Here's the sad part of the story.
I don't think there's anything that can be done.
In theory, the goal would be to email/call/accost your USA-U board member, urge them to not let the change happen, and if they don't promise to fight the change/vote against it vote them out of office and put in someone that would vote against it.
This strategy is all but impossible though.
For starters, within the past two years, the way the board was elected was changed. It used to be that all spots were electable, now, several spots are appointed and still more are only open to voting by a small minority of the players. This was done on purpose of course.
Secondly, Mike Payne is extremely wealthy, extremely entrenched, elected as president of the board, and would win any election. He is also behind Tom Crawford more than 100%. I think you couldn't oust him if you tried.
Third, Tom Crawford is polished. Some of you may not be old enough to remember tournament directors and the USA-U of old. People used to say, "man if the people in boulder only got their shit halfway together..."
Their shit is halfway together. The messaging is polished, the corporate sponsors are in tow. Everything looks right from the outside, even as USA-U feels like a soul-less corporation more than a warm non-profit.
Read anything Tom writes. It reads like perfect corporate middle-manager speak.
Read that article
http://ultiworld.com/2013/08/23/usa-ultimate-to-gradually-push-club-series-into-summer/
We know who the winners are: ESPN, customers, sponsors, as Tom's budget comes increasingly from sponsorship and away from the players themselves, that's who the game is catering to. The sponsors.
Look at the name!
It's no longer the player's association. The players don't even elect all of the board anymore.
You can vote with your feet, and some people will, but not enough to make a difference. There's no money to be made at sectionals. The corporate money comes at nationals.
USA-Ultimate has decided to chase sponsorship dollars, and to simultaneously crush AUDL and MLU if it can. It has done this at the expense of hundreds of club teams around the country.
They know they can get away with this.
The players that remember most how it used to be, are for the most part not stakeholders. I'm 33. I'm fat at 5'11 190 lbs, my knees always hurt, and I'm at the end of my career. I'm not running for the board.
These changes don't affect me, they don't effect most of my peers, many of whom retired long before me (I was the oldest player on my mixed club team in 2012 and 2013).
Some younger players probably didn't see the dozen baby steps that were taken for this masterstroke to happen, they simply didnt have the perspective. And most of the older ones.... well they are chasing other pursuits or raising families.
I don't know what to tell you, other than I'm sorry that this is happening to every 22 year old player out there. I'm sorry you won't get to enjoy club ultimate how I did.
Best Wishes,
Dan
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Part 3: Changes are Bad for the Players
These changes are bad for the players:
Much of what I said about teams applies to players. The lack of development time, the lack of time to really bond, the idea of having a proper season start when the weather turns nice and end just before the weather stops being so nice in most of the country.
The tryout process is truncated and inherently less fair. Teams may try to pack in tournaments every other week (good luck with injuries) or just go into the series way less prepared, or go to tournaments in march, with skeletal rosters (sans college players) in weather way colder than what the series will bring.
But mostly players might stop playing ultimate. It's not a perfect subset, for a number of reasons, but we have a real life example. There used to be a masters division concurrent with open and mixed and womens. You couldn't play both at the same time.
Now masters is a black sheep division. No need for sectionals, everyone goes straight to regionals. It's hard to know exactly how many teams there were nationally (I'm tempted to look it up), and I know the redrew the map, so regional comparisons aren't fully fair. This comparison is fair though:
Masters nationals this year on the men's side only has 13 teams. As in only 13 teams accepted their bid to nationals. One region had a 2 team regionals with 2 bids, only one team accepted their bid.
In my region (Mid-atlantic). There were two teams, loaded mostly with players still playing in other divisions for the fall, many on top tier teams that are in strong contention for nationals bids. There were two other teams, who were literally paid by the host team (in bottles of fine scotch) just to bring a team out for regionals to make sure we had the right number of teams for bids or whatever. 4 years ago, there was a 7 team masters regionals, with some teams clearly better than others, but all masters players. There may be some effect and competition from grandmasters (which like women's masters is a straight trip to nationals for the most part), but mostly participation is down with a summer series.
The numbers don't look quite so bad (still down of course), but that's only because of double dippers, players playing both Masters plus another division (which may have scared off some teams admittedly as well).
