Frank's Thoughts on The Rules of Ultimate
The Collective Landscape of Ultimate Frisbee is More Complicated Than You Think
Theory
The theory put forward in this article is that Ultimate Frisbee’s framework of rules, game mechanics and ideology has created an environment that stunts player development in the areas of naturally evolving neural pathways, advanced strategical thinking and physical skills & competency.
Premise
Sociologists, Psychiatrist, Neurologists and Psychologists have known for decades that rewarding individuals based on false positives stunts growth and creates learning impairment but we’re now also finding out that the lack of disciplinary action for mistakes also stunts growth significantly.
In this scientific research paper, published in 2015, strong evidence is provided that argues that not only does flooding the brain with neurotransmitters associated with pleasure (such as Oxytocin, Serotonin and Dopamine) disproportionately cause significant harm to that person’s ability to learn naturally, but the lack of neurotransmitters associated with pain also create learning impairment.
The lack of pain in the form of penalization in the rules of Ultimate Frisbee can be considered a lack of discipline.
From the scientific manuscript on pain’s relevance in learning:
Pain is fundamentally unpleasant, a feature that protects the organism by promoting motivation and learning. Relief of aversive states, including pain, is rewarding. The aversiveness of pain, as well as the reward from relief of pain, is encoded by brain reward/motivational mesocorticolimbic circuitry.
What this research paper discusses here is that after hundreds of millions of years of evolutionary biology and neurological development in mammals, the absence of a pain response to a mistake in judgement, behavior or action creates a outcome of stunted human development.
In other words, thought hundreds of thousands of years, our neurology has been finely tuned to help us learn and to adapt to our environments. If when you put your hand on a burning stove you get a pleasure response instead of getting a neurochemical response that bind with your pain receptors, you’re going to have a serious problem and you’re not going to learn proportionately or appropriately.
Research indicates that as we move through life, alongside positive reinforcement for beneficial behavior, there must be a proportionate amount of negative stimuli to disincentivize behavior that is potentially harmful. Throughout millennia, games have always been a useful tool used to aid in this learning process, all in a way that is based on a core learning experience oriented around fun.
We’ve known for a very long time that making a game out of learning Consider this:
If Ultimate Frisbee is a teacher, what had it taught us?
When you consider that the human nervous system’s biophysiological learning mechanism is not only based on positive reinforcement to incentivize advantageous new skills and behavior, but also negative disinforcement (pain response) for corrective measures, consider this phrase that has been in the Ultimate Frisbee Rule book for the past 50 years:
It assumed that no Ultimate player will intentionally violate the rules; thus there are no harsh penalties for inadvertent infractions
In other words, while the assumption in this clause is that the only reason to have penalties in sports is to prevent cheating, according to the research on brain chemistry, having penalties in sports are there primarily to enhance the game’s ability to teach.
The research is clear, harsh penalties are there in games to reinforce behavioral modifications and skill development of the game(s) for all the players’ development.
Because Ultimate lacks any real penalties, learning in the game is diminished and skill development is stunted and stagnant.
This is science.
However, with respect to ultimate players everywhere, it gets far worse.
Not only does ultimate elicit an artificially low amount of pain response (as appropriate for any given risk) but it also has artificially high pleasure response as rewards (for any behavior considered redeemable).
In other words, in Ultimate Frisbee, there are not nearly enough negative reinforcements for guardrail violations and a disproportionately high number of positive reinforcements for average or even subpar achievements.
From this article:
A study published today in Nature by scientists at the Allen Institute, Columbia University’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown and Seattle Children’s Research Institute sheds new light on this mystery. It reveals how dopamine not only signals a reward but also guides animals to home in on the specific behaviors that lead to these rewards through trial and error.
Intriguingly, the research also shows that the brain's reward system can swiftly and dynamically alter the full range of an animal’s movements and behaviors. This highlights a sophisticated learning strategy where behaviors are not just reinforced, but actively shaped and fine-tuned through experience, said Rui Costa, D.V.M, Ph.D., the study’s senior author.
Most scientific research into artificially high levels of dopamine have historically been about drug and alcohol dependence, but more and more research is being done on the dopaminergic affects in smart phones and video games and this research can equally be applied to Ultimate Frisbee as well (for published scientific research papers on the subject with regards to online gaming, see here, here and here).
I think it can be said without a lot of controversy, that Ultimate players very quickly become addicted to the game (it’s not a stretch to conclude that this is dopamine related).
