Colleges With Flag Football: These 15 Schools Have Varsity Programs

Flag football is a fun sport that many people enjoy playing on college campuses. It’s been played for a long time as an intramural sport. But did you know that some universities now offer it as an intercollegiate sport?

Although the NCAA hasn’t recognized it yet, the NAIA has recognized flag football as a varsity sport. As a result, a handful of colleges have started building women’s flag football programs. These programs compete against either other during the season.

This article lists the NAIA colleges with flag football. If you’re a female athlete who loves football and wants the opportunity to play in college, these schools will give you the chance to be a varsity athlete.

The 15 Colleges With Intercollegiate Flag Football Programs

As of 2023, a total of 15 colleges offer flag football as an NAIA sport. This article lists these schools and provides an overview of each.

You’ll notice that most of these schools are small. This is common for NAIA schools. Almost all of the massive schools with major sports programs that you’re familiar with play in the NCAA.

That said, playing in the NAIA makes you just as much of a college athlete as an NCAA player. And unlike NCAA’s Division III, which many people compare to the NAIA in terms of size and competitiveness, NAIA schools are allowed to offer athletic scholarships — and a few of the colleges below, including Warner University, offer them for flag football.

Here are the 15 schools with NAIA flag football programs:

Cottey College

• Location: Nevada, MO
• Enrollment: 311

Cottey College is an women’s college in Nevada, MO, about 80 miles south of Kansas City. The school is tiny, its enrollment hovering between 300 and 350 students. It is owned by the P.E.O. Sisterhood, a charitable organization that supports women’s education.

The college has a unique curriculum that emphasizes leadership and social responsibility. It offers degrees in fields such as business, education, and international relations. In 2020, Cottey College added flag football as an NAIA sport. 

Florida Memorial University

• Location: Miami Gardens, FL
• Enrollment: 1,800

Florida Memorial University is a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) located near Sun Life Stadium (where the Dolphins play) in Miami Gardens, FL. The campus has a long history of educating black students and is particularly strong in fields such as business and criminal justice.

FMU competes in 13 intercollegiate sports at the NAIA level. Flag football is the newest varsity sport offered at FMU. If you’re looking for a school with a fledgling but strong flag football program and a commitment to diversity, FMU is a great choice.

Kansas Wesleyan University

• Location: Salina, KS
• Enrollment: 803

Kansas Wesleyan is a small Methodist college in Salina, about 100 miles west of Topeka and the same distance north of Wichita. Its men’s football program has long been an NAIA powerhouse, most recently reaching the national semifinals in the playoffs in 2018.

KSU recently added women’s flag football to its lineup of intercollegiate NAIA sports. The school offers small class sizes and a BA-to-MBA program. It also has a highly regarded nursing school.

Keiser University

• Location: West Palm Beach, FL
• Enrollment: 17,892

Keiser University has its main residential campus in West Palm Beach, FL, though the school is headquartered just south of there in Fort Lauderdale.

Prior to 2011, Keiser was a for-profit college that operated primarily online, similar to disreputable degree mills such as the University of Phoenix and DeVry.

But it then switched its business model to a not-for-profit setup, added a residential campus (though the majority of its nearly 18,000 students are still online), and has seen its reputation vastly improve over the past decade.

Keiser has added several unique features to continue to build on its reputation, including a chiropractic school and now a women’s intercollegiate flag football program.

La Sierra University

• Location: Riverside, CA
• Enrollment: 1,609

La Sierra University is a Seventh-Day Adventist college located in Riverside, part of Southern California’s Inland Empire. Because of its affiliation with a devout Protestant religious denomination, the school is very strict when it comes to student conduct and morality. But the students seem to love it, and many of the school’s degree programs are highly regarded.

Women’s flag football is one of 10 intercollegiate NAIA sports offered at La Sierra.

Midland University

• Location: Fremont, NE
• Enrollment: 1,615

Midland University is a private Lutheran university in Fremont, NE, about an hour west of Omaha. It was struggling to stay open in the late 2000s, its enrollment having dropped to 500, but then Ben Sasse, who later became a U.S. senator and is now the president of the University of Florida, took over as president and revitalized the school. Its enrollment has since tripled to more than 1,600.

Flag football is not the only unique NAIA sport offered at Midland. It also has the country’s top collegiate powerlifting program. 

