Jets and ECAC launch largest collegiate women's flag football league in the US

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FLORHAM PARK, N.J. (AP) — Quincy Williams and his neighborhood buddies would get together and play football games wherever they had some room to run while growing up in Birmingham, Alabama.

Williams has since been living out his childhood dream in the NFL as a playmaking linebacker for the New York Jets, an example for the kids now playing on those fields. And he's excited that girls — maybe someday even his young daughter — are finding increasing opportunities to play football.

“When I was younger, we had females who wanted to play 7-on-7 with us and stuff like that,” Williams said. “To see how much it has grown, it's been amazing.”

The Jets and the Eastern College Athletic Conference announced Tuesday they're launching the largest collegiate women's flag football league in the country, starting in February. It will include 15 Division I, II and III universities from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio and Virginia.

“Taking that chance, taking that big jump of actually playing the game is something that we wanted to lead by making this collegiate league,” said Williams, who has been heavily involved in the Jets' efforts to support girls flag football leagues in the United States and overseas. "And also letting people see that it's not just an idea, that there's something that can actually happen.

“There's an opportunity that we can give these girls and the younger generation, also.”

Jets owner Woody Johnson, through the Betty Wold Johnson Foundation, is making a $1 million investment to support the creation and operation of the women's flag league. Each participating school will receive a grant to help offset costs such as equipment, uniforms, coaches' salaries and travel.

“It is absolutely huge,” ECAC Commissioner Dan Coonan said. “And it’s a game changer, really. ... Without it, this doesn’t happen.”

The Jets' support for girls flag football dates to 2011 when they were the first NFL team to help launch a league at the varsity high school level in New York. They have since helped create more than 260 teams around the world, including in England and Ireland.

“Ultimately it came down to, it was just the next evolution of everything we’ve done in girls flag football,” said Jesse Linder, the Jets' vice president of community relations. “It was like, what’s the next step for these girls? How do we provide opportunities for them to play? We also saw there was a little bit of a gap between high school and Olympic or international competition. So the collegiate space just made the most sense.”

Linder and the Jets reached out to Coonan, who similarly felt there was a void for the sport at the college level. Coonan said he had already been contacting the NFL's offices to see which teams might be the right fit for the ECAC.

“By far the most urgency I felt on the other side of the phone was when I talked to the Jets,” Coonan said. “It was just kind of a match made in heaven.”

Coonan, who spearheaded the ECAC's esports program in 2018, emailed the athletic directors of all 200 schools associated with the conference to gauge their interest in a women's flag football league.

“Within 10 days or so, I got 15 responses saying, ‘Yeah, we’re in,'” Coonan said.

The initial group of schools that will compete in the first season includes Allegheny College, Eastern University, Franciscan University, Kean University, Long Island University, Mercy University, Mercyhurst University, Montclair State University, Mount St. Mary’s University and Penn State Schuykill.

Five others — Caldwell University, Fairleigh Dickinson, Dominican University, Union College and Sweet Briar College — will begin competing in 2027.

Linder said the goal is to have at least 20 schools competing within the first four years, a number Coonan told him will be reached in short order. They both think the new league will help serve as a blueprint for college athletics, especially with the NCAA set to vote on making women's flag football an “emerging sport” in January.

“I hope this is kind of the nudge to push things over the edge,” Linder said.

Regular-season games will be played with a 7-on-7 format on campus sites from February through April. The Jets will host a playoff tournament at their facility in May, with future postseasons played at MetLife Stadium.

Callie Brownson, a scouting intern for New York in 2017 and the first woman hired as a full-time NCAA Division I coach a year later with Dartmouth before coaching with the Bills and Browns, will be the Jets' flag football adviser.

Commissioner Roger Goodell said in October that the NFL plans to launch women’s and men’s professional flag football leagues “in the next couple of years” — ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, which will feature flag football for the first time.

“The desire has always been there and the talent has always been there,” Coonan said. “It’s just needed a little vision of somebody to say, ‘Why not? Why can’t we do this?’ In the era of Caitlin Clark and women’s sports again getting another big boost out of her, I think it’s perfect.

"So, to be associated with that is everything. It means everything. And it’s why we exist, really.”

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