Badminton Tries the Toad Method

For years certain member of the ultimate community, like badly-trained dogs, have insisted, among other things, that ultimate ought to have cheerleaders. You know, to bring some fans to the game. Like the NFL, Toad would insist. Like ultimate and the NFL are even in the same stratosphere.

Well, maybe Toad should watch badminton!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/sports/badminton-dress-code-for-women-criticized-as-sexist.html?_r=1&hp#

Cheerleading Dances on Our Gravestones

well, you know, there's lot of competition out there to hit the big time. Here's another.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/sports/gender-games-born-on-sideline-cheering-clamors-to-be-sport.html?_r=1&hp

Removed Portion of Article on Skyd

This email came to me this evening:

Hey Tony,

FYI, USAU has requested that a portion of the article be taken down. You are welcome to reword it but you'll have to check with Andy Lee to see what they want out there -

This was removed:

And once again the semifinals and finals will be broadcast (not live, of course) on a television network, CBS College Sports. Since the niche cable outfit College Sports Television (CSTV) and the UPA worked out a deal in 2003, broadcasting the Championships has been an awkward affair.

There really aren't a lot of spectators out there for the game despite all of ultimate's best attempts. The UPA kept the details of the CSTV deal under wraps but suffice to say the UPA paid for that coverage, which sort of undermines the common perception of how the business model works for sports and broadcasting.

But ultimate is surely not the only niche sport to pay for its own broadcasting and if you think the sport is popular enough to sustain media interest, think again.

"The last contract we had with CBS College Sports expired this fall. So we took the opportunity to test the market. We pitched to Versus, Fuse, NBC—there was no interest. CBS was the only show in town," spoke USA Ultimate's Marketing Director Andy Lee in a recent conversation.

"With CBS it's a barter deal. We cover production costs and in return we get inventory which is advertising time," explained Lee. "CBS wont give out ratings of their shows but it was a good sign that the deal got significantly better. This year was one-quarter the cost and three times as much coverage."

Polar Bears go Nationwide

As we know now from reading the USAU Magazine, the national-champion mixed team Polar Bears got their name from the pickup line:

PICKUP ARTIST: How much does a polar bear weigh?
PROSPECTIVE MATE: I don't know.
PICKUP ARTIST: Enough to break the ice. So, what's your phone number? Let's have sweaty Eskimo sex.

I added that last line about sweaty Eskimo sex because it gets to the point and here in New York that's the point.

It's a creative, albeit hackneyed and perpetually silly pickup line, but when paired with an ultimate team of giggling 20somethings egging on teammates to use the line (the team did not take it seriously) then you've got a good story and at least some legitimate context.

And then came Hollywood. Coincidence? Of course not. Hollywood knows all about ultimate. Joel Silver, one of Tinseltown's most famous mega-producers, co-founded and helped popularize the sport. He knows what's up.

So the movie trailer for the latest cheeseball flick "Hall Pass" should come as no surprise. I've looked for links online and found this below:

Hall Pass

But oddly enough, it doesn't have the "Polar Bear" pickup line (i've seen a different version on TV ads) yet it does contain a scene with some chicks throwing frisbees.

Make your own judgment call on all this.

Hollywood + ultimate. It's happening. Be prepared.

Some Basic Lei-Out Results

To follow will be more tales from the sea and Santa Monica.

But for the meantime, here are the results.

Semifinals in A bracket was Strawberry Love, not sure where from but I recognized Jared Inselman from DC/Truck Stop on the team, against Sb Antimony III -- a Santa Barbarba/Condors-based team with Husak, Dugan, Steets, Burfiend, Regetz, others I am sure.

And apologies for not knowing the women. I recognized a few of them but not as much as the guys. Strawberry goes up 2 or 3 but eventually loses by 2 I think?

Other semifinal was Woodies in LA in their Munich-gear and random pickups (Kimberly and Rocky Beach conjoined! No relation, however, except for perhaps one category) versus San Fran outfit Crazy Go Nuts University with 3 PoNY guys and others. CGNU basically crushes in this game to make finals.

Finals was good. i missed the first half to watch the Jets take down the Patriots at a bar on Muscle Beach with some NY teammates and let me tell you, this was a good call. Tallboy PBRs, a bunch of meatheads and those upstanding Patriots getting faced was primo.

