FORT WORTH, Texas — The concept of girls playing football is not new, and to a previous generation it was just called "powder puff football."
"Can you imagine using that term today?" Dallas Cowboys vice president Charlotte Jones said Thursday.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Provided the person wants their email and phone inbox to be buried with irate messages from people who find the term "powder puff football" offensive.
In 2022, powder puff football just goes by the more socially acceptable term, "girls football."
It's a game that is coming to Fort Worth, with the idea that it will be soon available to a generation of girls who want to play a sport that for about 100 years has been nearly exclusively for the boys.
Starting this year, Fort Worth Independent School District will offer varsity flag football to girls at 15 FWISD schools. It's one of the first public school systems in the United States to offer such a program.
From 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 5 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, the Dallas Cowboys will a hold "Girls Flag Football Jamboree" to educate interested players on the game, complete with drills, terminology, techniques, and a scrimmage.
The game is still the game, just without tackling.
It's taken nearly 50 years, but girls are playing just about every single sport these days as boys. Basketball, hockey, boxing, MMA, soccer, name your traditional male sport, and the females can play it, too.
With very limited exceptions, the holdout has been football.
FWISD administrators have constantly looked into ways to increase female participation in sports, and in the last few years football has finished among the top three choices when they poll students.
In the two decades or so, the occasional girl has ventured onto the football field to play with the boys, as a kicker.
In December of 2002, Katie Knida became the first woman to play a Division I football game when she appeared as a kicker at the University of New Mexico.
In 2015, Reilly Fox made national news when she kicked field goals for the Paschal Panthers.
In 2020, Sarah Fuller became the first female to play in a FBS game when she kicked in a few games for Vanderbilt.
Fuller is scheduled to appear at the Jamboree on Saturday, along with former Dallas Cowboys linebacker DeMarcus Ware, whose daughter plays flag football.
There has not been a place for girls to play organized football. What it needed was some funding, and the initiative to actually start a league.
All of the necessary parts are there for it to work, and Fort Worth will be the "kickoff" to have the sport available to females as a varsity sport.
Since 2016, the NFL estimates about 200,000 girls ages 6 to 17 play flag football; 14 NFL teams, including the Cowboys, have committed to work with their respective states to make girls flag football a varsity sport.
The NAIA is working with the NFL to start women's flag football as a varsity sport.
"Girls playing sports has advanced so much from when I was growing up," Jones said. "The real expense in something like this is really the field and field-time usage. In terms of playing the game itself, it's not as much and it doesn't take much.
"But you want to fund coaches, and you want to prepare the coaches to coach and understand the game and the value of the game," she said.
For schools, and conferences, girls flag football has its advantages, because it's not that expensive.
Now, they just need the players.
