Last night I caught "61*" on HBO and for those that have not seen it, the movie is a pretty sweet depiction of the homerun race between Mickey Mantle and Roger Marris in the summer of '61. Billy Crystal, a huge Mantle fan, articulates the struggles of both players as they try and break Babe Ruth's single season homerun record, "The most most respected record in all of sports". Being a sucker for emo-sports stories such as this, I was taken in by the flick nearly 10 years ago when it first aired, and once again, caught myself getting a little misty. Although in the wake of the steroid era, it is kind of hard to feel any positive emotion when Big Mac is on screen.
In any event, this movie got me thinking about ultimate and how we really don't have that many records. Yes there is DoG's epic run of 6 consecutive championships, but for me it draws similarities to ULCA's championship runs in the 60's and 70's. They were incredible and will never be forgotten, but the increase in parity makes duplicating such a result unlikely.
With the rise in fan appreciation for all sports, focus often falls on one record or another. From the '72 dolphins, to Cal Ripken, Wayne Gretzky, Joe DiMaggio, Wilt Chamberlain, etc... we can all think of records that command attention and inspire hope, even for those of us that will never see a professional playing field.
Some might say these records are irrelevant and that players don't pay any attention to them, but I would argue that most professional athletes cared at one point or another, if only as a child, and all would agree that records are an important part of sports. Can we say the same for ultimate? What records are there? I know Joe Seidler could probably name more than a few, but I get the feeling most folks would be left flat when asked what records are treasured in ultimate.
The only thing that really comes to mind is the perfect season, which to my knowledge has not been done, at least not recently (Perhaps an ex-NYNY player will correct me, but for arguments sake, lets say there has never been a team that has gone undefeated). Since I have played the game Stanford, Florida and Wisconsin have all come close with records of 37-1 (2002), 49-1 (2006), and 55-1 (2007), respectively, and I believe all three could claim to be the best college teams ever assembled. Now I am not here to claim that the perfect season is the ideal record, its just one that comes to mind. In reality, I think it is a goal that could prove to be counter productive. Considering the fact that all my "1-loss" teams are college programs, it is obvious that no one really cares about the perfect season in the club sphere.
However, what I am trying to claim is that ultimate could benefit from well known/accepted records and more importantly an improved system of keeping statistics, which is obviously where records come from. One of my favorite components of every UPA magazine that features recaps of Nationals (college or club) is the championship stat sheet where I can see who had good/poor games and how clean/sloppy the finals were. To my knowledge, no game has ever been turnover free, but I do sometimes find myself talking about the epic Furious/DoG semifinal from 2002, Kyle Weisbrod's #1 game of the decade, which seems to be the pinnacle of ultimate performance.
With this in mind, I am curious to know what records could manifest in ultimate. Given that our sport is prone to speciality positions at the highest level I doubt a triple crown of 1) Goals, 2) Assists and 3) D's would be possible. Perhaps single season records of each could be cool, but I wonder if lopsided teams would dominant such stats, thus making any sort of record irrelevant. Another route, much like goalie records in hockey, could be player completion percentage but I wonder if keeping track of passes would be overwhelmingly tedious. Regardless, I know that such stats where kept at least once at the 2005 World Games in Germany, and I can vividly remember combing through them that summer with a grin from ear to ear.
Then there are team records. I mentioned DoG's run of championships, and the "clean sheet", but what about football-esk records like average points against. I am sure Muffin, Mahowald, Hohenstein, and the rest of the '07 Hodags would love to be talked about the way the Steel Curtain is, especially considering the fact that offense has such a major advantage in our game.
Ultimately (ha! I always find it funny to use that word in ultimate articles) I don't really feel anything for any of these records which, given our sport, is not surprising. I respect total number of championships, but in all honesty, they are respectable almost to the point of boredom. Yes de Frondeville's got like 11 rings, I'm over it. Give me something a little more exciting to pay attention too.
Which brings me to my final point. In 2008 I had the time of my life covering ultimate and when I look back at all the seasons I have followed the most epic are always the ones I followed most closely. I think 2005 was the best college nationals in recent history, but it was also the first time I ever attended them. I think 2008 had the most compelling stories with Kershner, and Florida and Wisconsin, but then again I was at Centex, and Nationals, and followed every team with a magnifying glass. Since then I, and what looks like most of the ultimate community, have not been paying attention. I was approached to write the College Open Preview because somebody flaked and I struggled for talking points, especially with the Callahan. And it wasn't just me. Everyone I contacted sort of shrugged their shoulders and was like, "I dunno" and/or had some sort of heavy regional bias. All in all, I find the focus on ultimate, college or club, is pretty weak and has been for the past two years and I think statistics would make a difference. I mean come on, take a look at baseball. The game is nothing but numbers and I am sure more than a few of you out there care more about WHIP than you'd care to admit because of your fantasy team.
Anyway, long story short, I wish our sport kept better records. I have bitched numerous times that we don't archive our history well and now that we have a consistent score reporter, I now want statistics. Goals, assists, turnovers, D's. Think how much analysis of the game would change if we had such information. Who's the best? Who's the most consistent? Who's improved the most? With cold hard data, everything would change. High risk high reward players would be exposed for their carelessness and cool and steady flatballers would gain the credit they deserve. Strengths and weaknesses could be improved or taken advantage of with greater efficiency. Hell we might even get a record or two to chase when the dust settles.
I am sure I'm just yelling at the rain, but here is one way to make ultimate more like professional sports without talking about refs and SOTG, keep track of stats.
just my thoughts
match diesel
7 comments:
You just proved your point, Match.
It was Billy Rodriguez with 11 titles. Five with NYNY; six with DoG.
