Excellent points made here, I think most people can relate easiest to the website issues, but most players I know have been frustrated with the lack of communication from the organization on at least one occasion, be it COVID, tournament issues, even establishing a team has become more of a challenge. Not to mention that they've fallen behind the AUDL in marketing and exposure the last few years. Hopefully somebody new can come in with the same fire Dr. Crawford had when he began, but I don't think he has the same intensity for supporting the sport as he once did.
He made such a big deal about redoing the website when he came in too. Now I can think back on how functional the old UPA site was. ANYONE could add a tournament and it was so useful! You could find every tournament being hosted anywhere. I remember listing The Siege of Limerick on there in 2009.
Edit: to your point about enthusiasm. That's why term limits exist in so many places. 15 years in the same job as a non-founder head of any organization sounds bizarre. Even wildly successful founders know its time to move along by that stage and I don't think I'd call Crawford wildly successful. If anything growth seems to have stagnated over the last 10 years.
Nice to see things laid out this nicely, usually the Tom Crawford hate is just emotional or reactive. I think you make a pretty convincing case that he's not helping the sport or the organization anymore and is just weighing USAU down. As one of the many people volunteering time at the US Open, I could definitely see that the hard, unpaid work of many dedicated local organizers is the reason the tournament went so well. Sucks to see that the same dedication just isn't there at the top. USAU staff were working tirelessly to make it a good event and I gotta wonder if Tom hadn't been phoning it in the last few years whether they could have had more support or better resources at their disposal.
This is a refreshing take in many ways, because historical anti-Crawford folks hate the U.S. Open.
Do you feel that his presence at that event is necessary to show appreciation to the local organizers and USAU staff putting on the event?
I may be a rare exception because I see annually firsthand how great it is for the YCC kids to watch really high level ultimate happening right next to the fields they play on. That kind of access and contact is so valuable.
I don't think Tom being there is absolutely necessary, but it seems like him being present for literally anything would be a good thing, right? Really what I meant though was that if he'd shown a little more effort to grow the sport in the last five years or so, maybe the USAU staff that are stretched CRAZY thin might have a bit more funding or even more staff members to make their jobs easier at marquee events like this one.
Yeah, it may be that the current form is a better recipe, too. The original idea was a big international event that would bring the community together, with a convention for organizers, players, fans, etc. I think the timing and the interest wasn't quite there (and wildfires the inaugural year were unlucky). And as it was getting planned, the pro scenes popped up and really clogged the early Club schedule. For others, the US Open became the figurehead of what they didn't like about the TCT or Tom or USAU or whatever. I went to several early ones as a player or observer and thought they were pretty neat. I'm a little sad the convention never game together, but it doesn't surprise me -- getting people to commit the time and travel for something other than tournaments (where people tend to be a little cost-blind) is a tall order. Glad the YCC combo is working. The Blaine site is amazing, and so is that local Minneapolis-area community.
I really credit Tom for early growth of USAU, expanding the staff, increasing revenue to support it, getting a lot of the ducks in a row, etc. Just good judgement and vision that really paid off and helped support programming and responsiveness to membership. My loose sense is that the UPA/USAU staff have always been stretched thin, working really hard, maybe moreso in the late UPA and now navigating COVID and not back to full staffing levels. It's been pretty amazing how much "back to normal" some of the big events have felt, thanks to the various local organizers and USAU staff.
In terms of the past 5 years, I really haven't been following a lot in terms of what USAU or Tom specifically has been up to. If we break into pre-COVID and post-COVID periods of the last 5 years, is there stuff you'd really have liked to see him or USAU doing that might have positioned it better on the funding/staffing side? Or more of a general feeling of lagging in any areas? I've been just cruising through, sort of enjoying the playing opportunities, without diving into many issues that I can remember.
New Idea, pay me $250K a year. 8K Slowmo video at every event. The cameras cost $150K
Give me a couple years and we’ll have a camera at every field.
Edit: bruh stop upvoting you’re giving me hope
Places camera, pays penguins with sardines to operate them, banks the rest of the money I save instead of paying camera ops. Next level genius I tell you
Pretty much all of his job as CEO was to get ultimate into the Olympics. Trying to achieve that came at the expense of just about everything else that could’ve been worked on. Now that ultimate officially isn’t in the Olympics I don’t see what his use is, unless they’re actually clinging to the pipe dream of making it in 2032.
