Are We Breakin' Up?

Other than being a spectacular Rilo Kiley song, the title of this post refers to the maelstrom currently surrounding Cultimate's Conference 1 proposal, which would involve the potential flight of 25 teams from the UPA.

As Hector so eloquently put it, shit's hit the fan, and I agree. Everyone has something to say, and Cultimate so far has seemed quite tight-lipped about it all.

I want to begin by saying that I don't know very much about Cultimate or Conference 1. I have thus far only played in two Cultimate tournaments, Trouble in Vegas and Rollcall, and know little about the way they were run. My knowledge of the C1 proposal comes mainly from reading different websites, blogs, and RSD, as well as from conversation with ultimate-playing friends. To be honest, I feel a little bit isolated from the situation, sitting here in Shanghai, waiting to hear about who's in and who's not, and made the early decision not to write anything about C1, because I just don't feel like I fully understand it. But in the past few days, I've felt compelled to say something, mostly to get my questions answered. So please right my ignorance.

Firstly, my opinion of Conference 1 is that with a lot of tweaks, it could be a good idea in the future. Basically, I guess you could say that I was okay with the UPA's timeline for change. That being said, while I respect that Cultimate is trying to take action and legitimize College ultimate, I still have a lot of questions and issues with C1.

My first question concerns the selection of the top 25. What were the bases of selection? Was Cultimate looking at win/loss records and RRIs of the past few years? UPA Nationals appearances and performances? Appearances and performances at Cultimate tournaments? Did division creation have an effect on which teams were chosen? While both Minnesota and Western Washington are teams with great potential, I'm not sure that they belong in the top 25 of Open elite teams. UCSB was a great team in the late '80s and the late '90s, but they haven't qualified for Nationals since 2002 ('04 doesn't count). Then you have Dartmouth and Arizona, two teams that battled it out in prequarters at Natties '08 until Arizona won on universe point, but Delaware gets invited into C1 after a whopping one win at that same tournament (admittedly though, they have made frequent trips to Nationals).

As flawed as I think the selection process for these 25 teams were, this C1 idea will only work if all 25 of these supposed elite teams accept the offer, because that's what C1 is supposed to be -- only the top 25 most elite teams. But Georgia has already bowed out, so is another team going to be named in their place? Will it be another team in the "Southeast Division", for geography's sake, or will it be whoever Cultimate arbitrarily decided was in the #26 slot? Either way, based on C1's exclusive design, the aim of having only the top 25 teams competing against each other has already been compromised with the loss of just one team. 

That leads us to the "next tier". What of the mid-level teams, those bubble teams? Teams like Dartmouth and Pittsburgh are consistently very good, with Pittsburgh having been to Nationals something like the last four years in a row, or something ridiculous like that. Finally, like everyone's been bringing up, what's going to happen to the Cinderella stories? The endearing thing about that Disney movie is that everyone got to try on the shoe, both the wealthy, janky looking sisters and the poor, beautiful Cinderella. For every Wisconsin Hodag team that is a contender every season, there's an Arizona Sunburn team, working and waiting to burst on the scene. For every UCLA Blu team that has been a major player every year, there's an MIT Smite team, that surprises a bunch of people and gets a ticket to The Big Show.

The thing about ultimate though, and any underdog team, really isn't that they just all of a sudden, instantaneously got really good. Let's go back to a sport I know a little better than ultimate -- basketball. Do you think all those upsets occur during March Madness because just one night, all the stars aligned together and all that other shit? No. I don't believe in that. I believe that that night, the underdog wanted it more. That night, all the underdog's work finally came to fruition. That's the key word -- work. These "Cinderella stories" don't just happen with the slipping on of a cleat. Teams like Arizona and MIT have been working for years and years to build their team -- they're working hard and playing great ultimate the same way that Wisconsin and UBC did this year. 

Sure, with C1, those top 25 would get to consistently duke it out with each other and improve their own teams in that way. It'd make the game that much more competitive. I think college basketball provides us with a great model for what C1 could be -- conferences (or in C1's case, Divisions), play-ins into the tournament, games that matter, etc. But what happens to the rest of the teams excluded from that top tier? Without competition with teams deemed elite, how does a team on the verge get better? Not by beating up on cupcakes, but by taking down one of the big guns. The beauty of ultimate is that everyone gets to compete with everyone else.

I strongly believe that unless you compete against and win against the best, you can't call yourself the best. To be objective, I'll use an example I know I can't get shit for -- the White Sox can beat up on teams like the Kansas City Royals all they want to pad their W-L column, but unless they also win games consistently (and during the playoffs) against perennially competitive teams like the Boston Red Sox or the Anaheim Angels, then the White Sox are a sham. Brodie Smith said it himself when he said that you must go through the defending champion in order to call yourself the champion. Unless every kid that wants a shot gets their shot, it's not really fair.

Further, I think that there are a good number of "not quite elite" teams that would have a great shot at doing well at Nationals. What I mean to say is, you never know what's going to happen. You never know what team is going to peak at what time, and a team that you never suspected could very well be the team taking your spot at Nationals. Until Whitesmoke, the last tournament right before Sectionals, I had no idea that Michigan State was a team that anyone would even consider in the conversation at Regionals. Then they went on to win the backdoor final game for the second bid out of the Great Lakes. Despite beating quality teams at Trouble in Vegas, the Illinois men's team had no tournament wins all spring until Sectionals (my memory is a bit spotty though, so correct me if I'm wrong), where they almost fell to a then lowkey North Park. Just weeks later, they ended up not only defeating Regional rival Michigan, who won the Great Lakes region, but also tied for 5th in the nation. While it's not entirely rocket science figuring out which teams will be major contenders and which teams will not be, it's also not an exact science. We can never be sure that the next MIT or the next Arizona isn't just on the verge of a breakout season.