While this short video is discussing the artificially high amount of dopamine associated with drug usage, one could easily make the argument that Ultimate Frisbee or several online games that also creates artificially high amounts of dopamine as well:
My assertion is that Ultimate Frisbee also creates a Dopamine Superhighway to the Rewards Center of the Brain (much in the same way that smartphones and video games do—see Worlds of Warcraft, Dota 2 or Final Fantasy XIV.
Examples of Excessive Dopamine Producing Tripwires in the game of Ultimate
So what are all the disproportionate rewards that players are exposed to in the game of ultimate frisbee (hint, there are A LOT)?
A Frisbee
First off, a game disc in Ultimate provides all kinds of false positives
Throwing a football or baseball 50-60 yards accurately takes a lot of skill, strength and effort, but just about anyone can throw an Ultimate Frisbee game disc that far.
Because of our opposing thumbs and the thin profile of a disc, they are much easier to grab bare handed than any other ball, puck, etc.
Because they are designed to be aerodynamic and hover, layout catches are much more common than they are in other sports.
A disc can be thrown hundreds of different ways and can be easily manipulated to curve in a variety of various flightpaths to evade the defense (at least an order of magnitude more versatile than any ball, etc.).
In fact, it could be argued that because the disc itself is a tremendous source of dopamine induced euphoria in and of itself, that a competitive sport oriented around a Frisbee should be designed to be extraordinarily excessively challenging to balance out that risk/reward ratio than normal ball sports (see Dischoops).
However, this is exactly the opposite of the case in Ultimate.
In fact, it’s almost as if the entire set of rules was created intentionally to induce an artificially overwhelming dopamine response.
Pivot Feet
Pivot Foot Entitlement.
This is where a player takes one extra step after coming to a stop, to plant their preferred pivot foot, as opposed to the foot that they would have stopped on.
Speaking of “coming to a stop”, coming to a stop not even defined in the rules, but nonetheless a requirement in adherence to the rules.
Coming to a stop “as quickly as possible” or “in as few steps as possible” is defined so loosely and ambiguously that there is no hard boundary here.
When you layout for a catch, you immediately have a pivot foot, but the rules stipulate that even though it’s technically a traveling violation to stand up, players are provided a waiver to be able to stand up and reset their pivot foot.
If all of this were not enough false positives associated with planting and maintaining a pivot foot, according to the bizzare new rules for traveling that the UPA just put out, it’s now legal to move your pivot foot.
If you actually understood the history of the game’s mechanics, you’d realize that this is like allowing a pitcher to slide his foot off the pitching rubber several inches to pitch (see this article).
Even if a defender has the actual temerity to call a traveling violation on a pivot foot violation, there’s no penalty.
The offender gets a free do-over.
There’s basically zero pain response associated with the pivot feet in Ultimate and far too much pleasure experienced. Pure candy.
Ambiguities in the rules left open to interpretation
There should be virtually nothing in the rules for Ultimate that is left to interpretation.
Humans like games and sports because they give us clearly defined and unambiguous boundaries.
Virtually no one understands why the rules are what they are or how they came into being.
All of the vaguely defined rules in the game, and subjectiveness built into the interpretation process has led to an extreme amount of arguing over the years (arguing that never really gets us anywhere).
A player’s ability to litigate a call on the field, as opposed to just accepting an independent third party’s officiating always allows them to win an argument, irrespective of what happened on any given play.
Yay!!! 💯Litigation based Dopamine
Dead-ball Fouls and Consequences
As I’ve stated in this article, Ultimate Frisbee’s Game Mechanics were designed to be in the dead-ball sport paradigm.
By mashing up the guardrails of a ‘dead-ball’ paradigm, with the guardrails of continuous play sports, you end up with virtually no guardrails at all.
This lack of guardrails has produced a game loaded with false positives as well as severely diminished negatives.
Momentum or pivoting out of bounds is an example of a pleasure response where a pain response would aid development of skills and strategies.
“All Ball” type blocks on the thrower that would naturally be a ‘pain’ response instead are awarded pleasure.
A 5 second stall count would certainly make the game more challenging
Double teams on the thrower would make the game more challenging
Fouling out of a game after 3 or 4 fouls would make the game more challenging
Abolishing the pick rule (except for intentional, moving picks) would make the game more challenging.
Instituting a 3 step max for traveling violations would make the game more challenging.
Prohibiting momentum into, or a pivot foot into the attacking goal will make the game more challenging.
