This past weekend, ESPN televised the USA Ultimate D-I College Championships, where the University of North Carolina was crowned the 2015 champion. While to many mainstream sports fans this fact slipped beneath a radar jammed with NBA and NHL playoff action, for thousands of others, this was the culmination of another season in the most misunderstood sport in America.
Ultimate Frisbee, or, as it has been rebranded, Ultimate, is currently played on thousands of college campuses nationwide, has two pro leagues, and is growing at a rapid pace. The governing body, USA Ultimate, counts over 35,000 members, ranging in ages from youth to masters levels, with international teams for both men and women. The appeal of the sport is spreading rapidly due to a variety of factors from low cost of buy-in, great exercise, an easy rule set, and a very inclusive community feel.
However intriguing Ultimate appears as a growth commodity, college teams currently fall under university’s “club sports” umbrella, a designation that perhaps maligns the time and financial commitments required to play high level Ultimate. Cross country travel and tournament entry fees can cost a bundle for elite squads, who usually receive only a fraction of the money necessary to compose a season’s budget. Nevertheless, compared to the bills for many other current varsity programs, Ultimate would run at a significant discount, if only because of the comparatively low costs of equipment and overhead.
So what keeps Ultimate, which has a substantial following already, is televised on major cable networks, supports two pro leagues, and is appealing to both men and women from a range of ages, from having a clear future as an NCAA sport? Differing reasons abound on dedicated forums and websites, but one of the primary roadblocks set down by experts is that college Ultimate is not officiated like mainstream NCAA sports. Rather than having an impartial referee making calls during a game, college Ultimate is player officiated, with trained, on-field “observers” present to only settle unresolved disputes between players. This style of officiating might be off-putting to the NCAA, which seeks transparent standardization across all platforms in terms of rule interpretation. The AUDL and MLU, two pro Ultimate leagues, both have full referee integration, so this could be an easy fix logistically (but certainly not culturally) for the college game, were an NCAA opportunity to arise.
The second, more subjective rationale for the NCAA not embracing Ultimate on college campuses might have to do with an insidious and erroneous association being made with the sport’s roots. When mentioned, Ultimate seems to still conjure images of tie-dye shirts and barefoot players, or, even more inaccurately, dogs catching Frisbees. However off-base these associations may be, NCAA officials certainly don’t want to consider a sport that doesn’t immediately draw the casual observer or create an aura of legitimate, hard-nosed competition. Perhaps greater exposure and more time is simply what’s needed to overturn preconceived notions of a sport being played at high levels by varsity-caliber athletes.
The opportunity for college Ultimate to make the jump to the hallowed realm of “varsity athletics” might be a ways off, but the argument for athletic departments to consider the sport is strong. A comparatively low operating cost, strong, pre-established governing body, popular appeal among a very large community of players, and accessibility for women as well as men all seem to make sense for college athletic departments looking to expand their varsity repertoire or come into compliance with Title IX. Furthermore, the argument that the sport is not taken seriously and thus isn’t worth the investment might be backwards; perhaps if the NCAA sanctioned the sport, its reputation, seemingly one obstacle in the continued growth of Ultimate, might change.
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