Milligan University

• Location: Elizabethton, TN
• Enrollment: 1,338

Milligan University, known as Milligan College until 2020, is a small Christian college in Elizabethton, TN, located in the northeast corner of the state right at the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.

As a Church of Christ-affiliated university, Milligan is strict about alcohol, tobacco, drugs, and cohabitation on campus, so that’s something to be aware of if you like the party lifestyle. But the school has strong NAIA sports programs, the newest of which is women’s flag football.

Ottawa University

• Location: Ottawa, KS
• Enrollment: 3,589

Ottawa University is not in the capital of Canada. It’s a small Baptist school in Ottawa, KS, a little town located about 45 miles south of the Kansas City suburbs. Like Midland University, it is known among NAIA schools for its strong powerlifting program. Women’s flag football is the newest addition to the school’s intercollegiate offerings.

The college has a second residential campus in Surprise, AZ, an exurb of Phoenix, but the flag football team practices and plays at the Kansas location.

Reinhardt University

• Location: Waleska, GA
• Enrollment: 1,281

Reinhardt University is a private Methodist college in rural Waleska, GA, about 45 minutes north of Atlanta without traffic. It has one of the most interesting origin stories of any college in America. It actually started out in the late 1800s as a grammar school, then became a high school, then a junior college, and now it’s a full-fledged university.

Reinhardt also has one of the most robust athletic departments in all of the NAIA, boasting 23 varsity sports, the newest of which is women’s flag football.

St. Thomas University

• Location: Miami Gardens, FL
• Enrollment: 1,797

St. Thomas University, a small Catholic school, is actually one of two universities in the suburb of Miami Gardens that has an intercollegiate flag football team, the other being Florida Memorial University (listed above).

St. Thomas enjoys a strong reputation in the region and has both undergraduate and graduate programs, including a law school that produces a ton of local legal talent. It’s the alma mater of Jose Baez, a high-profile criminal attorney who has won a number of huge, well-publicized cases.

Tougaloo College

• Location: Jackson, MS
• Enrollment: 900

Tougaloo College is a small HBCU affiliated with the Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ. Students at the campus have long been known for political activism, dating back to the Civil Rights Movement and before. The school was once a public teachers’ college, but in 1920 it went private and broadened its academic offerings.

As of 2023, women’s flag football is one of 12 intercollegiate NAIA sports offered at Tougaloo College.

University of Saint Mary

• Location: 796
• Enrollment: Leavenworth, KS

The University of Saint Mary is a tiny Catholic school that was once a women’s college but has since gone coeducational. Its main residential campus is in the town of Leavenworth (yes, the place with the prison — don’t worry, it’s well-guarded and hasn’t had a successful escape in decades!). The school has a satellite campus in Overland Park, the largest Kansas-side suburb of Kansas City.

Even though it’s a tiny school in Kansas, it has a geographically diverse student body, drawing from over 30 states and close to a dozen countries. It has 26 intercollegiate NAIA sports, women’s flag football being one of the newest, along with eSports.

Warner University

• Location: 1,200
• Enrollment: Lake Wales, FL

Warner University is a private Christian college in the dead center of the state with a steadily growing student body. If you like sunshine and don’t mind humid, sweltering weather in the spring and early fall, Warner offers small classes, a growing reputation, and the ability to play flag football at the intercollegiate level.

In 2021, Warner became the first university in Florida to offer a female a scholarship to play football (flag, of course!).

Webber International University

• Location: Babson Park, FL
• Enrollment: 800

Webber is located just down the road from Warner University and offers a business-focused education in an intimate setting with small class sizes. Though the student body has only 800 students, they come from nearly 50 countries, so the “International” in the school’s name isn’t just for show.

Webber offers associate’s, bachelor’s, and master’s degrees, and it has 22 NAIA intercollegiate sports programs. The school has student-athletes who have gone on to compete in the NFL, professional wrestling, and professional bowling.

Xavier University of Louisiana

• Location: New Orleans, LA
• Enrollment: 3,419

Xavier University of Louisiana is a Catholic HBCU located in the Gert Town section of New Orleans, near the Washington-Palmetto Canal. It’s the only university in the nation that is both Catholic-affiliated and an HBCU.

The school is also unique in that the only intercollegiate football team it currently has is a women’s team. Xavier shuttered its men’s varsity football program in 1959.