Sports Scandals - Ultimate

So in sports today there are 2 major scandals going on, the Michael Vick dog fighting scandal and the Donaghy gambling situation. First, I think the situation is initally hilarious because these two scandals just happen to involve sports that are not in season. How happy are Tom Jackson or Steven A Smith that they get to get pulled out of seasonal retirement to comment on occurances in their respective sports (football and basketball, respectively) despite the fact that no one will really care about either sport for another 1-2 months. Now NFL/NBA Live at 1:30am on ESPN has some substance. I suppose this is not unlike the summer of 2005 when Terrell Owens was headlining ESPN with his training camp antics. In any event, I think that these two situations (Vick and Donaghy) are very interesting. For some insight into either one check out espn.com and for the Donaghy story, check out Bill Simmons' July 24th article because it is really cool.

Ok, long into, why do we care? After hearing about all of these scandals I began to think about scandal in the realm of ultimate and I immediately remembered probably the biggest and only real scandal (that I can think of) in recent memory. I am referring to the UCSB Black Tide disqualification in May of 2004. I thought it would be interesting to give my account of the situation considering the fact that I was moderately affected by the situation.

The story (at least from my perspective) begins at Sectionals in 2004. Now I was no A team star, in fact I was just 1 of 2 B team captains for UCSD B. However, in 2004 UCSD was a decent squad. We were coming off a good year (I didn't really know all the ins and outs of tournament performance at the time, so i don't really know how good we were record wise), but more importantly, it was the year after we lost on double game point to Colorado in the game to go to nationals. We only had 1 bid that year (2003) out of the SW and Colorado went on to make semis and be the only team to score double digits on Wisconsin in Texas. In any event, in my eyes, we were clearly the best So-Cal team. However, at sectionals that year Black Tide beat our A team 15-11 and won the sectional tournament. Yikes, not good for our moral, and Black Tde seemed like the team that was gonna take either the 2 spot for nationals that year with Colorado taking #1. So a few weeks later, regionals takes place in Santa Barbara. As usual Colorado, UCSB, and UCSD all crusie through their games en-route to the 1 spot semis. The semifinals (if I remember right) were Colorado/Arizona and UCSB/UCSD. Colorado steam rolls Arizona and I watched Black Tide take down our A squad 15-11, again. So its Colorado vs Black Tide in the finals. Now this was Beau's freshman year and this was the year Colorado won nationals by beating Cal 15-7 in the finals. Colorado had arguably the best offense ever assembled with Parker and Chicken as handlers, Richter (callahan winner that year) and JV as middle cutters and Beau as a deep. Quite intimidating. But what will be forgotten about that year is how good Santa Barbara was. The team was led by the very talented, albeit scary as hell, Mike Brown who had the likes of Asa Wilson, Jonathan Hester, Rory Orloff and most of all Tim "Hand" Henshaw-Plath. Now most folks have never heard of "Hand" but this dude was fucking good. The guy was awesome in the air, a smart player, great throws and had several years of black tide disc to look forward too. However, I think he tore his ACL (I think) and never really broke out. Too bad.

So, the finals. UCSB comes out with their sterotypical zone D and it literally shuts down Colorado. Despite playing in UCSB's stadium with little wind, Parker's hammers sail out of bounds and UCSB takes control. I'd also like to mention that "Hand" managed to sky the crap out of Beau on a huck. However, he spiked the disc in celebration while not being in the endzone, turn over, Colorado's disc. In any event, UCSB shocked the #2 team in the country (Cal being #1 after beating Colorado 15-14 at the first Centex) 15-11. In that game i believe Mike Brown laid out into a team mate, a no-namer in Nate Bouxsein, and I think broke his jaw if memory serves me right. This sucked for several reasons, 1) Nate was actually a nice guy amongst arguably the douchiest UCSB team ever 2) he was one of 2 captains and 3) It took him out of the series (an irony that will surface later). In any event, Colorado is now playing UCSD (coming off a win against Colorado State) in the back door finals. UCSD had only beaten Colorado once in our hostroy (Pres Day '03 show case game) and now had to play colorado in the "game to go" for the second year in a row. This time, there would be no double game point and Colorado's seemingly perfect offense and the indefensible and impervious Beau went up and down the field on our best player, Kubiak, in a 15-11 beating. This game was depressing. UCSD goes down hard. UCSB is elated. First trip to natties in 2 years, they are in good shape. Colorado is shocked but they are still going. UCSD still has yet to get passed either UCSB or Colorado and has yet to break their nationals cherry.

(Sorry for all the exposition, I know I get wordy, I but I just want folks to know how good UCSB was that year and how important this next series of events were given the previous occurences.)

Now for the scandal. This was back in the day when Greenough or whoever was trying to set the tone for UPA registration and legitmacy and rightfully so. In any event, the UPA finds out that Nate Bouxsein actually is a grad student at UCSB and was an undergrad/captain at Northwestern University. This is quite perplexing considering 2004 was his 4th year on Black Tide and would make him wayyy out of eligibility. In order to set an example, Greenough decided that Nate's eligibility was invalid and he deemed Nate ineligible and because he had played for UCSB through the series, Black Tide now had an erroneous roster and were now disqualified from nationals. Now this was huge for several, obvious reasons. 1) UCSB had just knocked off the #2 team in the country and, in hindsight, could conceivably gone on to win nationals 2) Nate had gotten injured at regionals and would not have played at nationals anyway 3) he was more of a coach than anything and, despite his captainship, was not a play maker on arguably one of the best teams in the country. All told, this was a big deal.

Now as a UCSD student this was actually good news. A friend and team mate of mine had a little brother on UCSB and word got to him that UCSB had been dis-qualified. It was later confirmed when Greenough informed the captains. Later, the captains revealed to our team at our Alumni Day (quite serendipitous) that UCSB had been DQ'd and we were going to take their place. Long story short, we get the 13 seed at nationals, mange to go 1-2 in pool play with a win against MSU and a close loss to Wisconsin (we got raped by Cal). Took down William and Mary in Pre-Quarters allowing us to make quarters and with Colorado's national title, the SW managed to maintain its strength bid. This gave UCSD some long needed confidence and we managed to reload and make another nationals run. This time earning it by taking down UCSB at regionals in 2005 and we made semis (albeit the easiest way possible) giving the SW 3 bids for 2006, and the rest is history.

In any event, I thought that this was a crazy story because 1 single player managed to change not only his own team but change the future of several programs. Had he been eligible or just not played, Black Tide may have earned thier 7th national title, Beau may never have become such an icon, Richter might not have won the callahan, UCSB might have made natties in 2005 with a national title as a recruting tool, UCSD may never have made nationals even to this day, and so on and so on.

I guess peripheral to the whole scandal business, it goes to show you just how important a bid to nationals is. There is always talk about the metro east or the NE or the great lakes possibly getting undeserved bids and I am not saying that they don't deserve them, but realistically, a nationals bid is something to be treasured. It is so difficult to make it to the show and every year there are teams sitting at home on memorial day that could very well dominate at nationals. UCSB only lost to Colorado 16-14 at regionals making Black Tide a serious contender. Had Colorado won that quarters game at nationals in 2006 against Georgia we might have seen Black Tide, not Florida or Colorado or Stanford in the semis, yada yada yada. Take home message, size bids are crap. 20 team nationals format, 4 strength bids, 2 bids per region. That is all.

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