First of all, I really agree with the gist of this article. Stats allow us to, at some level, recreate a game or season even if we can't see it. And right now we can't see it. Stats help us measure objectively what we think that we're seeing and allow us to discuss games, teams, and players in more full ways.
Unfortunately, most of those stats (at least full season stats) won't matter until Ultimate has a more standardized schedule. It's hard to compare the stats of Chain against UGA B to the stats of Sockeye against Furious and draw any conclusions. Even within tournaments there is a lack of standardization. Take Club Nationals, after the first day some teams are playing weaker competition while other teams are playing stronger competition. Overall, there are so few games that you can't draw any reasonable conclusions.
Now imagine this - the top 8 teams from the previous years' Club Nationals compete in a three tournament summer "elite league." At each event the teams play a full round robin. Every game has stat keepers. Each team now has a standardized 21 game schedule having played each other team 3 times. Now, their records and the player and team stats have discrete meaning.
If I could have stats available, the ones that I would most want would be:
Team:
Offensive Efficiency - Scores/possessions for a team that started a point on offense
Defensive Efficiency - Scores/possessions for a team that started a point on defense
RedZone Efficiency - Scores/Redzone (w/in 20 yards of the endzone) possession
Individual:
Points Played
Turnovers
Blocks
Assists
2nd Assists (the hockey assist)
Goals
O Catalyst Rating - % of the time team scores on an O point when player is on
D Catalyst Rating - % of the time teams scores on a D point when player is on
I think those would be the easiest to track. Tracking touches for everyone and starting/ending point on the field is harder, but if you did, I'd want to see the following stats:
Team:
- Avg. number of touches/possession
- Avg. number of touches/scoring possession
- Avg. starting position/scoring possession
- Avg. starting position/possession
(these could all be broken up by O/D)
Individual:
- Touches/Game
- Completion efficiency (completions/touch (on playing field proper))
- Secondary completion efficiency (stolen from Frank - this is the completion efficiency of the person you threw it to - and would measure whether you are putting your team in better or worse position with your throw)
That's it at first glance. Of course, it won't paint a complete picture of a player or team. None of these stats weight a 25 yard break higher than a 5 yard reset pass (although Secondary completion efficiency helps at some level).
-Kyle
Joe Seidler has been keeping pretty good track of ultimate's history, though not at the goals/assists/Ds level.
Check out: http://www.ultimatehistory.com/
Especially: http://www.ultimatehistory.com/specialaccomplishments/index.html
Weisbrod, you crack me up.
I remember when I was on my ref kick a while back and you commented that training people to ref at an effective level would be prohibitively complicated.
Now that I mention stats you're talking elite leagues and "catalyst ratings". I love it.
I also don't buy the Chain vs. UGA-B/Sockeye vs Furious thing for two reasons:
1) Numbers have a way of normalizing themselves. For every Chain vs. UGA-B there is Sockeye vs. Blackfish. Every section/region would have these sorts of blowouts and I think on a longer time line, such factors would sort themselves out. Plus, elite teams tend to challenge themselves anyway by going to tournaments like Labor Day and ECC.
2) The same argument could be made for college football, for example the SEC where teams like Florida and Alabama run up scores on Florida-International and Tennessee Chattanooga (respectively) but people still record/care about Tebow's TD passes and Ingram's rushing yards.
Even if only goals/assists/blocks were recorded I think global ultimate analysis would reach a higher octive, much like what has happened with the score reporter. Plus it would draw more attention to the sport, because its data and fans need fat to chew.
However, it would require leg work and thats the rub. I think at least at nationals it would be fairly effective/straightforward. There are always volunteers that are eager to contribute and even if it were only to the level of WUGC or WUCC, it would be a significant improvement.
Catalyst rankings are easy to calculate. All you need to track is if a player played, if the team was on O or D, and if they scored or got scored on. I bet even you could keep that stat ;).
I'd say college football stats are considerably less well-regarded than professional stats. The main reason for that is that it is often an apples to oranges comparison due to the different calibers of schedules teams play.
Also, look at my suggestion. I'm talking about keeping stats at 3 tournaments each with only 8 teams at each. That's a hell of a lot easier than expanding this to sectionals, regionals and nationals.
Currently I bet that a lot of teams keep most of the stats listed for their own games. Even the most basic sideline clipboard will have who plays which points and the score of each point--allowing for Kyle's catalyst ratings. Most teams that keep stats also record goals, assists, and Ds (the fantasy stats). Some teams record more detail such as every touch.
However, right now there is very little incentive to sharing any of these stats with the public. Do I really want to post Riot's stats and allow other teams to scout our top goal scorers? A record alone is not much incentive if there's no guarantee the opposing team is also reporting stats.
Maybe teams would release their stats if there was an easy way to upload them to the UPA Score Reporter and they would only be released if some minimum number of opponents also submitted stats. Or something to make sure that a team was not at a disadvantage by submitting their numbers.
As always Gwen, insightful input.
I completely conceded that teams would be reluctant to release data concerning their program and knowing how committed you are to quantification, I can only imagine the information you have on your team and countless others. That being said, such data is immensely valuable and like plays, strategies, scouting information, etc... should be protected.
In my opinion, much like ESPN or CBS sportsline, or whatever sports medium, stat keeping is the distributor's, not individual teams', responsibility. Like worlds and several other tourneys, I think scores and assists (and maybe even blocks) can/should be recorded by the organizing body, if only for to harvest information. Forget scouting, or strategies, or re-creation. Simply record the information for the sake of recording it. Much like the human genome project, space exploration, even Facebook, information has inherent worth and beauty and is best utilized when no specific goal is in mind.
We just want to know.
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