Jimmy Holtzman called it on RSD a few years ago when they were moving that series to the summer. It's a really hard sell to go to nationals then, especially if you have a wife and kid. Summer vacations with the family on many teams are acceptable if you miss a practice or two, or some non-series tournament. What happens now that the tournament is Nationals or maybe regionals?
Lastly, there's the elephant in the room on the men's side. MLU/AUDL. The first year of semi-pro ultimate was awkward for sure. Some teams heavy handedly banned players from summer league and things like that, but at this point, the semi-pro teams realize they need to be cooperative with the community, and have done a great job with it (the Boston Whitecaps gave 2 tickets to every team at Mixed easterns for example). Clubs have learned to deal with the pro league schedule, as for the most part many players become available not long after the college players do, and many double dip with practices for both teams. Clearly now a player won't be able to play both. Which is of course probably makes USA-U happy, they will take a few years of lower participation to reclaim a monoply in the long run.
Much of what I said about teams applies to players. The lack of development time, the lack of time to really bond, the idea of having a proper season start when the weather turns nice and end just before the weather stops being so nice in most of the country.
The tryout process is truncated and inherently less fair. Teams may try to pack in tournaments every other week (good luck with injuries) or just go into the series way less prepared, or go to tournaments in march, with skeletal rosters (sans college players) in weather way colder than what the series will bring.
But mostly players might stop playing ultimate. It's not a perfect subset, for a number of reasons, but we have a real life example. There used to be a masters division concurrent with open and mixed and womens. You couldn't play both at the same time.
Now masters is a black sheep division. No need for sectionals, everyone goes straight to regionals. It's hard to know exactly how many teams there were nationally (I'm tempted to look it up), and I know the redrew the map, so regional comparisons aren't fully fair. This comparison is fair though:
Masters nationals this year on the men's side only has 13 teams. As in only 13 teams accepted their bid to nationals. One region had a 2 team regionals with 2 bids, only one team accepted their bid.
In my region (Mid-atlantic). There were two teams, loaded mostly with players still playing in other divisions for the fall, many on top tier teams that are in strong contention for nationals bids. There were two other teams, who were literally paid by the host team (in bottles of fine scotch) just to bring a team out for regionals to make sure we had the right number of teams for bids or whatever. 4 years ago, there was a 7 team masters regionals, with some teams clearly better than others, but all masters players. There may be some effect and competition from grandmasters (which like women's masters is a straight trip to nationals for the most part), but mostly participation is down with a summer series.
The numbers don't look quite so bad (still down of course), but that's only because of double dippers, players playing both Masters plus another division (which may have scared off some teams admittedly as well).
Jimmy Holtzman called it on RSD a few years ago when they were moving that series to the summer. It's a really hard sell to go to nationals then, especially if you have a wife and kid. Summer vacations with the family on many teams are acceptable if you miss a practice or two, or some non-series tournament. What happens now that the tournament is Nationals or maybe regionals?
Lastly, there's the elephant in the room on the men's side. MLU/AUDL. The first year of semi-pro ultimate was awkward for sure. Some teams heavy handedly banned players from summer league and things like that, but at this point, the semi-pro teams realize they need to be cooperative with the community, and have done a great job with it (the Boston Whitecaps gave 2 tickets to every team at Mixed easterns for example). Clubs have learned to deal with the pro league schedule, as for the most part many players become available not long after the college players do, and many double dip with practices for both teams. Clearly now a player won't be able to play both. Which is of course probably makes USA-U happy, they will take a few years of lower participation to reclaim a monoply in the long run.
Part 2: Damage to Club Teams
Let's state the obvious: these changes absolutely crush teams.
I have some perspective here, and it's likely that you do as well. I'm 33, have played for a while, like some of you. I haven't always been the best player, or the best teammate, or the most spirited person, but hopefully ultimate has nudged me in a better direction. I was lucky enough to spend 6 seasons (2008-2013) with a group of super close friends on Jughandle. When i created a reddit account, it was only to advertise Jughandle tryouts and I thought it was best if it had my username. I was lucky enough to be the captain for the last 3 years, and in those 3 years we were a lower level regionals team, a mid-tier regionals team and an upper tier regionals team. I've had experience now running the tryout and roster process and team building process for teams now in very different places on the expectation and commitment scale.
