With practice set to begin in 19 days, 111 teams will be competing in two classifications for the Alabama High School Athletic Association flag football championship this season. According to a member of the Flag Football Hall of Fame, the sport is poised for even more growth.

Doug Rogers is the head coach for Shelton State Community College’s debut season after spending four years as offensive coordinator for Vestavia Hills High School. Rogers helped head coach Debra Broome lead the Rebels to a 61-12 record and a state runner-up finish in 2023.

When the Alabama Community College Conference added flag football to its scholarship sports beginning this fall, Rogers was the choice to lead the Bucs. The prospect of earning a college scholarship, he said, will spark increased focus on the sport in high school.

The ACCC will have seven teams competing in 2025. Wallace-Hanceville, Snead in Boaz, Calhoun in Decatur and Northwest-Shoals in Muscle Shoals will make up the Northern Conference with Shelton in Tuscaloosa, Bishop State in Mobile and Lurlene B. Wallace in Andalusia in the Southern.

Rogers is not new to being a flag football pioneer.

“My first professional job was as intramural coordinator at Pensacola Junior College in 1987,” he said. “One of our biggest programs was flag football. Florida is a football state and the kids who didn’t get scholarships still wanted to play.”

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The self-described “Navy brat,” who was born in Japan and grew up mostly in Pensacola, started playing flag football seriously after graduating from high school. “I was a sandlot quarterback,” Rogers said. “I went to Florida State for a year and played in their league and I played when I went to (the University of) West Florida.”

At Pensacola Junior College – now Pensacola State College – Rogers oversaw club sports. Player-coaches were legal in flag football and in 1993 he led his team to the National Intramural and Recreational Sports Association championship. In 2004, he was an NIRSA All-American and the Pirates were the national runner-up. In 2005, he was the tournament MVP as Pensacola captured a national championship.

“I coached the guys and played and started a regional tournament with West Florida. We probably had the largest regional in the nation with 106 men’s teams,” he said. “The national tournament was in New Orleans over New Year’s, so everybody wanted to go there. Some should have been in the ‘Bourbon Street League.’ They would show up after partying and couldn’t play. We would go and get serious about it. We’d traditionally get to the final eight or the final four.

“I let my knowledge of the game level the playing field to a degree. Some college teams we played had players from their freshman year to graduate school. Some had ex-NFL players and ex-college players. It was a lot of talent, not a lot of backyard football by any means.”

When Rogers, who was inducted into the NIRSA Flag Football Hall of Fame in 2008, decided to retire from Pensacola State, he reached out to a former intern of his at the college. “Brian Davis was the director of Vestavia’s park and rec and he hired me to come in and start adult programming. He told me, ‘By the way, I volunteered you to be an assistant for the girls team at Vestavia High School.’ That’s how I got involved.”

Davis was hired in 2023 to lead Tuscaloosa Park & Recreation Authority and when Shelton State decided to start a flag program, he suggested Rogers.

Shelton’s administration set a roster limit of 15 players. Rogers has signed eight, so far, and said he expects to get 10 on scholarship with five walk-on players. Two of his signees are from two-time AHSAA state champion Central-Phenix City – Shabreia Brannon and Janiyah Garrett. Others include quarterbacks from Tuscaloosa County and Northside and Merritt Kelley from the 2023 state runner-up Vestavia Hills team.

Flag football is emerging in college in NAIA and in NCAA Division II and Division III. Alabama State University launched a Division I team in February and D3 Huntingdon College in Montgomery fielded a team in 2025.

“I think the sport is still growing and it’s got room to grow,” Rogers said. “A lot of schools (in Alabama) are not playing, but it is exploding. The talent in Alabama is really good. I will say this from watching the Florida (high school) state tournament in Tampa: Our top teams are competitive with them, but our lower ranked teams aren’t. Watching their top 16 teams play, there is talent and they are flying around.”

Rogers said as college opportunities expand, he expects more girls will decide to devote all of their energy to the sport. He pointed to AL.com’s first Miss Football, Central-Phenix City quarterback Gerritt Griggs, who also starred in softball and basketball. “Griggs signed with Alabama to play softball. In Florida, for the best players flag is their only sport. They aren’t pulling the trigger on another sport. It helps them as a team, having seven on a team just killing it. I think that’s coming for Alabama.”

The veteran coach praised the AHSAA’s state championship game atmosphere – “two years ago, that was stellar” – and the NFL FLAG program that begin in the early ’90s and now has more than 750,000 boys and girls participants from age 4 to 17 across the country.