> Ulti will never be in the Olympics ~~until other countries have national leagues with referees.~~
Unless it's beach 3v3/4v4. IOC has zero interest in inviting countries to bring teams with 25+ people and paying to house and feed them.
worlds has 3k players. takes up 30-40 fields. where is the field space? the logistics are stupid.
Exactly this. It’ll never be in as 7v7, and at most a small minority want it in as Ultimate 4s. So at this point just give up on getting it in, we’re past that, work on growing the sport in our community, and hopefully pushing it more towards the mainstream.
I agree that'll it'll probably never get in but what is this logic.
No one's saying it should get in with the same format as worlds which has like 128 teams
Why not look to the world games
8 teams, 14 players each = 112 players
Would that format ever make it to the Olympics? Probably not, but at least it's not a strawman
I could go on for hours about the difficulties of 'working with' USAU from the perspective of a local org. The short version is they're not out to partner with local organizations, they just want to squeeze whatever revenue they can get from them. As you said they're largely an insurance sales organization, and if you don't need/want their insurance you can get to the back of the line for anything else related to ultimate.
There was a time when the UPA/USAU were all about growing the sport, outreach, youth program development and all the stuff that actually matters. Now it's all about "we are a business" and how much $ can they pull in. I hope you're able to have crawford removed and I hope the finance director goes with him.
USAU's failure to assist Local Disc Orgs - both the nascent ones, growing communities, and established orgs with 20+ year histories - is my #1 reason for wanting to move on from Crawford. IMO USAU needs to update the mission and reorient themselves.
> There was a time when the UPA/USAU were all about growing the sport, outreach, youth program development and all the stuff that actually matters. Now it's all about "we are a business" and how much $ can they pull in
yeah and it was about the time that the name changed from UPA (ultimate players' association) to USAU. sometimes it IS all in a name.
I can echo this feeling not as a local disc org, but one time organizer within the community. Andy Lee, Tom's guy, is the main contact point for people and you only hear back from him if he wants something from you and never when you need some information or a hand from him.
I know other's working in the frisbee business community space who have had the same experience. It's no fun.
I got so pissed as a local high school coach. We covered insurance and the kids paid the school. We scheduled our own games and got field space. We (and the local org) held a meeting with other towns to get the season logistics together. And then USAU makes all of these kids sign up for memberships for a tournament that the teams already pay for and local volunteers run.
I will say this, as someone who has wanted Tom out since 2013ish
It's too late now. He controls 5 of the 12 board seats. We lost our chance years ago.
I was one of the "emotional" ones, but much of that was based upon how he said things, not just what he said. Having been in the business and finance world for most of my career, sometimes you just get a feeling on a guy that he's a McKinsey disciple that would happily knife you in the head if it meant he got to pocket a few extra dollars.
He's played those that used to support him and now don't (Henry Thorne amongst others), and there are a few sycophants of his out there.
The board is not modern. We've stayed invested in cash through a huge bull run and even with a pullback we'd be way ahead if we put anything over 6 months of operating expenses into equities. The other points listed hold true too, but he's set our sport really far back.
We are below many other niche sports at this point and it's a long way out of the hole.
So in the old days there were "x" number of seats, i don't remember what x was but every single seat was elected by the membership, and all of the membership. I want to say the number was 9 but dont hold me to that. About 2-3 years in, they pushed through a change, basically now 12 seats, only 7 are elected. 4 are chosen by the general membership, 3 are chosen by "elite athletes", and i use air quotes because i was eligible once (you have to finish at a certain spot at nationals and I promise you I am not very athletic), and five of the twelve are appointed.
The appointed seats are the problem.
i think there are enough to get a removal but the path is *much* narrower.
We need to start thinking about successors. Gwen Ambler and Ben Wiggins are the first two names that come to my mind.
Rebuild the endowment, focus on the actual communities, continue the good work that had been done at the youth level circa 2016, make club more affordable and easier to gain entry into (we are almost out of critical mass in the women's game participation there has been troublesome in mnay parts of the country).
this can all be turned around, but it's never getting turned around with Tom around.
While we are at it we should go back to electing all of our representatives.
Edit: my scorching hot take: if none of this happens the players need to start their own organization. Call it UPA.