My old team will adjust regardless, but these changes will absolutely SUCK for our team, and many others.
Let's be real here. If you live north of the Mason Dixon line, your season isn't really starting until April at the earliest, and in reality, the season starts in May. Why is that? College! As the younger players come into college age increasingly polished (and graduate from it even more polished), it's a staple of teams elite and otherwise to usually take some young, energetic legs. (credit to the USA-U they have done a good job with High School and College divisions for the most part).
In some cases, teams might even take a precocious high school player. Southpaw took Trent Dillon, and we took Derek Yan one year, and tried unsuccessfully recruit Sadie J (who is now on the US U-19 team).
In general though, there is a symbiotic relationship. College captains tell their kids left and right to spend the summers playing leagues, and to tryout for local teams. Teams, when they get an email from a tryout saying "Hi, I have heard good things about your team and I'd love to tryout, but there is a problem. I will be at women's college nationals and not back in the area until after Memorial Day, hopefully we can work something out", usually get a reply from the club team of "Tryout X, congratulations on nationals! Savor the moment, kick butt, and we'd love to have you out when you get back, we will see you in June!" or something to that effect.
Similarly the biggest chance for a college player to become a club player, especially at the middle tier is the summer after college. This is opinion, but if a player doesn't play ultimate that season, there's a non-zero chance they may get caught up in other things as one life replaces another. What is fact though is that many graduating players generally are at school an extra week or two for graduation, packing up their stuff, and maybe taking a week trip to see some sights before they go into the working world.
Guess what. As a captain, I was fine with this process because we had a tryout tournament in May where we could weed out the easiest roster decisions, and a second one in June, where the hard decisions had to be made. Our roster wouldn't be set until July, and then you get 2 full months to really gel as a team. The tryout tournaments are fun, but the roster tournaments are where the closest bonding happens. Practices can be full of angst especially for fringe tryouts who realize they have an uphill fight to make a team. It isn't always relaxing. But once you know who your 26 teammates are, and you have several tournaments with them, by the end you'd run through a brick wall for them, and it's an amazing thing to watch and feel a team become better, become closer, and to become way more than the sum of their parts.
Done right, it's one of the single most worthwhile parts of ultimate.
It's now going to be much more freaking difficult to do. What do you do with that unseen college nationals player? (Not all college nationals players are created equal!). What do you do with that all region player who still has some glaring holes that need refinement? What do you do with that 19 year old project, that if you get 3-4 summers with them, they turn into say... Mason Compton, but now your season might be a month before Sectionals?
It's pretty much a disgusting process. The quality of play at sectionals will go way down. I can tell you that every may without fail, my club team looked terrible. We would typically look terrible at least once more each season, and only by September, after 4 months of practice, a team meeting/playbook session, 3-4 tournaments to tinker with lineups, rotations, strategies, did we look anywhere near our best. Sure that greatness is still their in flashes or maybe for a single game, but this is just awful news for teams. And the bonding, the going to tournaments, the 6 month process of making something special happen. Gone. For what? So nationals can be, in the immortal words of Tom Crawford, "Not stuck in the south?" Maybe some people WANT to go to Sarasota in October! (FYI if you think this is actually the biggest reason I have a bridge to sell you, but this reason on it's own is a stupendously bad reason.)
One other note. Enjoy regionals in Late June/Early July. I hope it's 110 degress in arizona and 98 with 70% humidity for regionals. I hope Tom has to watch all of those games in the stuffiest suit imaginable. 500+ teams enter the club series for sectionals, hundreds play regionals, only 10% of teams that start out at sectionals make nationals. September is, much of the time, in much of the country, one of the most gorgeous weather months of the year, and a perfect time to hold the highlight of the season for 90% of the teams that enter.
