NFL Funding New Wheelchair Football League
NFL Funding New Wheelchair Football League
Are you ready for some MORE football?!?!
Good ... 'cause the NFL has announced its helping fund a new National Football Wheelchair League -- and the game sounds exciting as hell!!!
According to Disabled Sports USA -- Roger Goodell's league has given its NFL Bob Woodruff Foundation of Healthy Lifestyles and Creating Community (HLCC) a grant to help kick off the new form of football next fall.
The games -- which are set to be played in Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Kansas City, Missouri -- will feature teams of 7 disabled players going at it on 60-yard, hard surface courts.
"Tackling" will instead be one-hand touch above the waste, and the kicking aspect of the game will be eliminated ... but other than that, the league is promising similar action to the NFL.
"Generally," the DSUSA says, "if it is legal in the Stand Up game, it is legal in the USA Wheelchair Football League."
The NFL will help announce the new league's beginnings at its draft this weekend ... with Purple Heart recipient and Marine vet Brad Lang -- who tragically lost both his legs in Afghanistan in 2011 -- announcing a Carolina Panthers pick on Saturday.
"We believe that sport has the unique power to bring people together and to push them beyond what is possible, redefining their ability,” DSUSA executive director Glenn Merry said.
"We are excited to launch the Wheelchair Football league in cadence with the NFL Draft driving a new generation of aspiring athletes to reimagine this ability."
