Women’s flag football is coming to a Division I program in Texas.
UT Arlington announced Thursday that it will add the sport as a full varsity program in 2027.
It makes the Mavericks the fifth NCAA Division I program to publicly declare it will sponsor the sport at the varsity level. The others are Mount St. Mary’s, Alabama State, Long Island and Mercyhurst.
UT Arlington is the first Division I program in Texas to add the sport at the varsity level, and also the first member of the Western Athletic Conference to do so. Two other schools in Texas — Division III Concordia and NAIA Texas Wesleyan — also sponsor women’s flag football at the varsity level, while two other WAC programs in Grand Canyon and Cal Baptist have it as a club sport.
In a statement, UT Arlington said its flag football program will play games at Maverick Stadium, a 12,000-seat venue. Later this year, the program will hire a coaching staff and begin signing players.
For UT Arlington, the addition of a women’s flag football team marks the first time in 40 years that the Mavericks will have a football team of any sort. Its men’s tackle team was disbanded in 1985. This is also the first time UT Arlington has added any sport since 2017, when the Mavericks began competing in women’s golf.
Women’s flag football is widely seen as a rising sport and one of the fastest-growing in college athletics. Last month, the Division III Atlantic East was the first NCAA league to play a full season of women’s flag football and cap it off with a conference championship.
It will be an Olympic sport in 2028 in Los Angeles, and the NCAA has recommended adding it to its Emerging Sports for Women program.
Currently, according to the NCAA, about 65 schools have flag football teams at the varsity or club level, but to be considered for championship status at least 40 NCAA programs will need to sponsor women’s flag football as a varsity sport within 10 years. Those teams would also have to meet minimums in games played and player participation.
Earlier this week, Radford — a Division I program in Virginia competing in the Big South — announced it was adding women’s flag football as a club sport this fall “with plans to grow it into an intercollegiate varsity sport.”
So far, no school at the Power 4 level is adding the sport at the varsity level, but Nebraska athletic director Troy Dannen recently said women’s flag football is “something we should all keep a close eye on.”