Currently, the structure of C1 seems rigidly exclusive. I agree that a distinction should be made for teams that work hard, build a strong program, make themselves into contenders every year, and literally make ultimate their lives -- I personally wouldn't feel motivated to train myself for a National Championship if I knew that I would be getting the same payoff as a team that didn't care to be competitive or hard-working. In that respect, I think that something like C1 would be awesome for those teams that want to make themselves C1 material. But is there possibility for vertical mobility? That is, if an elite team performs poorly, will it drop out of the top 25, and cease to enjoy the benefits of a C1 team? Will new teams be able to enter? How easy or how difficult would it be for a non-C1 team to break into the top 25? How should these new teams be judged, if they're only playing against other non-C1 teams?

The UPA has something of a similar plan with their Division I/Division II model. It's something that I advocate, but I have questions about that, too. How are teams split up into Div. I and Div. II? I think that in NCAA football, they make that split based on school size, but how would that work in ultimate, when there are more than a few smaller schools that perennially do well, such as Carleton and Dartmouth? 

Another major concern of mine is the money. Where is the money for this operation coming from? How is it that these 25 teams will not only be receiving free jerseys, but will also be playing in tournaments free of charge? How is this financially sustainable? Will the money be coming from non-C1 teams, paying a jacked up tournament fee? If that's the case, then not only is Cultimate committing highway robbery, they are also hurting the development of ultimate. By forcing "non-elite" teams to pay a higher price to benefit the "elite" teams, you're either asking them to pay substantial amounts of money, or to just not play at all. Both options are unfair, on both a financial and a competitive standpoint. I don't believe that a team's financial capabilities should be the determining factor of whether or not they can attend a tournament. I know that I don't just speak for my own team when I say that a lot of teams find themselves in a financial bind throughout the season, trying to pay for tournament fees and the other financial needs that go along with tournaments with sparse support from our schools. It's hard enough already, and to up those fees would just make it a nightmare. Teams would either have to make the decision to just not go to the tournament, or choose to go to cheaper, possibly less competitive tournaments. 

By continually challenging ourselves against the best, most competitive teams and constantly putting in the mileage to travel and play against different teams, a team can experience a great deal of growth and improvement that comes in handy come Series time. If we make it harder for non-C1 teams to get out and play, how can we expect them to move up into C1 status? It's rough. Also, are we not more than a little concerned that this is being set up by a for-profit organization? Now, I don't know Cyle van Auken, but I've heard enough about his past endeavors to have my own doubts. 

After two years of learning and learning to love this sport, nothing would give me a greater sense of pride than to walk away from college ultimate at the end of my four/five years, and know that I left it better than when I picked the game up. Nothing would give me more satisfaction than knowing that the sport I grew to know and love was on the verge of becoming, or even better yet, had already become, an NCAA Division I sport. As great as that would be, I don't believe that this can happen in the next two and a half years. Like I said, I think it's great that Cultimate is trying to step up and move towards legitimizing the game, but perhaps their plan of execution just isn't quite there yet. It needs more development, more time, and more discussion. I don't see why Cultimate and the UPA couldn't work together to do something like this. More legitimacy, individual team sponsorships, groupies, etc. -- I'm sure that will all come down the road. But I think we have a responsibility to ourselves and to the future of this sport to make sure that we're doing this in the best, most sustainable way possible. If we try to do something hasty and it falls apart or blows up in our faces, that's another mess we have to clean up before we can move on. I don't want to see something awesome get set up just to collapse. 

If it will take time to develop this, then give it time. I don't believe that we should move forward with this plan with only 20% of the ultimate community being benefited and involved; we can only move forward and find success with a plan that involves and enriches the entire community.

Finally, the biggest problem I have with C1 is its exclusion of the Women's Division. As it stands, Cultimate hasn't said anything about the creation of a Women's Conference 1 (But they're going to say something, right? Five wouldn't go along with this if it didn't, right? I don't know, that's just what I feel/hope). Saying that a women's equivalent to C1 is "in the works" or that it will be developed in a few years after the establishment of the Open division is a cop out, an insult, and most of all, I think it's a load of shit.

There's a lot to be said about public interest in both divisions and who should be getting more support based on the level of interest, but I won't go into it -- it's too complicated. I'm not here to argue that a woman can jump as high as a man can, or that a Women's game can be as fast-paced and exciting as an Open game. There are definite differences between the men's and women's games, yes, but I don't believe that that should affect at all how these two sports are taken to the next level. Additionally, suppose C1 works out -- what of the women's teams? Will we get to play in the same tournaments, sans the whole C1 label? I know that for many men's and women's teams, not being able to play at the same tournament as their friends/significant others would really make the experience a lot less fun, and I think the social aspect of ultimate contributes quite a bit to the culture of the sport. It's not entirely unique to our sport, but it is pretty cool that men and women's teams go to almost all the same tournaments, and that our community is still small enough that it's possible to see friends scattered throughout the country on a regular basis.

There was some talk on RSD about Skip Sewell's attitude towards the Women's division and the women's game as a whole, and if that holds true, then I'm really disappointed. Even if men like Skip and Cyle decide that they want to make an effort to include women in the conversation, I won't be convinced until someone like Gwen Ambler or Lindsey Hack is involved. I want someone who knows what she's talking about, and I want someone who cares about the women's game. I anticipate a lot of comments much akin to "Well if you don't like it, then DO something about it!" Don't worry, I plan to. I'm still unsure about how I'm going to approach it and how I'll handle it, but I'm going to "do something about it".

Finally, I don't mean to get all political about it, but I want to remind you that you have until November 3 to vote for the UPA Board of Directors. There's another really important election date right after that, but I shouldn't have to remind you about that one.