JP wrote:
I believe it
is because in other sports it is easy to cheat and get away with it and the
advantage to be gained by cheating is large. It is much harder to cheat in ultimate and the
advantage to be gained by doing so is small. Good observers make it even
harder to cheat and the advantage even smaller.
I don't agree with the idea that cheating doesn't lead to advantage in Ultimate. Of course it does, and every bit as much as in football or other sports. If it really didn't have any advantage, people wouldn't bother to call it, and we wouldn't be talking about observers.
(Since, apparently, football is a bad comparison, let's look at this. How many fouls result in huge advantages in football? Very few. The only obvious ones are a professional foul by the last defender, fouling someone in the act of shooting, or handball on the line. How many other fouls, all over the pitch, can be said to massively influence the game? I'd say about the same number as in ultimate - it's a rare foul that DIRECTLY leads to or prevents a point/goal in both sports.)
As for numpties changing their behaviour when playing ultimate, I think you've got it the wrong way round. Nice Ultimate people who play football have no choice but to play aggressively, because everyone else does it. The most important thing is to prevent a core of thoughtless and aggressive people dominating the philosophy of the sport. If idiots cheat and get away with it, then eventually we'll all have to play that way.
The only question is whether observers will help to maintain the philosophy or not. It is possible to argue that they won't make things worse if the game is already becoming aggressive - indeed the American example can be used to support this. But have they really improved matters, or reduced the number of bad calls, or prevented teams with a win-at-all-costs ethos from forming? No-one has persuaded me of that, yet.
Now here's the bit that'll get a few people upset. The best way I can see of maintaining SOTG is to link poor spirit to some form of sanction. I've heard the following idea from a few people, and I wonder what the wider community thinks...
In every game at a tournament, each team receives a spirit mark out of ten. Not for stupid songs and being nice guys, but for adherence to (and as Retter correctly points out, knowledge of) the rules.
Teams who average below three points (or who score more than 2 'zero's, or indeed any other agreed arbitrary minimum spirit requirement) are not invited to the next tournament (or are publicly named and shamed, or any other fitting punishment).
Obviously, we all have games where personalities clash, or where lots of close calls happen, or whatever; but across a whole tournament every team should be able to set a reasonable standard of behaviour.
(Note: I think every team now in Britain would pass incredibly strict standards for minimum spirit - this idea is all about the long term protection of the spirit of the game). If Milky wants a way to incorporate spirit into the rules, why not something like this?
Yours in anticipation of disagreement, Benji
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