UPA Proposal for Merit Based Ultimate Frisbee

Charting a New Course for Competitive Ultimate Frisbee

Last week, I had a 30 minute video call with Robert Rauch, who has been intimately involved with the governance of ultimate frisbee with both the UPA and WFDF for the past 40 years or so.

I was so inspired by out conversation that I not only posted this article about my proposal, but this article (about Ultimate Frisbee’s ideological roots).

I feel that the heart and soul of this conversation is so valuable and so important to Ultimate Frisbee’s future that I decided to post it here, along with some commentary I added throughout the discussion we had, to clear some of it up.

Excuse me if I got a little fiery, I’m very passionate about this and it can be a bit frustrating to me that for a half century, the people who have governed this sport have look everywhere for answers, except the two most obvious sources of Ultimate’s persistent challenges; The New Games Influence and the ‘Dead-ball’ // Continuous Play mashup.

Here is the video. (you need to turn the volume way up, my mic is a little soft).

I’m sorry if I’m a bit gruff in my commentary but this shit has been going on for 50 years and to hear the same lame excuses I’ve been hearing since the late 70s drives me nuts. Please spread this article around to all the best, brightest, athletic and competitive players you know and we can get this done.

Thanks,

Frank

Here’s my proposal

For very complicated reasons, the rules, the governance, the unique philosophy of sportsmanship and the Ultimate Frisbee culture & community has created a codependent situation that has made any kind of significant alterations. modifications or revisions to the game nearly impossible.

In other words, to fix one aspect (of the rules, the doctrine, the governance, the demographic that plays the game, the way the game is played and the culture), we’re going to need a wholesale approach. Fixing one thing at a time is problematic, to say the least.

This proposal is specifically written as a way to creatively confront this challenge in a way that can lead to revision of the game of Ultimate for the first time in over 50 years and a plan that could be executed in time for the 2025 National Series.

Overview

This is a quick summary of where things stand today.

• Ultimate Frisbee was designed as a ‘dead-ball’ sport, but without a coherent mechanism that ever defined what a dead-ball situation is, what the duration of the dead-ball is, and how play resumes after a dead ball. See article on Ultimate Frisbee’s Game Mechanics here.

  • Ultimate Frisbee is the only “dead-ball” team sport where the game action doesn’t come to a complete stop after every dead-ball situation (in Ultimate, that would be after every completion).

  • In Baseball, Football, Volleyball, Tennis, etc., whenever there is a dead ball, the offense sets up, the defense sets up, player substitutions can happen, the play clock stops (if there is a play clock), etc.

  • In Ultimate, none of these things occur and in fact, at its fastest pace, the game action doesn’t even halt for a nano-second.

  • There are at least 24 separate rules in Ultimate Frisbee that are ‘dead-ball’ related rules, that would be inappropriate for a continuous play sport.

  • Nobody, in their right mind, would every design a team sport from the ground up with a complete set of “dead-ball” based rules, in a sport where the game action is continuous and doesn’t stop in normal play.

• The games vaunted Spirit of the Game philosophy is, in truth, a derivative of the New Games Movement, which was a failed counter-culture phenomena of the 1960s with significant Marxist undertones. See article here.

  • In short, what the effect that the New Games influence had over the governance of Ultimate Frisbee was to attempt to artificially level the playing field in such as way as to make the game fun and fair for all participants, irrespective of their backgrounds, ability, physique, ethnicity, intelligence, athleticism, etc. Any good sport should never need to have the field artificially leveled, because sports are designed to be level playing fields out of principle.

  • Ultimate was never designed for the kinds of high performance, high level elite athletes that are competing in 2025.

  • Nobody, in their right mind, would ever design a competitive team sport from the ground up with a framework that “artificially levels the playing field” to make the game more fair for mediocre participants, at the expense of exceptional athletes.

• The first principle of any governing body, in any sport, is to vet and maintain the rules to make sure that they are safe from injury (within reason), fair and balanced.

  • All of the existing governing bodies in Ultimate (USAU, WFDF, MLU or AUDL) have been derelict in their duties in this regard. See article here.

  • Just from the standpoint of injuries alone, the current framework has always been extremely injury prone.

• Additionally, the governing bodies have been encumbered for the past 50 years with the philosophical underpinnings that the game was founded in, in spite of the fact that these underpinnings were always questionable, theoretical and have most likely held the game back. See article here.

• The UPA (Ultimate Players Association) was incorporated in 1979 and was always intended to be an organization that represented the players’ best interest and the game’s best interest. Irv Kalb, who founded the UPA compared it to the NBPA (National Basketball Players Association) and that ultimately, a separate governing body would form and take on the duties of governance, etc.