I have some perspective here, and it's likely that you do as well. I'm 33, have played for a while, like some of you. I haven't always been the best player, or the best teammate, or the most spirited person, but hopefully ultimate has nudged me in a better direction. I was lucky enough to spend 6 seasons (2008-2013) with a group of super close friends on Jughandle. When i created a reddit account, it was only to advertise Jughandle tryouts and I thought it was best if it had my username. I was lucky enough to be the captain for the last 3 years, and in those 3 years we were a lower level regionals team, a mid-tier regionals team and an upper tier regionals team. I've had experience now running the tryout and roster process and team building process for teams now in very different places on the expectation and commitment scale.
My old team will adjust regardless, but these changes will absolutely SUCK for our team, and many others.
Let's be real here. If you live north of the Mason Dixon line, your season isn't really starting until April at the earliest, and in reality, the season starts in May. Why is that? College! As the younger players come into college age increasingly polished (and graduate from it even more polished), it's a staple of teams elite and otherwise to usually take some young, energetic legs. (credit to the USA-U they have done a good job with High School and College divisions for the most part).
In some cases, teams might even take a precocious high school player. Southpaw took Trent Dillon, and we took Derek Yan one year, and tried unsuccessfully recruit Sadie J (who is now on the US U-19 team).
In general though, there is a symbiotic relationship. College captains tell their kids left and right to spend the summers playing leagues, and to tryout for local teams. Teams, when they get an email from a tryout saying "Hi, I have heard good things about your team and I'd love to tryout, but there is a problem. I will be at women's college nationals and not back in the area until after Memorial Day, hopefully we can work something out", usually get a reply from the club team of "Tryout X, congratulations on nationals! Savor the moment, kick butt, and we'd love to have you out when you get back, we will see you in June!" or something to that effect.
Similarly the biggest chance for a college player to become a club player, especially at the middle tier is the summer after college. This is opinion, but if a player doesn't play ultimate that season, there's a non-zero chance they may get caught up in other things as one life replaces another. What is fact though is that many graduating players generally are at school an extra week or two for graduation, packing up their stuff, and maybe taking a week trip to see some sights before they go into the working world.
Guess what. As a captain, I was fine with this process because we had a tryout tournament in May where we could weed out the easiest roster decisions, and a second one in June, where the hard decisions had to be made. Our roster wouldn't be set until July, and then you get 2 full months to really gel as a team. The tryout tournaments are fun, but the roster tournaments are where the closest bonding happens. Practices can be full of angst especially for fringe tryouts who realize they have an uphill fight to make a team. It isn't always relaxing. But once you know who your 26 teammates are, and you have several tournaments with them, by the end you'd run through a brick wall for them, and it's an amazing thing to watch and feel a team become better, become closer, and to become way more than the sum of their parts.
Done right, it's one of the single most worthwhile parts of ultimate.
It's now going to be much more freaking difficult to do. What do you do with that unseen college nationals player? (Not all college nationals players are created equal!). What do you do with that all region player who still has some glaring holes that need refinement? What do you do with that 19 year old project, that if you get 3-4 summers with them, they turn into say... Mason Compton, but now your season might be a month before Sectionals?
It's pretty much a disgusting process. The quality of play at sectionals will go way down. I can tell you that every may without fail, my club team looked terrible. We would typically look terrible at least once more each season, and only by September, after 4 months of practice, a team meeting/playbook session, 3-4 tournaments to tinker with lineups, rotations, strategies, did we look anywhere near our best. Sure that greatness is still their in flashes or maybe for a single game, but this is just awful news for teams. And the bonding, the going to tournaments, the 6 month process of making something special happen. Gone. For what? So nationals can be, in the immortal words of Tom Crawford, "Not stuck in the south?" Maybe some people WANT to go to Sarasota in October! (FYI if you think this is actually the biggest reason I have a bridge to sell you, but this reason on it's own is a stupendously bad reason.)
One other note. Enjoy regionals in Late June/Early July. I hope it's 110 degress in arizona and 98 with 70% humidity for regionals. I hope Tom has to watch all of those games in the stuffiest suit imaginable. 500+ teams enter the club series for sectionals, hundreds play regionals, only 10% of teams that start out at sectionals make nationals. September is, much of the time, in much of the country, one of the most gorgeous weather months of the year, and a perfect time to hold the highlight of the season for 90% of the teams that enter.