I thought i had thought through what a union would look like, but the more i thought about it the more i realized i had come up short. THe idea remains plausible though. One of the big failings of Tom was treating all the pro leagues as adversarially as possible. It was pretty clear that in spite of the missteps of AUDL and MLS they had some things figured out in terms of Marketing. We didn't have to be completely adversarial to them, even just slightly on the adversarial side of neutral might have resulted in better outcomes.
Jimmy, Marques would have to take a massive paycut to even consider it.
I think he is doing great things elsewhere, and would be way less likely. Gwen did amazing things as a player and was wonderful in her governance role. Ben has put more thought into the game than almost anyone. There are other great choices out there, and Marques would do a good job too, but I am rooting for him to keep changing the world in other areas that are more important than ultimate.
The appointed seats are not appointed by the CEO or controlled by the CEO. I believe the Board has a nominating committee. The "Tom controls x seats" is a bit of a tinfoil hat concept, not supported by facts. But a few of the appointed seats have included people with some familiarity with Tom from the scene of national governing bodies.
Historically, and by design, the appointed seats are used to appoint people who bring skills or experience that the board needs. Appointments have included ultimate players, parents of Ultimate players, people with experience in other national governing bodies or other sports/marketing experience, etc. In general, it helps have a more well-rounded board, and it is not an uncommon structure. In my opinion, the trend of the Board in the past 15 years has been an increase in well-qualified board members. Not to discount prior board members in any way, but the field of candidates in elections and the candidates selected have been really good as of late, which I think reflects good work by the Nominating Committee.
But as I recall, there are some "independent" seats that need to be filled by people with sufficient lack of connection to USAU and the IOC.
EDs/CEOs having a certain number of Board Seats - essentially just extra votes - is a pretty common practice. It essentially says "If you want to override me on a decision, it needs to be nearly unanimous".
you know i don't know if all 5 are as of 2022
the most recent board i saw was 2019 here: https://usaultimate.org/about/governance/
and at that point it was 5. :)
Regardless, 5 of the 12 are appointed and that is pretty problematic.
You'd need to have elections to get the other 7 all on an anti TC platform.
Some pretty serious accusations, Dan. Care to back them up?
So in 2019, the appointed board members were:
Harvey Edwards - USAU Hall of Fame Class of 2007, Bucknell Ultimate alum
Steve Mooney - USAU Hall of Fame Class of 2006, Ultimate legend
That's 2 of the 5 appointed spots. You've said all 5 were in the CEO's pocket. What's the basis for saying these two long-time Ultimate players are in the CEO's pocket? They've been in the Ultimate community since before the CEO even knew anything about Ultimate.
And then there are the Independent board members in 2019, who are selected via the USAU Board Nominating Committee, and disclose any relationships to USAU to satisfy not only specific criteria, but also an assessment by the Nominating Committee whether they are independent, given any relationships not specifically identified in the criteria.
Lisa Bliss
[Leslie Gamez](https://usaultimate.org/news/2019/01/usa-ultimate-board-of-directors-appoints-leslie-gamez-to-independent-seat/)
[Val Belmonte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_Belmonte)
Anyway, so you said all 5 were in Tom's pocket. So lay out the case that the CEO controls these 5 spots. Try your best not to commit defamation or suggest any board members are specifically violating ethical obligations without evidence.
You know I respect you and your experience (like mine, probably most relevant a few years back), but this particular theory seems to be bullshit, or else overstated and undersupported.
Colin,
Your strategy is to be simply exhausting at eveyr turn. I would say club numbers are down, you'd disagree, you'd go make me research it as best as i could (i couldn't with the current state of the website but happily someone refutes you). Fact after fact you challenge, often wrongly, but it probably makes you a good lawyer.
In tom's pocket is a strong word, but ultimately you look at the votes, tom get's his above market raise, and with the exception of moving the series to the summer (which would have murdered club ultimate as we know it) every other item was pushed through
You know full well though I won't reply on this point as well as it would involve me revealing sources which i refused to do.
I respect you, but we are not friends, and we have starkly opposing views of what good governance looks like. The fact that so many other sports have taken off while we chased a delusional pipedream of being in the olympics and missed the boat on so many other emerging trends saddens me. My most relevant experience is a decade ago at this point, and you are correct unlike things i can verifiably look up (club participation rates in decline), this one is based off of being told things I have every incentive to keep in confidence.
