How high of a priority should credibility/legitimacy be for the UPA?
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6 comments:
Very low!
Who cares what other people think of our sport?
I think the UPA should focus on primarily on providing high quality tournaments and not worry about the world outside of ultimate.
We all should care, at least to the extent that this perceived legitimacy enhances youth development efforts (and player development in general.)
If being perceived as legitimate means that a Phys Ed instructor is more likely to use ultimate in his/her curriculum, or that a group of students or faculty member is more likely to get administration support in starting a club team, then I'd argue it's quite important.
Getting increased TV exposure may or may not be important, but either way should be considered a means to the above ends, and shouldn't be an goal unto itself.
Credibility/Legitimacy is key to expanding the sport, which it seems is a high priority of those who responded to the survey. But this will never happen if we think of this as "our sport," something to be refined in the isolated realm of "our tournaments."
When I see hundreds of youngsters in bright t-shirts filling an athletic field on the opening day of spring soccer season (as I did last Saturday), I wonder why that can't be ultimate too. Ultimate is a great sport that makes life better, which is why it's important for us to share it with others.
But we have to be ready to give up the alternative, fringe, image of ultimate if we want the sport to enter the mainstream of community, and maybe olympic, sports. That doesn't mean we have to cut our hair or give up SOTG. But its definitely worth taking other meaningful steps to establish the credibility we need to bring "our sport" to the masses.
Since credibility/legitimacy is essentially defined by outside perceptions, however, beyond our own internal UPA survey, perhaps it help if the UPA surveyed key people outside of our sport: high school and college sport leaders; youth leaders; sports writers; soccer and lacrosse organizers and investors; etc.
To the extent that working to increase credibility/legitimacy improves the sport, I think it's great.
Efforts to get players to know the rules. Efforts to speed up the game (more enjoyable for everyone involved). Continued efforts to create a better rule set.
But I think there are enough kinks still to be worked out that we shouldn't put a lot of energy into publicity for the sake of publicity.
I don't know how I feel about CSTV. Their DVD sets that came out a couple years ago were an embarrassment, with blackout time during what previously were commercials. And very few people get CSTV. It seems like all we're really doing is increasing CSTV subscriptions among ultimate players and paying to do it. Would it be cheaper to have UVTV in charge and air the footage on public access, while encouraging local newspapers to run an article about it?
Also efforts to establish a college eligibility system isn't both unfair to honest non-degree seeking students and easy to elude by dishonest system-abusers.
As an outsider it would strike me funny to hear, "I just graduated and am taking some additional classes to fulfill med school requirements and I'm not allowed to play, but this other guy who's enrolling in one semester of Rocks for Jocks classes under pretense of getting a 2nd Bachelor's is allowed to play."
It's things like these that make me think the sport is grass roots and disorganized.
I agree that CSTV doesn't seem to be the best outlet for expanding knowledge about ultimate with the general public. Any sort of public viewing network is way better - there are probably more people who watch videos on U-tube than CSTV, and thats free to watch and to post - not suggesting that be the main strategy of the UPA.
Definitely higher credibility will expand play, youth development, funding, and its the only way the sport will ever have a chance at entering the olympics, if that is a long-term goal.
There are some freaking awesome athletes in this sport and I think people would love watching high-level play in person or on TV if they only knew that ultimate was so much more than those pick-up games seen around campuses and parks and that its definitely not something you simply do with a dog.
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