![]() The eight best teams will then play the inaugural AFFL season. Think of of it as American Idol or American Ninja Warrior, but with a football. Winning teams will recruit from losing teams, until only the best remain. The league launches next year with the Flag Football US Open, an epic tournament that Lewis envisions drawing 1,000 teams and a seven-figure prize. The clock runs constantly, until the last two minutes of the first half and the last five of the second half, when the clock stops after each play. Tackling, blocking, and kicking? Strictly forbidden. After scoring a touchdown, teams can go for one, two, or three more points with a conversion. Touchdowns from less than 50 yards earn six points. The game moves quickly-the quarterback has just four seconds to heave the ball or start running, and the defense can rush the backfield after two seconds. The receiving team has four plays to reach the next 25-yard zone, then the next, and so on until it scores or throw-punts (no kicking, remember?). Games start with a throw-off, with a player of the coach's choice hurling the ball as far as possible. Each team features a dozen players and fields seven at a time. Players spend 60 minutes working their way up and down a standard football field delineated by four 25-yard zones. The game riffs on the one you probably played as a kid. He figured he could tap the pool of skilled players who aren't in the NFL for one reason or another and create a league just as exciting. "It just made me say to myself, 'I wonder what this game would look like if it was played by the greatest players in the world?'" he says. He'd coached the game for a few years, and found the sport surprisingly entertaining. ![]() The way Lewis tells it, the AFFL started on the sidelines of his son Hayden's flag football game. Now if the players could just remember the rules. This isn't the first league to challenge the supremacy of the NFL, but Lewis believes flag football provides a faster, safer, more social media-savvy take on football. So far, the league consists of just two teams and the goal of launching the Flag Football US Open next year. Lewis and his team spent just nine months building the AFFL: lining up investments, writing the rules, finding players and broadcasters and live-streaming partners. It makes for great TV, which is all that really matters to Lewis. ![]() And with no helmets or pads in the way, viewers can see every grimace, every celebration, and frustrated harumph. Replays come from all angles just moments after each play. The "Go Clock" that counts down the four seconds until the quarterback must pass or run works perfectly. The swooping Sk圜am looks almost Madden-like. The virtual first-down line holds in place. Chaos reigns on the field, but the broadcast feed looks gorgeous. He summons two people to a monitor propped up in the midfield tunnel to explain why. League employees pace the sidelines here at Avaya Stadium in San Jose, debating a solution. But the magnets won't hold through the vinyl on the flag, and Velcro can't stand up to the rigors of gameplay. They use magnets and wireless radios to help referees pinpoint exactly where a ballcarrier went down. The 14 players on the field keep at it until Jeffrey Lewis, the founder of the American Flag Football League, runs toward the field yelling "Dead! Dead! Whistle!" There's no kicking in flag football.) That should end the play, but no one remembers that. On the first play, someone bobbles the throw-off. ![]() The league's two teams, led by former NFL all-pros Mike Vick and Terrell Owens, have just taken the field for a dress rehearsal of sorts. IT'S THE NIGHT before the world's first professional flag football game, and everything's going wrong. CBS’S MASSIVE AFC CHAMPIONSHIP PRODUCTION TO DEPLOY NEXT-GEN PLAYER-TRACKING GRAPHICS
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