should stop playing tackle altogether, moving everyone into flag as if risk itself disqualifies the sport. That’s not equity. That’s not inclusion. That’s not progress.

Real progress is choice. Boys choosing tackle or flag. Girls choosing tackle or flag. Men and women choosing the version of the game that calls to them. That’s freedom. That’s equality. That’s the future that I am participating in.

So let’s not pretend this is a theoretical debate about what might happen if girls were “allowed” to play football. The reality is they already do. They have for a century. They will for the next century too.

The real question isn’t whether football is “too dangerous for girls.” The real question is whether we’ll keep ignoring the women and girls who are already playing it. Tackle football, with all its risks, all its flaws, and all its beauty isn’t going anywhere. Not for boys. Not for girls. Not for anyone with the courage and skill to step onto the field.

Because this was never about limiting the game. It’s about expanding it. And women, in fact, do play football.

Respect Where It’s Due 

To be clear, this is not an indictment of Michael Messner. His body of work has been foundational in shining light on the inequities in sport. For decades, he has called out how media sidelines women athletes, how youth sports reinforce outdated gender norms, and how systemic barriers keep girls from access to the same opportunities as boys. On that front, he has been an ally and an advocate.

But in this case, his conclusion misses the mark. To suggest that tackle football should fade away because of its risks is to overlook the truth staring us in the face: women have played organized football for more than a century. They still do. The lack of growth in women’s tackle isn’t about danger, it’s about a lack of investment, visibility, and belief from those with the money and the cameras.

Women don’t need protection from tackle football. They need opportunity within it. That’s the part the article gets wrong. And that’s the part the future will prove right.