Pro Bowl

• I didn’t get a pass to media day, so I didn’t get a chance to ask Chiefs head coach Andy Reid about how he tends to his mustache.
• But my colleagues and I were able to ask an all-pro lineup of scholars to write about a range of football-related topics, from the partisan food divide to the numbers behind the biggest gambling bonanza in league history.

1. Flag, you’re it

• A year ago, league officials decided to shake up the annual showcase.
• It would no longer be a tackle football game.
• But Woods points to a gender divide and a political divide that could end up clouding the sport’s future.

2. X’s, O’s and Z’s

• In 2011, former NFL cornerback Sam Shields was a rookie playing for a Green Bay Packers team that had made the Super Bowl.
• The night before the big game, he tossed and turned.
• Something tells me I’d be a lot like Shields.

3. Going all in on gambling

• Or maybe you’re betting on Reba McEntire’s national anthem to last longer than 90.5 seconds.
• The country’s gambling mania has been aided, in part, by the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling that overturned a federal ban on sports betting.
• The NFL has gone all in on its embrace of gambling, forging billion-dollar partnerships with the country’s top sportsbooks.
• Read more:
  The Super Bowl gets the Vegas treatment, with 1 in 4 American adults expected to gamble on the big game

4. At least they aren’t serving donkey meat

• And even the Super Bowl – one of the few communal events left in a polarized, atomized nation – can’t avoid the creep of partisanship.
• Maybe you could just serve salmon – a food that, according to Dyck and Pearson-Merkowitz’s research, is “resistant to partisan cues.” Grim times, indeed.
• Read more:
  Super Bowl party foods can deliver political bite – choose wisely

5. ByeDaddy

• That’s one reason companies are willing to fork over so much cash for a coveted slot – as much as US$7 million for a 30-second spot.
• Ferrell point out, many regulars on the airwaves of the Super Bowl, such as GoDaddy and Ford, are missing from this year’s lineup.
• Read more:
  Super Bowl ads: It's getting harder for commercials to score with consumers

  This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

• Once a casual activity played at family reunions, the competitive sport of flag football is “soaring,” “exploding” and “skyrocketing in popularity nationwide,” according to mainstream news outlets.
• There’s some data behind the breathless headlines: According to the NFL’s official flag football program, since 2015 the number of kids ages 6 to 12 who play flag football has risen by 38%, to more than 1.5 million.
• In my recent book, “Emerging Sports as Social Movements,” I explore nontraditional sports like flag football and disc golf.

A fun, fast, safer alternative

• Though its rules are similar to tackle football, flag football is currently gaining attention for what makes it different.
• A “tackle” involves snatching one of two flags that hang from the hips of the ball carrier.
• While players face injury risks, they sustain far fewer head impacts than athletes who play tackle football.
• With the public’s concerns about brain injuries on the rise, many parents are opting for flag football instead of tackle for their kids.

The NFL cultivates the grassroots

• Although it may come as a surprise, the NFL is embracing flag football and taking its growth seriously.
• In 2021, the NFL and Nike committed US$5 million in equipment to support high school flag football teams across the nation.
• Most NFL teams are currently supporting the grassroots of flag football with summer camps, clinics and regional tournaments.

By the numbers

• According to figures collected annually by the National Federation of High Schools, 21,980 students played high school flag football in 2023.
• To put this number in context, however, tackle football attracted 47 times more students – roughly 1 million players – the same year.
• Though high school participation in flag football has increased steadily since 2007, almost all the growth comes from the girls’ side.
• A nationwide sports participation survey finds that the number of casual players of flag football is up, but core participation is down.

Red sport, blue sport

• Over the past decade, several studies have found a link between repeated head impacts and the risk for serious brain injuries, including chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
• Yet recent efforts to make tackle football safer for young athletes have been met with fierce resistance from families, fans and organizers.
• In many regions of the U.S., tackle football is deeply ingrained in the culture, leading to strong opposition to any changes.

• As beliefs about the dangers of tackle football become polarized, the perceived benefits of flag football will likely follow suit.
• As I showed in a recent study of sport popularity in 207 areas of the U.S., flag football is more popular in regions that tend to vote Democratic, with tackle football more popular in Republican areas.

Josh Woods does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Eli Manning and Brock Purdy named national partners: TMNA today announced that Brock Purdy and Eli Manning have been named as national partners.
• Both Purdy and Manning will appear in national content across digital and linear platforms and at experiences designed to engage fans and Toyota dealers.
• Manning powered the New York Giants to two Super Bowl championships (2008 and 2012).
• Return to Super Bowl air as advertiser: The brand will feature a 30-second commercial within the Super Bowl LVIII game broadcast on CBS.

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