Making traveling a turnover will aid tremendously in forcing players to learn naturally and apply real time problem solving.
Field Dimensions
Gigantic Endzone; at 120’x80’, the endzone in Ultimate makes scoring much easier than it needs to be.
Question, if the field width was cut in half, would this benefit the defense or the offense?
It would benefit the defense of course.
So the UFA, in their infinite wisdom, took a sport with an enormous bias in favor of the offense and made the playing field 40% larger!
The playing field is so large in the UFA that their endzones are actually larger than the size of an entire half-court in the NBA!!
Lengthening the field and changing the game to a 10 yard endzone and possibly a narrower field (30-35 yards wide) will make the game more challenging.
Pulls
This is another needless, Gallipoli type legacy from Flag Football. At least having the pulling team all line up from the goal line.
In a game with an offensive bias in the rules, having the defenders (other than the puller) lined up at midfield would help make the game more challenging and reduce the false positives in the game.
No reasonable roster limits
This has been one of the biggest factors in creating a scenario that has stifled growth in the game.
Active rosters could easily be 17 players (with a couple of injury replacement roster spots).
This would drive innovation and competition by creating many more teams.
No referees
Observers have always been a halfway solution and have caused more problems than they fixed. More times than not, they’ve only served to intensify and reinforce dopamine producing scenarios.
When you play with referees you understand how much of a service they provide
It’s not easy to be a good referee and you immediately appreciate a good referee when you have one
A big part of being a referee is ‘game management’ and adjudicating a game without disrupting it any more than is necessary to allow for a natural game flow.
Working the refs is a big part of sports that do have referees, there’s nothing wrong with working the refs.
Without a legit certification process for referees, and meaningful enforcement of the rules (when they are broken), far too many incidents on the field err on the side of dopamine
Referees were always considered to be a viable option, all the way back to the 1st edition of the rules. SOTG never explicitly mean to eliminate referees.
Combined, all of the above false positives are supplying brains with a significantly disproportionate dosage of dopamine and other ‘pleasure’ related neurotransmitters while at the same time offering almost zero resistance in terms of negative consequences.
If we are to believe the science, not to mention our own common sense, we can a set of testable prediction that such a framework (like ultimate’s) that is built with virtually no penalties while simultaneously having an extremely lopsided amount of dopamine inducing incentives would literally create functional and behavioral retardation in the players.
Flick Mechanics—A Case Study in how Ultimate Produces Unnatural Learning
Virtually every single player in ultimate frisbees has incorrect throwing mechanics and I can prove it….
Here’s Paul McBeth throwing a flick. He’s a professional Frisbee player who has signed a $10,000,000 sponsorship deal because of his advanced throwing ability:
*Note, while McBeth walks into the throw as part of his throwing mechanics, there’s no doubt that if he had to throw with a foot planted, he would throw with virtually identical throwing mechanics.
Juxtapose those sweet throwing mechanics against the contorted throwing mechanics in these next two videos**.
Here are a couple of well known Ultimate Frisbee players instructing other players on how to throw a flick with throwing mechanics that are, by definition, retarded.
Unironically, Rowan actually had this to say alongside his video on how to throw a flick:
Everyone should be able to throw a full field forehand. It’s all timing, mechanics & a little understanding on how the disc flies. Too many players are expected to learn how to throw a forehand on their own. Even worse… you are taught incorrectly from a coach.
Do NOT throw a flick like this, under any circumstances. McDonnell is literally coaching you how to throw incorrectly here.
Here’s another (bonus points awarded for accurately counting the number of traveling violations Jack commits in this short 1 minute video):
In this next video, Jack and Rowan are competing against each other, without a marker or any kind of defense on accuracy, power and consistency, using their horribly compromised mechanics.
Nice music tho….
Think I’m wrong? Show me one single video of a Professional Disc Golfer who throws a flick like this.
If Ultimate Frisbee is a teacher, what have we learned?
We’ve objectively learned to throw with very poor throwing mechanics and mechanics that usually result in illegalities as they are frequently accompanied with a traveling violation.
If I had a teacher that was teaching me completely wrong things, I’d fire them.
While you might be able to justify these convoluted throwing mechanics to suit your style of play, there’s no way in you can legitimately argue that these are sound throwing mechanics.
They simply are not and anyone who argues that these are quality throwing mechanics is plainly wrong.
This is pure lunacy.
Virtually every Ultimate Frisbee player in the game throws with these severely flawed body mechanics.
