LONG BEACH, Calif. — Girls’ flag football has become so popular in California that the state’s high school governing body, the CIF Federated Council, voted to add it as a sanctioned sport last month.
LA Times' Luca Evans wrote about it and joined Lisa McRee on "LA Times Today" with more.
LA’s NFL teams have supported girls’ flag football for a while now.
“As far as the Chargers and the Rams go, they each see a huge potential for growth within Los Angeles. As far as individual communities, schools are really banding together and this excitement is brewing from the youth level, from local leagues to, potentially the high school level,” Evans said.
The rules for CIF flag football will differ from football regulations. Evans explained the changes.
“Same four 12-minute quarters [as football], but play will run continuously through the first 22 minutes of each half, so there will be no time stoppage for incomplete passes through those first 22 minutes. No dead balls or anything like that. Obviously some clock stoppages factor in, but it will make the games faster. Another thing I’m interested to see is that extra points are worth more at varying distances. So, you can get more points … the further you go back to try an extra point," he said.
Funding these new teams will be a group effort by CIF, school districts, and even some NFL teams. Overall costs to start up a team range from $2,000 to $2,500.
“The NFL, the Rams, the Chargers have kind of pledged, not in an official capacity, to help programs get equipment and funding. Every team in the Corona Unified School District has already pledged to field a team. There’s a lot of interest brewing in Anaheim and in the Compton Unified School District as well... CIF is going to have to develop those bylaws and see the level of funding as compared to boys’ football. But the biggest factor for Title IX is going to be all about coaches. Likely there is going to be a strong push by CIF to get more female coaches, more women into head coaching positions of girls by football teams,” Evans said.
Watch the full interview above.
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