Part 1: Damage to the Local Ultimate Communities
Local Communities:
I have something of a background here. For three years, I was President of MCUDL, the largest league in New Jersey and the longest running league in the world. In those 3 years I co-founded a hugely successful overnight indoor tournament, helped stabilize and modernize the league, and generally helped create an atmosphere where several club teams and the league could work symbiotically. I also was married (partially overlapping with my presidency) the first ED of the Philadelphia Area Disc Alliance, one of the larger communities out there. Organizing ultimate was in my blood for a long time. Let me tell you something, USA-U's change will not be beneficial.
This is actually, between the three parties i mentioned at the start of this series, the group that gets harmed the least, as the damage does not hit every group. This is also the lengthiest piece, but may be of interest to people for other reasons.
I will share some secrets that not everyone knows. Not all of these apply to all leagues evenly, but between my friends who have run leagues in Pittsburgh, New York, DC, and other areas, most of this is what we can call generally true.
Secret 1: Not all leagues make money. It's true. For a smaller league (400 people), such as MCUDL, the boards are all volunteers. Some cases there arent elections as there are 3 open spots and only 3 volunteers. I became president of MCUDL by accident. A departed friend and mentor of mine (RIP Linda) had semi-twisted my arm within a year of me playing MCUDL, and I reluctantly agreed to be treasurer. Fast forward 6 months, there was no presidential volunteer, and basically everyone else put their finger on their nose and thumb on their chin or however it works faster than me.
This experience is typical. This usually means boards aren't always the savviest group of business people around. But you know who is polished? Ultimate clothing vendors! Insurance salespeople! Much of the stuff you sort of take for granted. If it's your first time buying shirts, and you don't fully understand that how far you can bargain down from the quoted price, you end up overpaying by $3 a shirt, and that ends up being a big loss. You fail to get enough volunteers to cook at your end of league picnic/playoffs/awards ceremony, you hire professional picnic people. Things like that put our league in the red by $2,000.
Year two was going better, but there was no way we were making that $2,000, until we stumbled upon.... a midnight hat tournament. We couldn't do it alone, we enlisted the help of PADA, they took care of some details we took care of others, hit both of our mailing lists, advertised on the major places to publicize events at the time, sold out the tournament. Our entry fee was $10-15 lower than any other all night hat tournament and almost certainly had more amenities. The tournament profit, with 180 people, was more than enough to cover our budget shortfall, and actually make back a decent chunk of the $2,000 lost earlier.
This money didn't go into anyone's pocket (ok some went into the Medical person, and some volunteers got free/reduced dues), but it went into the MCUDL budget. We could afford to pay for a few more kids who might be completely short on money because they didn't live in the right zip code. Maybe we could afford nicer fabric than cotton for shirts, maybe there was money for a thank you gift to the captain volunteers, and maybe we had enough in the bank to launch a fall league, and not be completely stressed about being able to afford the field time the first year or worry about having enough money saved up if the league was a money loser.
This experience is typical. I know some leagues that don't have enough saved borrow thousands of dollars (presumably interest free) from wealthier players in march, and pay the money back in may when they collect enough in dues.
The real point here, is that tournaments are a lifesaver. Tournaments make money. Sometimes that money finances someone's lifestyle (the ultiment tournaments are the primary source of income for Noah Bane for example), but many times, especially if the community runs that tournament, it's funding for the club team hosting for the year, or for the league.
When hurricane Irene hit the mid-atlantic 3 years ago, Chesapeake was cancelled. The teams (including mine) only got partial refunds, and none of them complained as far as I know. The real devastation was to WAFC, as that was a source of profit for them, and seemingly a year or two later they were still trying to sell discs from that tournament or use them as game discs at regionals.
And let me be clear, most club tournies are not overpriced. If a tournament costs $350, my guess is the actual cost of goods (field permits, insurance, medical staff etc), is probably in most cases $250-325 for a first rate tournament, and it used to be that tournaments that weren't worth it from a cost standpoint quickly stopped drawing teams. I think I remember the cost of renting polo fields in philly (12 fields) to be something like $6-7,000 for the weekend, but my math might be a bit off. That hosts 32 teams with byes, so you can kind of do the math.
