The Jets Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) Women's Flag Football League is set to nearly double in size with 15 new teams joining the conference for its second ever season. The expansion was supported with a $500,000 investment from the Betty Wold Johnson Foundation at the direction of Chairman Woody Johnson.

"This wouldn't be anywhere near as special as it is without the Jets and Betty Wold Johnson Foundation and Mr. Johnson's involvement," ECAC Commissioner Dan Coonan said. "It has not only given it a credibility, but it has really made our progress exponential."

The league was founded in December 2025 through a $1 million dollar grant from the Betty Wold Foundation to help create the nation's largest collegiate women's flag football league.

Marymount University was the ECAC's inaugural winner, claiming the championship in May after defeating Franciscan University in a thrilling 37-26 win at the Atlantic Health Jets Training Center. On Sunday, the team was honored in a ring ceremony at MetLife Stadium, which is the new home of the championship starting in 2027.

"[Sunday was] almost like our celebration of winning because when we got back [in May], the kids went into finals," Marymount's HC Mike Rivera said. "It was a whirlwind when we won."

A Force of Nature
The Jets have been a driver of women's flag football's ascension on several fronts, increasing the available opportunities for girls of every age. In 2011, the organization became the first NFL club to help launch girls flag football at the varsity level in New York City and in 2021, the Jets launched the first high school girls flag league in New Jersey.

"The reason we got in [with women's flag in] the first place was, I saw the expansion of youth flag football," Coonan said. "I said, you know, the only group here that's late to the party is intercollegiate athletics."

Ted Evans, who started a girls flag team at Paramus High School, is now the head coach of Caldwell University, one of the 15 additions to the ECAC this season. He said there's no surprise why the sport continues to rapidly grow.

"This wasn't a sport that just happened to get where it is – it was really a force of nature," Evans said. "I think there was just a ton of female athletes who found this sport and they knocked the door down and said, 'Hey, we're going to take this game.'"

Andy Crane was appointed as the head coach of Eastern Connecticut State University (ESCU) in 2025 and has been working to build the program leading up to the Warriors' first season in the ECAC. Over the past year, Crane has been on the road recruiting, traveling to flag football showcases across the country. Commitment and support from NFL clubs has allowed more opportunities for players to get recognized and receive opportunities to compete at the collegiate level.

"I don't remember any sport, and you know I've been around athletics my entire life, that has exploded the way flag football has," Crane said.

Going All In
ESCU built a flag football specific field and debuted the new turf in a fall scrimmage against UCONN. The field is marked with the 40s, 20s and painted end zones and is one of the many ways the university is "all in" on the program.

Flag football was added to the NCAA Emerging Sports for Women program and is on track to receive championship status pending a vote in January by all three NCAA divisions.

"I don't feel like there's any doubt that's going to pass, and the sport is only going to get bigger and better," Crane said. "We really want to be that flagship type program where I hope we see a bunch of football fields popping up over the next couple years and other schools really make the commitment to the sport like we are."

Following the emerging sports NCAA model, teams are allowed 25 practices in the fall and one scrimmage before full practices start in January with the first games slated for February 20.

"This has really been two years of work and we're getting ready to take the top off it and just kind of explode onto the scene," Crane said.

Takes A Vision
The ECAC will now have 29 teams competing for "The Betty," the championship trophy named in honor of the late Betty Wold Johnson, Chairman Johnson's mother. There will be four divisions within the league – Titans, Broadway, Sack Exchange and Gotham – that are arranged geographically.

Division I, II and III teams all compete together, and Coonan said that could change in the future as the league grows, but adjustments to how the league functions is a collaborative effort.

"It's less of our vision and it's more of taking what the defense gives us, so to speak, in terms of how we can provide value," Coonan said.

The season will conclude with a "March Madness" playoff format with all 29 teams competing over the course of the week with the top teams advancing to the championship weekend at MetLife Stadium.

"It's not like they sit there and say here's the league, here's how it's going to work," Rivera said. "There's been a lot of discussions and input from the coaches which has been pretty valuable from what officials we're going to use, what size ball we're going to use, what kind of flags we're going to use."

That collaborative effort helped make this expansion possible with unwavering support from Johnson and the Jets.

"The ECAC has embraced flag and it's allowed a school like us who can get that jump start to be able to put together a program," Evans said. "I think that opportunity is tremendous and you're going to see schools, coaches, players, community people all take advantage of this opportunity because they feel like it was coming."