It’s possibly the most grotesque anomaly in all of organized team sports. You’re going to bust my nuts for referring to Jack and Rowan as poor throwers?
Prove me wrong.
Winning championships within this extremely forgiving framework with no penalties and exorbitantly soft boundaries is not an automatic claim to being an elite player. These soft boundaries come at the expense of refinement, development and excellence.
This circular logic of coronated champions as elite players has created a self-perpetuating revolving door of mediocre Ultimate Frisbee players who are considered the state of the art, but are not.
If you want Ultimate Frisbee to generate the respect you feel it deserves, the sport has to earn it and it can only accomplish this by overhauling the rules, ideology and philosophy of how to play the game.
Instead of teaching players to throw with compromised body mechanics, you can learn to run an offense where you are able to neutralize the marker in order to throw with proper throwing mechanics instead (like all other sports). This isn’t rocket science people. It’s easy in a sport with an overwhelming offensive bias, to devise a scheme where you don’t have to sacrifice form in order to get off quality throws.
These are not mutually exclusive things. You can be highly successful in Ultimate and be uncompromising in your throwing motions to be able to achieve more power, consistency and accuracy in your game.
An entire sport where virtually every single player has these same identical and severely flawed throwing mechanics is the very definition of systemic mediocrity and the argument that this is the proper throwing mechanics for throwing a flick (just because you need to get around the marker) is indefensible.
In virtually all team sports of your power, consistency and accuracy comes from your core strength and all of this is generated from your hips, legs and core. When you step forward like the above videos, prior to the release, you neutralize your core because your starting position is literally coming from what normally would be the follow-through position.
This is the complete opposite of McBeth in his above flick instructional video, who keeps his hips back until they are part of the follow through. My money is on the guy who got a $10,000,000 contract because of his throwing prowess.
When you throw like Jack and Rowan are demonstrating here, you are basically starting off in the position that normally would be what should be the ‘follow through’ position and thereby you eliminate a significant amount of your power, consistency and accuracy.
Jack’s a great golfer. Check out this gorgeous swing:
No 2-iron Jack? I’m disappointed.
Now imagine this same golf swing, except with the same overextended right hip in the same way he cancels out his right hip above by stepping forward prior to throwing a disc (see video below).
Imagine the above mechanics when swinging a baseball bat trying to hit a 90 MPH slider, with your right leg/hip fully extended prior to the swinging motion.
The only time similar mechanics that I can think of in all of sports is when you are bunting in baseball.
Furthermore, this style of throwing with your hip prematurely thrust forward lends itself to an inordinate amount of [mostly uncalled] traveling violations. It’s gross.
Can anyone show me similar mechanics in any other sport?
Sure Patrick Mahomes can throw 60 yards off his front foot on occasion, but that’s why he get’s paid $60M
According to Spotrac, an online professional sports resource that tracks contracts and salaries for players, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes made a total of $59.4 million during the regular season. source.
However, for the most part his mechanics are completely sound (listen to what this analyst is saying about legs, hips and core being integral to fundamentally solid throwing mechanics here)
It’s not personal. Jack and Rowan are nice guys, they’re just not very good Ultimate Frisbee players, relative to how good they could be. From Jack’s golf swing, you can tell that he’s a competent athlete, so it must be something else.
If you can suspend disbelief long enough to take what I’m saying at face value, then it can only lead to one conclusion; there’s something intrinsic about Ultimate Frisbee that fosters, nurtures and cultivates questionable mechanics at the expense of exceptionalism.
Furthermore, this phenomena where the players who happen to win a tournament are then copied by everyone is is the very definition of Elite Ultimate.
From Cambridge Dictionary:
You can’t tell me that a single player in the UFA, USAU or WFDF is an Elite Player based on this definition. No where in this definition is ‘winning a championship without penalties, referees, rational roster limits or firm/consistent boundaries’ included as a qualifier for being considered elite.
To be considered to belong to the best trained Ultimate Frisbee players, you would have to understand how to dribble, how to shred, how the Triple Threat Principle applies to the game, you’d need to be trained in play action plays, pick and roll plays, how to throw with proper, fundamentally sound throwing mechanics, how to effectively decelerate into catches, how to play almost exclusively with rim catches, inverted pivots, how to play without cheating, and you’d have to be a disc throwing wizard, etc.
This is the bar that I set for the game decades ago. There’s no one in the game who even approaches this pinnacle (although I have to admit, AJ may be the closest I’ve ever seen).
