College Ultimate

If you're reading this blog, I'm going to assume you are aware of the Conference 1 (C1) controversy that Cultimate started by announcing its plans to run a college national championship separate from the UPA college series.

Since the story broke a week ago, there has been a flurry of posting on rec.sport.disc and UltimateTalk about the implications of C1. I've had numerous people ask me my opinion about Cultimate's plan, both from the perspective of someone who's running for the UPA board of directors and as someone who cares deeply about women's college ultimate. It's rather hard to determine a definitive "stance" on C1 as there are a lot of unknowns. Cultimate has not publicly released details on its full plans for the college season, the details it has published on C1 still leave many questions unanswered, and discussions between the UPA and Cultimate are not over.

Even with all that uncertainty, there are a few things I know for certain:

1. Over-hauling the college season is a good thing. Not throwing it into chaos, mind you, but re-designing the college season. This is something that the membership overwhelmingly called for in the UPA's strategic planning initiative and in online forums. It is also something that the UPA has made a priority (even before C1 emerged on the scene). I am strongly in favor of restructuring the college season to help address some of its current problems. As I see it, those problems include a lack of a meaningful and coherent regular season, poor distribution of bids to the championship tournament (e.g. calculating strength wildcards solely on the previous year's performances), huge disparity gaps between teams that must play each other at Sectionals, and geographic problems with the way teams are distributed in sections and regions. C1 has clearly been designed to try and solve many of these problems. Any over-haul of college ultimate needs to address these issues.
   
2. There should only be ONE umbrella system for college ultimate. Players and teams should not have to choose between signing up with either the UPA or Cultimate to play out their college seasons. I know that both Cultimate and the UPA are looking into finding common ground for a plan that both parties can get behind. Their joint statement mentions the importance of an undivided championship and I don't think it can be stressed enough. From my personal communication with certain Cultimate employees and the UPA board of directors members, I think collaboration is possible. I also believe that stakeholders should be pressuring both Cultimate and the UPA to work together on this. The captains of teams invited to C1 are in communication, and I hope that they use their leverage to really push for a joint venture between the UPA and Cultimate. As should the general membership. It truly is in the best interest of everyone for there to be one college system.
   
3. No team should be excluded from a shot at the title. While there have been certainly been dynasties like Stanford Superfly, there is actually a tremendous amount of flux among the top teams in the college division. In the past 10 years since the regional re-draw, a total of 55 different schools have been represented at the college championships in the women's division. Multiple teams have made it all the way to finals in their first appearance at the championships. That's a lot of turnover from year to year, suggesting that it is important for all teams (regardless of previous history) to have a shot at making it to the championship event in any given season. I think that different levels of play (e.g. Div I and Div II or a modified C1 and C2) are definitely appropriate for college ultimate as a way to both encourage growth of newer teams and to increase the level of play for high-level teams, but the dividing lines should be cross-able. No team should be excluded from a fighting chance at the start of the season unless it wants to be.
4. The open and women's division should have the same structure. There are obvious differences in the number and distribution of open and women's teams in college. That doesn't mean that the competitive systems designed for the two divisions should be drastically different. Ideally, a new structure for the college division has the capacity to handle expanding numbers as more teams form around the country. That structure should thus be able to accomodate the different numbers of teams in the women's and open division. I'm certainly a proponent of regions being drawn differently for different situations (e.g. regions in densely populated areas like New England must be drawn-up differently than in more sparsely populated areas like Arizona), but the competitive structure of what it is required for a season should not differ on account of gender.

I'm excited for change coming to college ultimate and I know that the people at Cultimate and the UPA are too. I sincerely hope that they are able to build off of the common ground they share and build a new future that helps push the division forward.