Anyway, second half I get back and SB Antimony is up a couple. Husak making a bunch of plays basically. Some dicey turnovers from CGNU and also some good plays on D. SB Antimony wins by three eventually and Hollywood Husak, according to Corey Sanford, becomes the winningest Lei-Out player in its 12 year history.

In B pool the competition seemed pretty good. We escaped a team called Straddle with some Huck Finn players on it by making some pretty dicey in/out calls apparently (I really can't say much except that one of our players was very insistent on a few calls so the disc went back to thrower) to get to B quarters at 6-0. We played Mustache Rides, an Austin-based team with Straw and a bunch of dudes and dudettes from Doublewide, Showdown, Dirty Birds, Chewbacca, etc. Basically all Nationals talent. Not sure how we even kept this close although I think me, Babbino, Tucker and Tisch held the fort as long as we could before falling 11-9.

B-pool semis was then Mustache versus an A-bracket descender, Pandangerous. Pandangerous seemed to be winning. Other side was Guns of Westwood (presumably ex-UCLA?) versus PieMo (presumably Pie Queens + Ugmo, the two sides of Cal Berkeley). I think PieMo won this one.

Shenanigans in next report.

Scripts in Santa Monica: Lei-Out 2011

There's been much to write about about and little effort to do so. From New Year's Evening celebration with some ultimate dignitaries and a few purposefully unpublished photos.

After that: New Year's Day hat tournament in the snow when some Swedish guy skyed me and then left during the third game on cross-country skis. Lots of snow. Great tournament, as always, as its a great way to start the new year.

But one thing you cannot get in the new year 2011 in New York is a prescription for medical marijuana which is something that come very naturally if you walk down a street in Santa Monica and run into a guy holding a sign that says "4:20 doctor." If you ask the doctor for s script you will have to go through a checklist and sign off: name. reason you are requesting a prescription. are you a resident of california. what is your medical condition?

apparently all you have to do is answer all the questions pretty much straight-up except the residency status. you want to say "california" for that one. go for ADHD as your illness, talk the guy down from $100 for his doctor's consultation to $65.

then pop on over to one of the green pharmacy sign/dispensiary and get a recommended strain/dosage, fork over $55 for a 1/8th and voila! You have medical relief for your troubled ADHD.

And that's the day before Lei-Out. The results of the tournament and some other tidibits will follow.

Holiday Bonanza Smorgasbord Hullaballoo

People complain all the time about, well, everything. Anything. I think that humans communicate in exactly four ways: by bartering (business-speak) by boning (speaking though the hips, baby) by being humorous (as the data age is the new industrial age, humor is its coinage) and, finally the most common, by bitching about the state of affairs in the world.

Fox News is an entire network with millions upon millions of followers who have nothing else to do but complain about shit.

The very foundation of journalism is built on criticism and critics mainly serve to complain. OK, look, there are exceptions of course.

But then comes a month and a half of Thanksgiving to Christmas and then New Years (and assorted related semi-religious non-Judeo Christian holidays and various days of merit like Festivus) in which it seems the entirety of American culture is primed to sell sell sell! And buy buy buy! And unveil shiny new cars. And belts. Shiny belts, or purses, or clutches.

Celebrate touchdowns on Thanksgiving by passing the turkey! Go out on Black Friday, stay in on Cyber Monday. Hit your holiday party for the office. All three of them if you're a freelancer like me.

The action is hot and heavy! Deals on plane tickets to warm places like Reno, the Bahamas, Ecuador. My neihgbor is going to Sri Lanka for Christmas and he's Jewish. Viva America!

People complain about this lengthy stretch of consumerism like the plague has finally descended upon Earth. Worse, they are comedians using the holiday stretch as a punchline. The buy-sell, buy-sell, buy-sell routine that marks the high point of our high capitalist culture is cause for concern! Or comedy! Or business-speak (but not so much on the bonin').

Well screw those people. Them. You know who you are. The complainers. So we have a 6-week stretch of car ads, Christmas lights, snowball fights on TV, spam emails trying to sell you things, etc etc. Why not?! Better than stretching the madness over, say, four months. Better than sitting around in mid-January bored mindless by gray skies and cold weather, waiting for Mardi Gras.

