On Olympic flag football, NFLPA likely will be siding with NFL over owners

The NFL wants to use current players in the Olympic flag football competition. The owners are leaning against inviting the injury risk to their most important assets.

The NFL Players Association will be caught in the middle. And it seems as if the union will be fully in favor of letting the players play.

"You don't need me to tell you they're excited about it, right?" former NFLPA external affairs chief George Atallah said on #PFTPM. "I think representing your country in an Olympic sport is a pretty incredible opportunity for you. I've had the opportunity to know tangentially a couple of Olympians and I know how proud they are to represent the country and put the flag around their neck when they compete and go there and represent America and the United States."

The problem is that the owners hold the contractual rights to all players. And those rights include the ability to prevent players (with a court order, if need be) from playing any other type of football.

"I think you're gonna have a hard time convincing active players who are really interested in participating from not doing it," Atallah said. "And I think that's gonna be a story that we'll continue to track and follow heading into the Olympics especially in Los Angeles. . . . The flip side of course is true where you do have to have some sort of injury protection. You do have to have, you know, to your point about the legal issues, there has to be some sort of agreement and understanding between the players union, the league, and the ownership groups about what are the ways that we can make this work and protect the players as well. I think that's a big question mark that's yet to be determined, but I also know that, again, it'd be hard-pressed to get a guy like Tyreek [Hill] who said, 'I really wanna be there in '28' if he's still in the NFL. It's gonna be hard for somebody to look him in the face and say, 'No, you can't wear the flag.'"

That could be the eventual core of the argument. The owners won't want to bear the financial risk of the player suffering a serious injury. The players won't want to assume it, either. Beyond persuading the owners to risk not having a key player for the entire 2028 season, someone will need to come up with a way of ensuring that NFL players can represent the USA without being SOL when it comes to their salaries.

It won't be easy. The owners have no reason to bend. Would it be great global exposure for the sport? Sure. But will the impact on the bottom line justify potentially not having an important player for the upcoming season, while also having to pay him?

Whatever the decision, the clock is ticking. And the path of least resistance will be to make Olympic flag football a platform for retired NFL players, not active ones.