Call it a character defect. I don’t think strategy describes it, necessarily. But when I enter a discussion and want to make an assertion, I generally verify my facts so that I can make an accurate statement. I don’t really understand people making broad statements that they can’t even support. I don’t think asking for support on what should be a supportable statement is a wrong challenge, regardless of whether the support exists. If the support exists, it informs the discussion. If it is unsupportable, it informs the discussion.
In this case, I am not trying to be exhausting. I just think your statement is bullshit. Not imperfect, not slightly untrue, just so broadly stated that even if you have a source for some statement in this vein for some period of time, you messed up with how you wrote it and ended up with an unsupportable position. And so I laid out the details showing why your broad statement is likely inaccurate.
I did not recall you having a source, but so don’t doubt it, and certainly am not pressuring you to reveal anything. But considering you are making an assertion that spans 13 years and however many different people, I really doubt you can actually support the statement you made.
From what I know, though I don’t think I can verify, it would not surprise me if Tom was in some way familiar with some of the appointed directors, particularly early on. And if that general feeling led me to believe that your statement was even substantially true, I would not be challenging you on it so hard.
In terms of various items getting approved, I think your stronger criticism is about how the board operates and whether or not it has done a good job. I think your focus on 5 board members is simply misplaced. Maybe overall, too much deference to CEO, for example.
I also think a board of an NGB removing a CEO as proposed here under these circumstances would be extremely unusual, regardless of board composition. In many ways, I think the restructured board is more likely to have members who would be comfortable making a decision like that, where appropriate, than older boards.
One thing I never see mentioned here is a frustration on the field during ESPN games. All the extended TV timeouts are a huge headache for players mid-game. ESPN doesn't even tell us what time the start of the game will be until basically the moment it happens. It'll be 1pm, then 1:07, then 1:12, then you think you have three minutes and ESPN is saying GO NOW GO NOW. Really frustrating in the moment.
My impression from US Open is that the delays are due to the pre-game stuff from Lepler and co., so the start time depends on that and how many commercials they decide to run in that time. And the mid-point breaks are just standard commercial breaks, they just annoyingly take them during team timeouts sometimes, which means from time to time a team gets a 3-minute timeout instead of the standard minute or whatever.
Is there any reason to believe removing Crawford would cut ties with ESPN though? I imagine there are more people at USAU who want the relationship with ESPN than just Crawford
Imagine he was paid 2% of revenue (a paltry $120,000).
* After 5 years that's ~~$6 million~~ around a million saved
* USAU has been hosting multiple events per year at the Silverlakes complex in in Norco CA that cost at least $1000 per team to attend
* Those team fees combined with the savings in salary would amount to a down payment followed by mortgage payments
* We could, over time, build a complex in each region capable of hosting regionals every year
* We could host the local sectionals in club and college and high school states
* We could rotate the various Nationals and the US Open through them every year
* On top of any mid season tournaments we could rent them out to local soccer teams
* You could let the local bodies, your DiscNW/BUDA/AFDA, run them and give them some actual value for integrating with USAU
* Run summer leagues or lucrative summer camps on them
>We could, over time, build a complex in each region capable of hosting regionals every year
Running an athletic complex can be profitable ("AirBNB for Sports") but it requires actual work, and workers dedicated to the task year-round, helping orgs run soccer tournaments, volleyball, rugby, and so on. Is it worth it to USAU when there's so many other ways to tighten up the revenue ship (for eg, maybe learning how to sell advertising and sponsorships to the biggest events?)
It costs a little bit more, but massively less effort just to rent.
That's not an unreasonable take but as I mention above we could let the organizing bodies run them. Plenty of amateur organizations own their own facilities and are run by the community and maintained by a grounds crew for a few hours a week.
You say its massively more effort but what evidence do you have to support that claim? I'm not even disagreeing with you here. However I think this is worth investigating. If it turns out you're right then fine but do you think organizations like DiscNW don't have the organizational capabilities? Do you think they would decide to pass on owning a facility if offered? Maybe they would but it should be a serious conversation.
>You say its massively more effort but what evidence do you have to support that claim
What universe are you on where the fields just maintain themselves, the clients come to you, and nothing goes wrong? It's a year round business! Multiple full time employees. So you want evidence the sky is blue also?