Hey, I live in Brooklyn. The holiday stretch in New York City is actually kind of nice. The streets are lit, the shopping is the bomb, the partying holds off the cold. The city gets scenic. It's a great time, a perfect city for that action.

Basically I'd like to officially register my complaint about the complainers. They're the losers and all their complaints are tired. They are complaining because they need something to complain about. Because they believe in a dead age, as if life in the 1950s in America was free of strife and anguish (ok, maybe it actually was). They complain about capitalism, the right-wingers complain about socialism, the pundits complain about each other. So very unnecessary.

Just give it a whirl. The holiday season. Why the eff not?

Oh, and you can buy my book if you haven't already. A gift for someone. Hot holiday action.

All of that was a set-up to post this link:

Ultimate: The Greatest Non-Bitchin' About Sport Ever Invented For Holiday Gift-Giving and General Fun n' Games



* * *

The Inverse Blog Post Relationship

A consideration to part-time blog'o'spheres, as this one is. If you're just half-assing and randomly throwing up posts, well, you may be doing more harm than good.

If you're a full time bog'o'rama then by all means, go for all that action and post away!

Otherwise it behooves one to think of a few inverse relationship rules. I made these up, half-assedly, so no need to buy into them.

The more posts one makes to a blog the less effect they will have.
The more serious your blog sounds the more people will think you're all serious and shit.
The more you write, the less you will be understood.
Blog frequency is inversely related to blog popularity.
Popularity is inversely related to perceived intelligence.
Most blog posts, when re-read by the author, sound whiny, self-involved and totally wrong-headed

Selling Out: A Reader's Guide

Ultimate isn't selling out. We tried to sell out, or rather we tried to sell-in, during the early 1990s with Cuervo Tequila but it wasn't a good fit. Just didn't work.

That's mainly because Cuervo wanted the sport to sell-out not sell-in.

How can you define "selling-out" for a sport? Well it's not that difficult actually. It means to take something organic and try to monetize it. it means letting sponsors and advertisers define success in the sport. It means pretending to be something you're not.

Here are some great examples of what won't happen to ultimate

1) Tough Mudder/ Warrior Dash
Chris Cline sent me this link to a competition modeled on what looks like Cyclocross (mountain biking mixed with an obstacle course) and the set of Braveheart.

http://toughmudder.com/

So is this "sport" a sell-out/ First, it's a competition, not a sport. Second, its website screams "enjoy life! drink alcohol like Cuervo Tequila Dos Equis!" Third, ihe website is clearly not organic. You can tell it was put together with one goal in mind: to make someone somewhere some cash.

here's a direct quote from the Wikipedia page. i'm not going to get into the credibility argument about Wikipedia at the moment, decide for yourself if it's accurate.

"Tough Mudder was founded by Englishmen Will Dean and Guy Livingstone. Dean came up with the idea while at Harvard Business School, and it was a finalist in the Harvard Business School’s annual Business Plan Contest. He brought on Guy Livingstone to act as Chief Operating Officer."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tough_Mudder

2) Flip Cup Guys

You know flip cup, I know flip cup, utlimate players have been playing flip cup as far back as the late 1990s if I recall. Early 2000s? I'm sure someone here could pipe in with the first time they played in college. I don't recall playing in 1995, my senior year.

Regardless, two guys in New Jersey, ie, "Two White Guyzz In New Joisey" decided at some point to try and make some cash on the event. And i'm sure they succeeded. They've tried to monetize an organic drinking game and are probably sitting at home in a mini-mansion in Ridgewood wearing T-Shirts that say, "Suckers!" and "I Love Taking Advantage of College Chicks When They Drink too Much Playing In My Flip Cup Tournament."

http://www.flipcupguys.com/index.php?p=home

3) World Series of Beer Pong

You know it's a sell out when they stage it in a shitty new York City bar, borrow the design of a major league sports logo (in this case, the north Carolina-based New Ultimate Association, founded by Toad and others) and make sure to hire strippers in thongs to show up. Add in prize money, trips to las Vegas and a "documentary" and you've got the makings of a total unadulterated sell out.

http://www.bpong.com/

4) Quidditch

I'm not sure where to qualify this one. I'm thnking they are trying to "sell-in." Amusing that they are trying to go the NCAA route. Good luck with that fellows!!

http://fitperez.com/2010-11-08-student-wants-to-make-harry-potter-sport-quidditch-into-a-legit-ncaa-recognized-sport/?from=PH

So what's the point? The point is that thank God we're not like these jokers, all four of them.