In any words, any Ultimate Frisbee player who calls themselves an Elite Player is just kidding themselves. There’s nothing elite about you, other than your elite level of misunderstanding the game.
Just look at all the counter-mechanics in this next image. Seemingly each different body component (torso, shoulder, hips, ankles, knees, elbows, head, neck, forearms, right leg, left leg, etc.) are all competing with one another, each over-compensating for some other flaw in order to produce a net release throwing mechanic co-efficient.
Bear in mind, this is a 2-D photograph and it doesn’t fully capture the 3-Dimensional buckles, contortions and convolutions.
The truth is that this completely unnatural throwing motion would have never been developed if Ultimate Frisbee never existed. This is a fact.
Furthermore, my contention is that these aberrant throwing mechanics would have never been devolved if Ultimate Frisbee had a normalized ruleset and framework.
The lack of penalties or meaningful boundaries in Ultimate only served to exacerbate this situation. It should have never happened.
Outside the Ultimate Frisbee Alternative Reality Zone, in what universe of competitive sports would this ever be considered to be, sound body mechanics, proper fundamentals or good form?
None.
Here is a short video I made on the proper throwing mechanics for a flick. In all sports, body mechanics are all grounded in balance, efficiency and core strength. All your power as a thrower comes from you legs, your hips and your core and your arms, fingers and wrists are for refinement and finish.
The standard way to throw a flick (that is taught by players that are considered to be the best throwers) are unbalanced, inefficient and they all neutralize the core.
And this critique, which is 💯legitimate and indisputable, is just a small fraction of the long litany of things that are completely upside-down about Ultimate. Again, there may be some debate on whether or not it’s possible to run an offense where you’re not required to compromise your throwing mechanics (spoiler alert-it is) but there shouldn’t be any debate regarding the proper throwing mechanics for throwing a flick. Just ask a disc golfer.
Body mechanics are also flawed on many other throws, pivots, fakes, cuts and even spikes are all mediocre. The standard of play in ultimate, even at the ‘highest’ levels, is no where close to anything what it easily could and should be after nearly 60 years and certainly nothing that can remotely be considered elite.
In Ultimate Frisbee, right is wrong, wrong is right, slavery is good, freedom is bad, ugly is beautiful and beautiful is ugly.
It’s all straight out of a Twilight Zone Episode…
And y’all can’t understand why Ultimate Frisbee doesn’t get any respect.
Any player, coach or instructor who teaches the same severely flawed throwing mechanics for a flick as Rowan and Jack to in their videos is by definition, a mediocre player and doesn’t know what the hell they are talking about. That’s the objective truth.
So how the f#$!^@ck did we get here?
ELITE ULTIMATE
Starting sometime in the mid to late 90s, a horrible new thing s began to spring up in tournaments; the Elite Division.
Please bear in mind all of the above assertions
Ultimate has excessive amounts of easily achievable positive reinforcement rewards. (*think of bunny slopes when you’re learning to ski)
Ultimate has a disproportionately diminished source of negative disinforcement consequences.
As a result Ultimate is highly addictive.
There are no legitimate coaches in ultimate frisbee.
No legitimate coach would ever allow his players to throw a flick with the flawed mechanics shown above, and that’s just one of dozens of inferior tactics, strategies and philosophies endemic throughout the entire culture of the game.
Consequently, skills, strategies and philosophies have been stale and stagnant for decades.
Within a paradigm of rules that provide false positives, a lack of meaningful roster limits, extremely limited enforcement, standards and adherence to the ‘agreed upon rules’, basically every point scored, each victorious game and every tournament win has been a false positive built on a house of cards of false positives.
A simple case study of this phenomenon is basic flick throwing mechanics that is pervasive and ubiquitous throughout the sport.
With this entire framework being a recipe for systemic mediocrity, Elite Ultimate Frisbee is a bit of an oxymoron.
Based on the above Cambridge dictionary definition of the word Elite, there are no elite players in Ultimate (besides yours truly). They only metric used to determine is someone is an Elite Player in ultimate is basically which teams they play on.
If you’re in the UFA, does that make you an elite player? No. (see Detroit Mechanix who just one their first game since the Obama administration).
If you qualify for USAU National Championships does that make you elite? No. (see RDU). To be fair, the bottom 8 teams at last years natties had no business being there.
If you’re on a team that has won either of these championships (USAU or UFA) does that make you elite?