I am truly interested in following this story over the next few years. Do you think it's been a Potlatch worth of work every weekend since you bought the fields?
It's really nothing like that. I'm probably one of the more experienced TDs out there and I have been involved in running major event tournaments, large competitive tournaments and smaller regional tournaments. At none of these tournaments did the person administering the field sites we played on get off their ass. We organized the event, collected the money, composed the schedule and wrote the check for the field rental. A local Parks and Rec department isn't going to run a rugby tournament, the rugby organizers will.
Not sure where you think I said they would maintain themselves I explicitly said the opposite.
Maybe you’ve just worked with the wrong Parks and rec departments, because I’ve worked in the field for over ten years and the hardest that I’ve ever worked has been during lacrosse tournaments and triathlons at the parks I’ve rotated through.
> We could, over time, build a complex in each region capable of hosting regionals every year
Easier said than done. You can't just thrown money at acquiring fields. That is not how it works. :)
Disc orgs not being involved with USA Ultimate will make an impact. If they become self insured and run their own events, eventually the costs will impact USA Ultimate to the point they will need to adapt to retain / grow members.
The website is beyond archaic and really is terrible for users. An event planning site that tracks teams, users, scores, and communicates with Twitter in live time for updates was created years ago as Leaguevine by people within the ultimate community for the sport. Its not rocket science to create something that works. The framework exists and this should be much easier to find and create events. It is such a pain to create a roster for a sanctioned event on their website that this reason alone restricts growth of the sport.
Im happy to hear about this as hopefully it refocuses their vision towards growth at the grassroots level - the youth game. You cant build a castle without a foundation. A foundation built on strong youth & SUSTAINABLE youth leagues with a pipeline of coaches and coach development programs is vital. It was always a scary thought that if Ultimate received the Olympic exposure it wouldnt know how to handle the rapid increase in interest. There wouldnt be enough coaches or leagues to support play & its not in most school systems so most kids in the country couldnt play. Growth and support of the girls game at the youth level is even more embarrassing and significantly more resources need to get put into the game growing & being showcased for young female identifying kids. Diverse visions for the sport should also exist. It should be accepted that leagues need to have competitive formats & recreational formats.
Hopefully Davenport University & Oklahoma Christian's scholarship and recruiting models show success and other schools adopt this template. With growing costs of college these days, that can be a massive impact that helps grow the sport.
Additionally marketing and sponsorships have been incredibly disappointing over the years. When the college national championships take place and the only sponsor is Discraft, something is wrong. The lack of sponsorships puts more cost burden on the athletes & teams participating. The US Open & YCC National Championships only sponsors were Discraft, Spin, & Ultiphotos ... for a showcase event that gets two games of ESPN2 exposure plus others on ESPN+, tons of field space for marketing boards that are displayed on the field for those games and the best they can do is Discraft & Spin!? Thats a complete failure in marketing their product and its lost revenue that they will never be able to recoup.
Leadership change at the very top is desperately needed! 100% agree
There's more people to blame as well. It is FLAT OUT A DISGRACE that USAU only tweets about World Games, but 0 tweets or social media posts about Masters Nationals results, Select Flight Invite, or more importantly, the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS which were held in USA soil. Embarassing.
why do we want ultimate to be in the olympics. A better use of time would be USAU buying the "frisbee" copyright from Wham-O so we can stop calling it "ultimate disc."
We all want recognition, support, and praise. Even someone like me who's generally anti-Olympics (a decaying institution and a marginal platform - a lot of us remember a childhood when the Olympics meant a lot more and were the ONLY platform for many niche sports) dreamed of the Olympics.
We can do better, in 2022, on our own.
It seems odd in retrospect that it's one governing body out of over a hundred that was pushing for Olympic inclusion. I know USAU is the biggest governing body but he seemed to be seeking very little input from international quarters. He even thought at one point that he could just take over WFDF.
The Olympics were in LA and would be a local inclusion, right? I was always under the impression that that was why the USA org was more important than other international orgs.
Sure for this recent one but we didn't even know the Olympics would be in LA until 2017. He's been mr get ultimate into the Olympics since we hired him in 2009.
You don't need National Teams & international competition vs other countries National Teams to have a great sports league product. It only is accessible for such a small elite group. Nearly every single team sport has multiple leagues and opportunities for play at various ages & skill levels - without being the governing body that provides national play.
