The Falcons paved the path for every other NFL team’s increased commitment and enthusiasm toward girls’ flag football.
In 2017, two high-ranking Falcons employees – Amanda Dinkel, senior director of community relations, and Chris Millman, vice president of community relations – were in Florida for NFL meetings and heard the state had sanctioned girls’ flag football as a sport. At the time, Florida, Nevada and Alaska were the only states that had done so.
“We said to ourselves, why aren’t we doing this in Georgia?” Millman said. “Us with the Atlanta Falcons, who own football in the state, let’s use our platform to bring this to light. At that time, we didn’t know if the Georgia High School Association had even considered this. But we were open to getting the conversation started.”
Dinkel and Millman spearheaded an effort the Falcons were quick to support. The team and the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation partnered with Gwinnett County schools in 2018 to fund the state’s first girls’ flag football league.
During interest meetings in the summer, some larger schools had around 100-150 girls expressing intrigue. The low cost of entry was a key selling point. The Falcons felt it was clear they’d unearthed a sleeping giant.
“I can’t say I was surprised by (the immediate interest) because everybody knows football, it’s obviously a very popular sport,” Falcons CEO Rich McKay said. “So the fact you can give girls of that age access to it, coaching, you’d just think they’d sign up. I think the sign-up numbers in Gwinnett that first year probably overwhelmed them and surprised us a bit. But from that point, I haven’t been surprised. I think it’s fantastic.”
The pilot program was successful, leading to five new counties adopting the sport in the following year (four in metro Atlanta, the other being Muscogee). That included 52 schools and over 800 girls. The sport was sanctioned in December 2019. The Falcons have also helped Alabama and Montana down the same path.
The past three years, the Falcons have hosted the NAIA and NJCAA college championship weekends. On Friday, they’ll have a showcase where girls go through combine-style workouts. Their efforts have led to more than 100 girls getting scholarship offers, when many of them hadn’t known they could even play collegiately.
Since the program’s inception, the Falcons have heard numerous stories about how flag football has impacted lives and improved mental health. It’s been another avenue for girls to build camaraderie, provided them another outlet. One girl found flag football shortly after a suicide attempt, and at season’s end, she told her coach that the sport had “saved her life.” Another girl had built a bond with her dad while playing after the two had a nonexistent relationship before that.
“Honestly, I pinch myself multiple times throughout the year (seeing the impact),” Dinkel said. “Any time I see a girls’ flag commercial, or I’ll log onto social media and see a random post about girls’ flag, or I’ll be out in the public and start talking to folks and they’ll say, ‘Oh, my daughter plays girls’ flag’ and they have no idea the background of who they’re talking to. The coolest part has been seeing it grow organically and to see how has it has exploded in so many different ways.
“It’s surreal to see it, and we couldn’t have asked for a better outcome for how quickly it’s grown and has spread. I think that’s just a testament to all of the girls that have been willing to sign up for something new and shows the bravery that they have. Just seeing how all the girls are benefiting from it. Some amazing stories have come out of it, and ones that have been told to us without even people totally understanding that we were the driving force behind it. Just to have those organic moments has been amazing.”
The NFL took note of the success. The league office asked Dinkel to speak to the 32 owners in New York during fall 2022 and present a blueprint for how the Falcons started the pilot league. “The commissioner was so inspired by how we did it here that he wanted the other 32 teams to lean into it and follow our model to get this going within their state,” Millman said.
Dinkel and Millman had a few weeks to prepare for the presentation. It centered on why other NFL teams should become involved with girls’ flag football and its importance in their communities.
“Collectively, we just wanted to just share ‘why,’” Dinkel said. “The impact that girls flag can make and just a lot of the different touch points on why it would be beneficial for their clubs to become involved with girls’ flag football. How it’s such a powerful impact for girls, no matter what market their club team is in. So that was a lot of the driving force preparing for the presentation.
“Then while up there speaking with all of them, we really wanted to drive home the ‘why,’ like I said. Definitely spoke on how we came about doing it and some advice on how to get started. But the big focus was to make sure the owners could then go back to their particular teams and share just a smidge of our experience. And then they would put us in touch with our counterparts at that particular team if they’re interested in moving forward.”
Today, all 32 teams are involved with girls’ flag football in some capacity.
“We really didn’t know the journey that we were going to go on,” Dinkel said. “We’ve just been floored and thrilled at the outcome. And I think we gave other NFL teams encouragement, a runway, a toolkit and really invented the wheel for them so they didn’t have to create a roadmap on their own. That was our hope and goal, to help spark interest in other NFL teams and provide them encouragement.”
Flag football continues growing on every level, especially now that it will be in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. The NFL had long wanted flag football to be part of the Olympics, and the Falcons’ efforts at the youth level, and corresponding league-wide influence, provided an assist.
“I do think that girls’ flag football brought a lot of attention to the whole topic of flag football and brought attention to its low cost-of-entry point, and that it’s a sport that could be taken globally,” McKay said. “No question it helped.”
“I love the idea that in the Olympics; you’re probably going to have some real high-profile players that want to play and probably will play. That will create a lot of attention, which is fantastic for the game and really good for flag football, whether it’s girls or boys.”