Nope, I could provide a list of hundreds, if not thousands, of players who’ve one titles over the years that are no where near what anyone would consider to be elite.
The Ultimate Frisbee Scene has always been a form of Postmodern Neo Tribalism.
Up until fairly recently, there have been no dichotomy between coaches and players and even the coaches in the game today are not real coaches, they just are more or less facilitators that allow the players to play the way they want to play.
There are no good coaches in the game. They all suck.
-Johnny Bansfield-
Ultimate Tribes tend to congregate around the larger population centers across the country. New York, Boston, DC, San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas, Chicago and Denver for example usually field the most competitive teams in the national championships.
Not because they have the best players, the best strategies or tactics or because they are elite in any way, shape or form, but simply because as the regional power Tribe, the majority of above average players in these larger locales can easily qualify for the UPA National Championship Weekend. So for 50 years, we’ve had mostly tribes from the most populated regions in the country, congregate at our national ‘championships’ and declare a winner, but that really doesn’t mean anything. For sure, in and of itself, that doesn’t make them elite.
At Natties every year, there have been virtually zero upsets. Ever.
Second and third tier teams study and emulate what these top teams do, as it must be the most sophisticated and advanced in the world if these teams making it to quarterfinals, let’s say, have got to be the state of the art in the game.
But that’s never been the case. If anything, these teams have dumbed down the offenses to simply things and they’ve won simply by virtue of the fact that they had the largest number of competent athletes playing the game.
In other words, there’s hardly been any real innovation at all in the game in the last 40 years.
Ultimate Frisbee at the ‘highest’ levels over the past couple of decades has been nothing short of simply Cosplay. Pretend referees, with pretend rules, with pretend ‘fans’ with pretend champions.
Competitive Ultimate Frisbee is nothing more than a bunch of mediocre players who think they’re good at the game just because they won a championship or some stupid shit.
DADDY’S HOME
Ultimate Frisbee is like that time you spent the summer at your grandparent’s house.
No rules, no discipline, stay up late eating popcorn and ice cream every night, sleeping in, watching movies, no boundaries, etc.
Ultimate needs a massive dose of cultural wide tough love. What the game, community and players all would benefit from would be some serious discipline and for that, there needs to be acceptance that the current framework has been an abject failure.
Ultimate Frisbee gets absolute zero respect outside of its extremely insular demographic of players and the one player that has been at the forefront of bringing reform to the game for decades you’ve shunned as a heretic.
I told you decades ago that Shredding breaks Ultimate, you didn’t believe me.
I told you there was a way to run legally with the disc with a technique I call dribbling, you called me Crazy.
I told you that applying the Triple Threat Principle to ultimate destroys the game and you mocked me.
I told you that overhauling the rules would make the game an order of magnitude more improved but you refused to take me seriously.
Never once did you sit back and consider the implications and ramifications of me being right, about everything.
There is an interesting paradox here. To accept the truth of what I’m saying represents an existential threat to your claim to your status as an Elite Ultimate Frisbee Player but the only way to truly become an Elite Ultimate Frisbee Player would be to accept the truth of what I’m saying (and have been saying for decades).
I haven’t gone away. I’m still here. I haven’t changed my tune a bit.
Everything about Ultimate Frisbee is wrong.
Ultiworld accused me of hate speech in a tweet that was viewed 100,000 times, and you sat back and did nothing.
Ring of Fire, the Mechanix, App State Nomads (twice) that the AlleyCats all agreed to have me coach my revolutionary offense only to renege on their commitments and somehow you were OK with that too.
/r/ultimate banned me, USUA and UFA block me and that doesn’t seem to bother you either.
The point is that this has never been about me. It’s about you. I’m just the truck driver.
You’re all mostly concerned with your Social Credit Score, how many likes you get and being an Internet Influencer than you are about staying in your own integrity and doing the right thing.
In other words it’s going to take courage, strength, fortitude and conviction to turn this ship around. I’m not the problem. It’s not my fault that Ultimate has never evolved. In fact, no one has tried harder to evolve the sport than I have.
I’m by a significant margin the most innovative player the community has ever seen
The funny thing is that I’m not very good, but it doesn’t take much to be a better player than you because you’re all stuck in a paradigm that has incarcerated you in indifference and amateurism.
Meanwhile, every player in the game has insanely flawed throwing mechanics and no one even bats an eyelash.
If you do a google image search for Ultimate Frisbee, 98% of the photographs are either someone laying out for a catch or someone leaping up in the air for a catch, both of which are the end result of mediocre throws (mostly likely as a result of severely bizarre throwing mechanics).