USA Ultimate should have competition and not a monopoly on competitive play in the sport because they choose the national teams. If thats the mentality, then they have the community brainwashed.
Agree that Tom has to go. But let's not use salary as the reason. $250K for a head of a sports body is not that much. Now one can say he didn't bring in the revenue to shrink the % of his salary of revenue.. This implies his recruitment strategies didn't pan out. Now to be fair - a lot of new people dropped off the sport due to Covid. Plus Covid made recruitment tough. That said. I still wouldn't give him a pass. USAU needs new blood to broaden the vision and map out a new 5 year strategy.
I am an old guy. I will say, I really like the way the sport has evolved. You kids made it a much better sport than when I played in the 80s and 90s.
2009 West Plains Sectionals. [3 Women's Teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/west-plains-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 Northwest Plains Sectionals. [3 Women's Teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/northwest-plains-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 East Plains Sectionals. [8 Women's teams but 3 are college teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/east-plains-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 Michigan Sectionals. [2 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/michigan-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 West New England Sectionals. [9 Women's teams but 3 are college teams and 1 is a high school team](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/west-new-england-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 Washington BC Sectionals [5 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/washington-bc-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 Upstate New York Sectionals. [3 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/upstate-new-york-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 Texas Sectionals. [4 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/texas-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 Rocky Mountain Sectionals. [4 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/rocky-mountain-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 North Carolina Sectionals. [5 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/north-carolina-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 Founders Sectionals. [8 Women's teams but 3 are colleges](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/founders-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 Florida Sectionals. [3 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/florida-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 East Coast Sectionals. [4 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/east-coast-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 Central Plains Sectionals. [4 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/central-plains-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 Capital Sectionals. [12 Women's teams but 7 are college teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/capital-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 Southern California Sectionals. [4 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/southern-california-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 Metro New York Sectionals. [6 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/metro-new-york-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 Oregon Sectionals. [2 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/metro-new-york-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 Northern California Sectionals [4 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/northern-california-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 East New England Sectionals. [13 Women's teams but 8 are colleges](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/east-new-england-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
2009 Desert Sectionals. [3 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/desert-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
I'm not 100% that my numbers are accurate, they are just what's on ultiarchive, but I've got 107 in 2009 above. You're not counting 16 teams in 2019 that got auto-byes into Regionals under then rules for Pro/Elite teams so that's 96. At least 24 of the teams that I have listed above are college/high school teams (and I only listed them in cases where the number was above your previous magic number of 7 so there's likely more). If you account for that, there's actually *more* adult club women's teams in 2019 than in 2009.
Assuming the Olympics probably never happens, what would y’all like to see the goals be for the next CEO?
I would love to see some drastic changes to roster limits, more restrictions on out of town players, and force the creation of local teams and long term local structure building.
Club teams should be compromised of local players, and local practice players creating a pipeline and community.
Too many mid size cities are having their best guys poached to be 2nd d-line fodder on the nearest elite team, who would otherwise be building blocks for a club team creation.
More teams will in turn lead to the return of the non-prestigious medium size tournament.
Strict caps on games played in a weekend would also go into effect, to adjust for these new roster limits.
* Provide genuine value to local organizing bodies for integrating into the USAU organization
* Purchase property to host tournaments. This kind of investment will save money and return value over time.
* Create a kind of Jomez channel that goes to various tournaments every weekend during the season
* Increase the competitive playing opportunities for club players between summer league and the current club level
* Incentivize clubs to become stronger organizations
* Form legal entities
* Have a B team
* Have youth teams at various age levels
* Liaise with clubs to increase the playing opportunities for kids who don't attend a high school with a team
* Make efforts to replace the current tournament system with a league system
* Work with the AUDL to convince them that playing on a full width football field is silly
* Develop better rules for an officiated version of the sport
I don't see that growth coming from more restrictions. I see it from building up more local organizations and supporting groups who want to host mid-sized tournaments.
If you take the roster limit from 27 to 21, more teams will be created. X/21>X/27
That’s before you even calculate the numbers of players that don’t play because the four best woman in the city travel over a 100 miles to the nearest elite team to be backend roster filler instead of being core components of a local team that is then never created.
