Flag football will debut as a sport in\u00a0the\u00a0Los Angeles 2028 Summer Olympic Games\u00a0and CFL quarterback Nathan Rourke wants to\u00a0represent\u00a0Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt certainly is an opportunity that I’d not want to pass up if it ever comes across. There’s no spot that is reserved for me in any type of way, just like\u00a0for any other player,\u201d Rourke told\u00a0Dave Thomas on the SportsCage.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would love to be considered and I think that’s what I’ve made clear by trying to make an effort to learn a little bit more about the game,\u00a0trying to understand it a little bit better and connect with those people who are the decision-makers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The CFL<\/a> announced on November 10, 2025 that the league\u00a0will allow their athletes to participate.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s not necessarily a one-to-one ratio in terms of tackle football and flag football,\u00a0going in with that type of mindset is a positive thing. We’re a couple years away still and there’s a lot of things that have happened, but I think this is a situation where you don\u2019t necessarily want to pass it up. I think it deserves some further probing,\u00a0looking into and that’s what I’m going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Rourke was asked\u00a0what\u00a0differences there are in\u00a0flag football compared to tackle.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that the biggest one\u00a0is how small the field is because it’s so small, things happen a lot faster and the windows are a lot smaller,\u201d Rourke explained. \u201cIt’s a bit like playing arena league dimensions, the rusher comes in really quick,\u00a0he’s only seven yards.\u201d<\/p>\n As for his position as a quarterback, Rourke shares the differences he sees between flag and tackle.<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest thing as a quarterback that I’ve noticed is that the snap difference, the shotgun distance\u00a0is quite deep sometimes,\u201d Rourke said. \u201cYou’re at 11 yards and in tackle, you’re never further back than five, so the ball’s in the air for a long time. You’ve got to find the ball, get ready to get rid of it really quick or that rusher’s going to be on top of you. That’s been the main difference so far.\u201d<\/p>\n Rourke shared what his team, the Lions, thought about\u00a0him participating in flag football for the Olympics.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn’t that dramatic or formal. It was\u00a0them\u00a0saying, ‘Hey, this is something that was brought up at the league meetings back in January\u00a0this year. We want you to know that if you go ahead and you try to pursue this, that we are behind you 100 percent.’ It’s a huge gift to have from your organization, but I think they also realize how cool and special it would be in the Olympics,\u00a0how it only comes every four years and playing football may or may not be in the Olympics in 2032,\u201d Rourke said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think everyone understands that and so I would never worry.\u00a0They gave me the green light and there’s\u00a0some things that we have to work out from an injury perspective and a liability kind of thing. But for me,\u00a0now I owe it to myself to do my due diligence.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year\u00a0with the B.C. Lions,\u00a0the team\u00a0finished with an\u00a011-7 record and were eliminated by the Saskatchewan Roughriders 24-21 in the\u00a0West Final. Rourke suited up in all\u00a018 regular season games for the Lions,\u00a0he completed 70 percent of his passes for 5,290 yards, 31 touchdowns and 16 interceptions. For his efforts, the 27-year-old\u00a0was\u00a0named the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player and Most Outstanding Canadian.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’ve got a great group of guys who are living here locally in the Vancouver area with Americans and Canadians,\u201d Rourke shared about\u00a0his offseason. \u201cWe’ve got a real college feel around here with the guys training every day together. It’s getting better and we’ve got a lot of hungry guys waiting for the season to get going —\u00a0May can’t come soon enough for us.\u201d<\/p>\n Shifting focus to his younger brother Kurtis<\/a>, Riders fans want\u00a0to know how he’s doing after playing the entire 2024<\/a>\u00a0NCAA season with the Indiana Hoosiers despite a torn ACL<\/a>. He\u00a0was selected\u00a0by Saskatchewan\u00a0in the third round, 25th overall during\u00a0the 2025 CFL\u00a0Draft and picked in the seventh round, 227th overall by the San Francisco 49ers\u00a0in the 2025 NFL Draft.<\/p>\n \u201cHis first year in the NFL was really more of a redshirt year. They didn’t really allow him to do too much after he was coming off the ACL injury in college. They want to give him a shot, which is great. He’ll have an opportunity to compete and hopefully be on the roster this year. I think as a draft pick, they’re invested in him. They see a future with him,\u201d Rourke said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think he’s in a really good spot in an organization that doesn’t have a lot of turnover with their coaches, which is always difficult in pro sports. He’s having a really good time down there. I think it’s going to be good. I think it’s always good to have a plan B to be able to have something to fall back on. But I think for all of our sakes, we hope that he doesn’t end up donning the Green and White anytime soon.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Flag football will debut as a sport in\u00a0the\u00a0Los Angeles 2028 Summer Olympic Games\u00a0and CFL quarterback Nathan Rourke wants…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[437],"tags":[49,48,521,522,520,218295,82],"class_list":["post-566752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canadian-football-league","tag-canadianfootballleague","tag-cfl","tag-flag-footballcflbc-lionsnathan-rourkekurtis-rourke2028-summer-olympics","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}