Each and every single one of us can walk into a coffee shop or grocery store today, and mention Ultimate Frisbee and be greeted with a blank stare or a “oh, I saw a course yesterday afternoon” or “Is that the thing with the dogs”?
There’s no way to sugar coat that.
Y’all wear your torn ACLs, broken collar bones, sprained ankles like some sort of perverse badge of honor when in reality, 90% of injuries simply wouldn’t happen in the game with a normalized set or rules that were based on a more natural risk/reward topography.
The difference between you and me?
I know for a fact that I’m right.
I know your flick mechanics are garbage.
I know Shredding destroys the game.
I know that Ultimate’s ‘dead-ball’ catastrophe has created a level of functional retardation never seen before in the modern era of team sports.
I know that the phrase elite ultimate frisbee is an oxymoron.
I know that the framework for Ultimate has held generations of players back (like kindergartners who’ve been held back year after year after year after year).
The entire sport, community, ideology and philosophy of Ultimate Frisbee is a hot mess. Most people in the community are too severely addicted to dopamine to realize it.
Elite Player players think they are exceptional, when in fact they are just ordinary. Actually, they are less than ordinary. The rules for the game are basically flag football, without the flags, downs or huddles.
Ultimate’s Spirit of The Game ideology is based on an idea of fairness that attemps to artificially level the playing field, but in doing so, the game’s founders have created a framework that unironically harms everybody. It stunts everyone’s growth, all in the name of making a sport that is more fun for anyone who wants to play it.
There’s been one player that has done everything in his power to bring reform, evolution and progress to the sport
Isn’t that what progressives want? Progress?
Advocates for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) believe that diversity is progress when in fact, the most important aspect of diversity is diversity of thought, which is something they abhor.
If someone doesn’t think like you, they are treated like a social leper and you call that progress.
Lack of tolerance for non-like minded thinkers is the dictionary definition for the word bigot but you’ve been too blinded by this foolish ideology to realize that you are the very thing that you are protesting against.
ULTIMATE 2.0
I’d like to see Ultimate Frisbee get the respect it deserves
~Frank~
Look, I want the same thing that everybody wants.
I want to be able to casually mention to a stranger that I play Ultimate Frisbee without being asked ‘is that the thing with the dogs?’ or ‘is that the thing I see the kids playing down at the park with the baskets’.
I’d like to tune into a game and watch some high quality, advanced and sophisticated play. There’s nothing at all interesting about the way the game is played. If I wanted to be entertained by sheer athleticism, I’d watch a track and field competition.
Hell, I’d be satisfied to watch an Ultimate Frisbee game where no one is cheating (traveling) or throwing with severely flawed body mechanics. That would be a good start.
I’d like to see an ESPN Top Ten play to be a truly remarkable pass, instead of a layout catch or someone skying over someone else (which are always the end result of traveling violations and garbage throws—perfect throws to receivers going away never would make the highlights, they’re too boring). Here’s a perfect throw to a receiver going away that I will put up against any of those crap plays on ESPN. Any day.
Daddy’s Home
Greatest Smack Talk in the history of the game.
I hadn’t played a point in 5 year and as I strolled on to the field, I walked up to AJ and quietly said “Daddy’s Home” and then I threw this true no look, left handed, high release, backhand lift to a receiver going away.
~B U T T E R~
Here’s the challenge.
If you’re an alcoholic, the first thing you need to do in order to break your habit is to admit you’ve got a problem.
However, for Ultimate Frisbee, the entire community (or at least a significant amount of thought leaders) need to come to terms with the fact that Ultimate Frisbee has a serious problem.
But how can this happen when most thought leaders in the game have labeled themselves Elite Players, because they won a game once and therefore they think that they are exceptional?
So what?
You won a game with ridiculous rules, no real penalties, no legitimate roster limits and no meaningful referees. If you want to try to extract meaning from all of that, good luck, but don’t kid yourself into thinking that you’re an Elite Player. You are not.
To have an entire sport that basically has no real penalties hurts everybody.
If we’re going to evolve Ultimate, here’s what we need to do
Admit we have a serious problem and commit to a Recovery Protocol
Normalize Neurotransmitter Response
Less dopamine, oxytocin and serotonin and more glutamate and aspartate (or other displeasure/pain neurotransmitters)
Efforts to make the game more challenging while incorporating strictness, discipline and harsh penalties will bring balance to neurochemistry of people playing ultimate
Reduction in the game]s addictiveness, which would be a good thing.