Crystal Ball: A Player's Union for USA Ultimate?

Free beer is gone from nationals, a telling and damning sign. The apocalypse is surely at hand! No, not really. Plenty of fun times were to be had and I don't think the elimination of free beer is going to ever end those.

However, the National Championships, which if you're keeping at track at home have gone from "Nationals" to the "UPA Club Championships" in order to indicate the inclusion of Canada and pump up the UPA brand, now to the "USA Ultimate Club Championships" with a logo/design actually featuring a map of USA, Canada not included (even though Canada was well-represented here as usual, of course) which means they might soon be called "Nationals" again -- anyway, the Championships are now one step closer to corporate.

Not such a bad thing and we've been going that direction for a long time and this is really what players seem to want: increased media, increased tournament size, observers, accountability, etc etc. In order to do this the UPA had to evolve into a non-profit entity and soon they will become an Org with sponsorship and advertising and this isn't a bad thing.

ESPN.com was at the tournament, CBS Sports paid a visit as well as many potential (and lucrative?) sponsors and advertisers.

If we get there, this is a good thing. The sport will grow up. But remember something unique: the Ultimate Player's Association no longer exists. It's true the Board, elected by the membership of USA Ultimate, chooses the CEO which is Tom Crawford and i think Crawford is great for the role. The Board is almost exclusively made up of ultimate players and this may never change.

But the captain's meeting at Nationals this year wasn't a traditional captain's meeting at all that I could tell. Captains didn't get to choose rules or come to agreement on terms. They don't usually at Nationals and perhaps this might have been done online but in the rules of the game the "Captain's Clause" allows for just about any rule of the game to be voted on and agreed to by captains. Heck, they could have voted for free beer, yes?

Yes, I believe they could have.

But that didn't happen. And this is fine. But someday if sponsorship comes and advertising comes might there be the return of the UPA but this time the UPU -- Ultimate Player's Union? For the players, that is, and not the administrators?

Would be many years in the future. There aren't going to be Ultimate Team Owners in the near future, or at least I doubt it, but it's something to think about.

the End of the Season

Panda Bears versus Polar Bears was the last matchup at Regionals... but here in Sarasota it was West Coast vs East Coast.

Mikey from Five says hi

Big Controversy? Polar Bears win 15-11.

whoa, a high hooking forehand caught by the wind tails away fast and a Polar Bears player make s huge grab ON THE LINE. Korber from D5 is on the play, both players went up and.... a slight delay, oversver rules "in"

Where I am out, very hard to tell, i would say out, who knows. But next to me is a veteran observer. On the field were two observers and one from crossfield ruled out and one near sideline ruled in. The "in" call stood even after Korber discussed it.

The observer by me said:

"I would much prefer to be 30 feet away than 6 feet away, that was a really really close call, i hope they got that right"

but thats your ball game! exciting way to finish

14-10 game point Polar Bears

D5 has disc. Seabirds are flying over the fields so every now and then I will look up and see something in the air, could be a disc, and its a bird floating past instead and the disc is on the ground or something like that.

Well, the end is nigh.

D5 scores downwind to RAFE (check his Facebook page, it's all caps) and they get it to 14-11. But the Polar Bears sidelines are all "mon mon mon!" and "rawr rawr rawr!" and are good to go right now

Zone in Effect

D5 has put on the zone while Bears are going downwind. But the comfortable handling of #22 Matty Sung, Liu and Tsou make it look easy, fast, quick movement and Bob Liu throws the goal to make it 14-10.

before the goal, an up/down call was called up by Bears, down by D5 so they went to the observer, who can make rulings but not ACTIVE rulings on such calls.

call was ruled down so D5 had yet another chance and yet again, failed to get yardage, making a short turnover that paid off for the Polar Bears.

Bears in Zone D with D5 Going Downwind

One thing to note is the Bears' use of the zone going both ways. While D5 was playing man, the Bears zone both directions is totally in the heads of D5 and affecting their throws and concentration. They manage to score, Redding to Segool as Segool sneaked around behind the deep in the zone to make it 13-10.

Now on D, while D5 do the same and go Z? they need to mix it up, it has been too comfortable for the Polar Bears.