  • USAU is registered as the UPA doing business as (DBA) the USAU. This is the opposite of what Irv had intended. This would be like the NBA absorbing the NBPA so they could control the players more. In truth, the USAU should form its own corporation and administer governance from within this alternate corporation, not the UPA.

• Since the inception of the game in 1968, none of the above things has ever been legitimately challenged and because of all of the interdependencies between these various organizations and philosophies, etc., bringing about any kind of meaningful change seems like virtually an insurmountable challenge.

  • The bottom line is that the game of Ultimate Frisbee has significant shortcomings in the rules, the philosophy, the governing bodies as well as the culture & community that has prevented the game from living up to its potential.

  • None of the existing framework is defensible. The philosophy, the game mechanics, the governance, the Ultimate Frisbee Doctrine, the way the game is played, etc. can adequately be defended, by anybody, other than using the doctrine to defend the doctrine.

The 2025 UPA Proposal

Given all of the combined challenges that the current ecosystem of the Ultimate Frisbee subculture presents, the following is a cogent and workable solution that has the potential to revitalize the game and bring it into the 21st Century.

1. The UPA shall revert back to it’s original charter and USA Ultimate will incorporate as a separate, independent entity.

2. USAU will continue to maintain membership to USAU members, provide governance and logistical support for tournaments, liability insurance, etc.

3. The UPA will then be reformed to consist of 2 players from each of the top 16 teams in the nation. (determining these top 16 teams TBD; For example, the teams qualifying for the 2024 men’s National Championship would not necessarily be the top 16 teams)

4. This panel of 32 players will make up a task force to establish a set of prototypical rules for the 2025 fall season (possibly initiated as early as the ProFlight series).

5. This set of pilot program rules will have all 17 ‘Dead-Ball’ rules removed or altered to remove any ‘dead-ball’ orientation and the New Games influence will also be removed from the rules and framework.

6. Presumably, this set of rules will be trialed initially in the Men’s Division, but this is not necessarily out of exclusion.

7. The eventual Pilot Framework must meet the requirement of 75% ratification (of the UPA (or 24 players) in order for it to be passed and approved for this program.

8. Attendees of these events will invoke the Captains Clause in the current rules for Ultimate to be able to instantiate these rules immediately within the current USAU Framework.

   1. Any team in any division will be welcome to invoke the Captain’s Clause to request to play within this trial framework, but clearly the top 16 teams in the country are all going to be men’s teams and it’s just common sense that in order to build a framework designed for high level competition that the Player Representatives in the UPA be representing the highest caliber teams.

9. Addendum: Self Officiation

   1. In the spirit of reconciliations and inclusion of Ultimate’s rich legacy, I’d like to propose a re-imagined form of self officiating.

   2. Here’s the idea and it’s based on the premise that asking competitive athletes to simultaneously play an extremely high intensity sport while also playing the role of referee lacks wisdom and forethought.

   3. The alternative solution (while maintaining self-officiating) is to organize tournaments such that teams that have a bye can spend their down time officiating games that they’re not playing in.

   4. This concept will accomplish several things

      1. It will alleviate players actively competing of the burden of the dual role of playing and officiating

      2. It will be a significant step towards standardization with regards to adherence to the rules.

      3. It solves the potential staffing requirement for the number of referees that would be required for any given tournament

      4. It would help determine quality referees so that we could have the best referees (based on player reviews) police semi-finals and the finals of the tournaments that they’ve been involved in.

      5. It acts as a guideline for players to realize the difference between a good ref and a bad ref and to appreciate the difference.

      6. It also teaches all the players doing the job of a referee realize just how hard it is to be a ref.

      7. These ‘Player/Refs’ will also understand the importance of part of their role, which is game management.

The Captains’ Clause has been altered somewhat over the years, but the current revision does provide us with a legitimate framework to implement this proposal within the USAU Guidelines:

This draft is open for comments and your input is valuable and important to the process.

This is a solid proposal that can be enacted almost immediately and can yield results virtually instantaneously.

Possibly the largest stumbling block will be convincing (demanding) that USAU relinquish all rights and ownership of the UPA and for them to form their own corporation but this shouldn’t be a significant issue.

Irv Kalb can easily confirm that USAU’s decision to absorb the UPA as part of its governance was not what was intended and could easily be remediated. In fact, I have a digital copy of a phone conversation where Irv communicated this exact thing.

Please let me know what you think.

Frank

fhuguenard@gmail.com