Incidentally, if there is a tournament that's overpriced, its the non-nationals triple crown events! Parking fees! $800 bids! $100 to attend the convention or whatever! Paying for USA-U Staff to fly from wherever and oversee it!
But hey, first prize was a "Big" check of $2000 for the winning teams of the US Open. That paid for maybe 20% of their cost of you know, actually attending the tournament after flight costs.
Running those tournaments takes coordination, and dozens if not hundreds of hours of volunteer work. If WAFC or BUDA or whichever league is hosting an event, be sure to thank the TD multiple times, as they are likely doing it for free because they care about their league.
So if we've established that many leagues are on relative shoestring budgets (and this can be confirmed at sites like guidestar.com, which will list the largest leagues), and tournaments are a key source of revenue, what happens to the new calendar?
Well we need to first answer a few questions.
We know who usually hosts college tournaments (usually the colleges themselves).
Who typically hosts club tournaments? When are they hosted?
Who goes to the largest number of club tournaments? When do they go?
The answers to these questions are pretty easy. While there are some few post-season and pre-season and in-season silly season club events (Trouble in Vegas/Potlatch/Kaimana etc), the biggest tournaments are usually in season, attended by club teams. The schedule, for years, has been more or less foolproofed. Teams build their team up usually in April, with college players filtering in in May. There are tryout tournaments in May and Maybe June. There are likely two tournaments in July or August, and a 3rd for a few teams. Then the series. Most club teams go to 4 tournaments a year plus the series. This has been true for a number of teams. The calendar was relatively predictable, and there exists some degree of agreement among the leagues. BUDA hosts two major events in June. Philly hosts what is a tryout tournament for many teams in May (Bell Crack). It wouldn't make sense for DC or NY or boston to try to host something the week of, or even the week before or after because it would draw poorly.
Club teams don't want to burn out their players.
These tournaments again are all important events for the communities that host them. I'm sure DiscNW looks at Emerald City Classic as a huge part of what lets them do what they can do.
I think most of us, on the balance, want to support our local leagues. They are the grassroots of ultimate.
Already in the last few years tournaments have been harmed. There's sort of a winner take all mentality to grab one of the precious triple crown tour events that have the nationals teams. If you don't get one of those events you're pretty much hosed. Amp used to have a 24 team event called Philly Invite. It was a first rate tournament, at a great price, and raised money for Amp which no one begrudged them for. Last year they reduced the field to 12 as they got the Pro-Elite Challenge. This year that bid went elsewhere, and their tournament, which used to fill up with 24 teams no problem, and still having the select flight status, had to cut their tournament size in half. Amp will not be able to use this tournament to help defray their expensive travel costs.
And again, on their own, they ran an excellent event. Due to the whims of the USA-U bid process, even though their tournament has been the same weekend more or less for years, they are pretty much stuck taking whichever team they can to simply get even half the field they'd normally get.
Now what happens when Regionals is late june/early july, sectionals is early-mid june, and Nationals is July? (or are we going to give teams less than 2 weeks to try to find plane tickets so they pay through the nose for nationals?)
What happens to tournaments like the Motown Throwdown, just outside of Detroit, that have run a first rate men's event for years in late July? Lots of teams used it to get ready for the series. Are they going to try to move their event to June and compete with all of the other tournaments doing the same thing? Or will they fold? You can repeat this scenario ad nauseum. There are probably hundreds of tournaments in mid-July on, who really only attract teams that intend on playing in the series. After the series is over, these teams may play a post season event, but most post-season events are silly teams, reunion teams, friends you haven't seen in a while teams. They are not the bread and butter of the tournament calendar, and most players don't go to one offseason event per month as they would in season.
This impact will have a negative impact on the leagues that rely on these events for fundraisers, and in some cases league dues will go substantially up, and some teams will find it really hard to help out that promising young player who doesn't have a baller job (yet).
Lastly, what happens to summer leagues? They still exist, but how many players will be jazzed up about playing games the week before regionals or nationals? This effect is unclear but I think it leans negative if you ask me...
This change will simply take money out of leagues, and local ultimate organizations. I am not sure who's pockets get enriched here.
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