Conference 1 thoughts and opinions

Having had a little time to digest the idea of conference 1, I am still falling short of completely understanding its implications. I've realized that my perspective is that of an outsider, as my team does not compete at a high enough level to be effected (yet....). We would not be playing any conference 1 teams at sectionals anyway, and if we make regionals I personally will be happy enough about that to not fuss about whether or not we get a shot at taking down "team X". Our goal is to take our section. Scoring a massive upset against a top 25 team would be pretty cool, but that's not our primary goal by any means.

Tiered competition has to be the future of the sport. As it is, it's pretty cool that everyone has a shot at the title, but realistically a lot of teams don't and its fairly easy to understand why elite teams do not favor having to play against easy opponents. On the other hand, it's understandable that the other however many hundreds of teams not invited to conference one have some legitimate reasons to be upset. For my part, I'm sort of looking forward to conference 1 because as a fan of the game it will be pretty exciting and easy to be able to keep track of the conference 1 series tournaments and keep abreast of the college competition. Making the game easier to follow is somewhat essential to developing a base of people who enjoy following the sport as well as playing it.

Most ultimate players I know have little sense of the competitive aspect of the game and are more interested in playing. I'm far more interested in playing as well, but look at it this way - following the game and watching high level games is a great way to learn, to improve.

Many RSD posters are talking about how cultimate is usurping the UPA college series by attempting to run their own show. To a certain extent that could be true, it depends on how they decide to cooperate - or not cooperate. I can't help but think that a competitive fall series might be a better idea. With more competitive fall tournaments the competition of the spring series would increase as well as teams would be playing and training harder. Sure there are many competitive fall tournaments but It would be pretty cool to have a separate fall championship. A fall conference would also build excitement for nationals as teams would be eager to avenge losses in the fall and come out fighting in the spring.

Also, a fall series would avoid the hypothetical dilution of the talent that would occur if only half of the 'top 25' move to cultimate and half stay with the UPA series. The conference 1 teams would still get their free uniforms and travel money for the fall, and with the increased legitimacy that should result from having such a conference they could probably persuade their respective universities to give them a larger budget for tournaments in the spring.

Anyway, whatever happens in the end, the next few weeks are going to be sweet as all of this gets figured out by the powers that be and thoroughly discussed by the players that be. These are exciting times for the sport and I'd like to think that we will all profit from them.