Remove all vestiges of the ‘Dead Ball’ catastrophe
Any step OB is a turnover
Throw-ins are a ‘side out’ like soccer or basketball
Max 3-steps for traveling (if you call yourself an Elite Player, you should be able to do at least this much)
Change of direction, acceleration and jumping within those 3-steps is now legal
You’re not allowed to stand up after layout catch, you have to maintain at least one knee on the ground as your ‘pivot’ (even on defense, to keep it consistent).
Jump Passes are legal
Traveling violations are a turnover
Momentum into the endzone is an anomalous problem
Solution A) any pivot foot or momentum into endzone is a turnover (my choice)
Solution B) after momentum into endzone, player must establish pivot foot (or throw before third ground contact) and throw back out of the endzone
What if player throws to another player in the endzone, who then throws is back out, and then it gets thrown back in?
Should that be legal or a turnover?
All ball blocks are legal
It’s legal to knock the disc out of the thrower’s hand (this has been thoroughly vetted and it works fine)
Offensive fouls are turnovers
Limit of 4 fouls per game before disqualification (fouling out)
Picks are legal, but moving picks are illegal
Double teams are legal
Ultimate’s Spirit of the Game Ideology is an ideological penitentiary.
It needs to be replaced.
No legitimate Elite Player would advocate for anything ideological as ideologies are an afront to exceptionalism.
Mutual Respect is impossible and needs to be removed
Respect must be earned and is not an entitlement
Joy of the game is subjective. what is fun for you is not what is fun for others
The rules were never agreed upon (in fact, virtually everyone disagrees to some extent with the rules)
The win-at-all-cost athlete is a unicorn, it doesn’t really exist.
It’s always a boogeyman argument made by people who identify as victims.
No organized team sport should ever create an entire framework because of this ideological assumption.
etc.
True Officiating
We need strict and consistent enforcement of coherent, legitimate rules that everyone understands
We’re better off beginning with extremely tight standards and then loosening them over time than we are starting out loose and trying to tighten them
There are methods for having teams with ‘byes’ in tournaments being able to field referees for the games being played during those ‘down’ times.
This isn’t rocket science. If you’re truly an Elite Player, you’d jump all over these modifications. You’d want to be challenged to bring out the best in you and to allow the cream to rise to the top.
Any Elite Player worth their salt would put the game above their own self-interests and realize that on a wholesale level, all of the above recommendations would vastly improve the game.
You’d also want to play in a system that when you did win a championship, you knew that you accomplished something very special.
If you’re not going to advocate overwhelmingly for each and everyone of these upgrades, you’re not an Elite Player. It’s that simple.
I sincerely think the only way we can possibly move forward is for you to admit to yourself and to everyone else that you’re not really an Elite Player. The good news is that it’s not your fault. In a year’s time, we can have hundreds, if not thousands of elite players. All we have to do is admit we have a problem and fix it.
Your lack of willingness to accept that you’re not really an Elite Player is an act of selfishness on your part.
The future on the sport is in your hands.
It’s incumbent on you to set aside your pride and your pride and accept that as a social experiment, Ultimate Frisbee has been an abject failure.
Ultimate, as it currently stands, is simply not a legitimate sport.
Since I ran for a UPA Board Member Seat in 2008, the UPA has literally wasted over $2,000,000 on Tom Crawford, who didn’t do jack shit to promote the game’s evolution. Ultimate Frisbee is just as stale and stagnant today than it was the day he was hired 15 years ago.
Coming from the world of organized team sports, as a member of Soccer’s governing body) Crawford had to know that Ultimate’s framework wasn’t viable and if he didn’t he should have never been hired.
$2M later, Dr. Tom Crawford still doesn’t have Ultimate Frisbee or USAU on his LinkedIn page. Is he too embarrassed?
We tried it your way, not let’s do it my way.
If you want Ultimate Frisbee to get the respect it deserves, hire me to be the CEO of the USAU.
~Frank~
If you’re someone who agrees with my work and would like to ask questions, get mor information or help out, please reach out to me at DogsAndBaskets@gmail.com
Thanks,
Frank
**The Dogs and Baskets substack is non-profit, non-commercial and educational and these embedded videos are being used for commentary under the Fair Use Doctrine.
lol you just want the field smaller because you're slow AF son. Always have been, always will be.