Who is the Real National Champ?
A look at two of the current 8-Man & 9-Man Nationals

Flag Football has seen a huge growth over the past seven to ten years of team and player participation. Major organizations and teams continue to argue about their rankings and nationals being the only ones that really count.  A true national tournament should include a representation of teams from all parts of the Untied States, not from one or two regions.

Two major organizations both host their nationals (8-Man Eligible based) on the same weekend every year. Both organizations would like for you to believe that their nationals are the only nationals that matter and will do anything to discredit the other.

The national tournament in Las Vegas had a total of sixteen teams in its 8 man all-eligible (Unlimited Division) in 2005 and of the sixteen only four teams were from outside California. Those numbers of out of state teams diminish in the lower divisions.

To the outside observer, the national tournament in Las Vegas is just a glorified western regional tournament with a few teams from the Midwest to make it look a little better than what it was. Although the last two champions have been The Houston Sleepers and The Denver Gamblers, the problem here is no one outside the west coast has ever heard or have seen these teams play.

The national tournament in Orlando can boast to having the most overall teams, but again can it actually be called a "national tournament"? The Orlando tournament 8-man eligible (A Division) did in fact have teams from several states, including the San Diego Swarm of California. But on the other hand it had no teams from any other state west of Missouri other than the single California team leaving 50% of the country without any representation.

Consider this, the 2004 National Champions Brothers AC (of the Eastern Nationals) are a virtual unknown to teams from the west coast as are teams such as Quick 6 (UT), another former Western National Champion is unknown to the east coast. Now having a history of nationally unknown National Champions defeats the purpose of being called the National Champ. 

Let's face it, no team wants to travel across the country to play in a tournament that they could either drive or save hundreds of dollars by playing close to home.  Contrary to popular belief, simply saying that if a team wants to be a champion then they should come to your Nationals is not going to provoke a team to travel.  Truth is, its up to the organizations to make sure that the Nationals are as convenient to all teams as it can possible be - convenience sells.

The only way to truly crown a national champion, as in any sport, is on the field and there should’ve been a collective effort by the leading National organizations to provide teams with this opportunity years ago.  But again, the greed of individuals has affected us all and hopefully a team-oriented organization can change the way the game is run.