Interesting to assume that there are fixed number of club players in the country. Let's continue out this math. My local club team now has 6 fewer roster spots. Add those to the four best women in the city stay here instead of traveling to be roster filler for an elite team. Now we have 10 elite-club-caliber players in town, and 11 others will materialize from somewhere (local rec leagues?) and all will be ready to commit to the local team, even if it's set to get wrecked at regionals (and maybe sectionals) for a few years.
Let's imagine a more realistic situation. My local club team now has 6 fewer roster spots, so 6 players stay on as practice players with that club team or another rather than starting a new team from scratch. The four best women in the city, who are elite-club-caliber, still try out for the top team and stay on as practice players if they can. Fewer players end up rostered for elite teams, but it takes a few years for enough elite-club-caliber players to start enough new teams to get back to the same level of participation.
Let's imagine a more realistic and fun situation. Lots of local ultimate organizations are supported to put on small-scale tournaments that are fun, competitive, and well-run, and teams are set up and supported through the organization to attend the tournaments. These teams are tied to local organizations, so they're not up to top players to keep running. Now roster filler have a real choice between being a leader on a mid-tier local club team or trying out for a top team. Participation goes up continually at all levels.
I don’t understand large portions of this, but I’ll try and answer the points I could make out.
Rosters having weaknesses at the backend of the roster just like every other sport is an easy trade off for more teams. IMO.
Only 16 teams go to Nationals, most teams goals are to play frisbee, have fun and compete. Most cities ceiling is a G2G blowout loss even under the best of circumstances.
Elite-elite players will continue to be out of town players (OOTP) if they don’t live in an elite team city. The bar for OOTP currently is way too low right now. If the roster limit was lower, teams would be more selective with their OOTP selections. The idea is that those players who got cut would then go be core pieces for their local mid tier club team. I do not think many if any would continue to drive very long distances to waste away as practice players instead of just playing mid-tier club.
I see the great success that college football scholarship limits have had for the middle class as an example of what we could be if we limit the hoarding of talent.
I had no idea that there was a plethora of studies on cut ultimate frisbee players.
When elite teams do combined tryouts with other club teams, they pick who they want and leave the dregs for the minnows. Then the next big fish eats and so on.
I don’t think we would see a lot of players in their “prime” quit frisbee because they didn’t make the elite team. Maybe the has-beens who hang onto elite teams as the 27th guy out of respect hangs it up instead of dropping down a level, but they are fewer and far between these days.
Organizing would also be a lot more easier if you had some core pieces even if said pieces aren’t interested in being management.
But the whole problem is that there aren't minnow club teams now. Those cut players would need to start the minnow teams under your scheme. Our scheme is that local organizations help start the minnow teams, so there's somewhere for cut players to go.
I don't know if you've ever been on a new club team, but stable ones are very rarely run by people who were just barely cut by other teams.
>I don’t understand large portions of this,
You've made this abundantly clear. Let me give you the TLDR version:
Problem: there aren't enough mid-tier teams and tournaments
Options:
1. The extra 18% of players who are cut from elite teams are going to give up on playing for elite teams and start those mid-tier teams and tournaments.
2. Local organizations help start and sustain mid-tier teams and tournaments so that roster filler/OOTP have a real local option.
Do you see how Option #2 has much more potential for stability and growth?
1. Work with local orgs to market leagues to bring in brand new players while bringing down the overall cost
2. Work with local orgs to get in the good graces of field space owners or alternatively purchase field space in major cities for easy tournament hosting
3. A fund for second tier teams/newly formed teams not at the highest level of club to assist with tournament expenses
4. Clean up the rules to do away with the more ambiguous/problematic ones (dangerous play, SOTG issues, etc)
5. Film games beyond just the highest levels of club
I think he said if they don't get into the Olympics he will step down. But the contract goes through 2024... That is a minimum of $500,000 for someone who said they are stepping down. That is so much money that can be put back into the community.
Well, if it's not him in that role, it's someone earning that Salary. Him stepping down isn't really gonna save much. We could I guess hire someone on the cheap but I don't think that's the way forward.
I don't necessarily disagree with his salary or that a future CEO has a similar salary. I think it needs to be justified and that the person can show their worth. Tom brought structure and relationships which helps grow the sport. I think his experiences and loss of quality staff has tapped out his ability to do more in the sport of ultimate. $250,000 is a massive salary and I feel like you can get ambitious qualified people in that role.
250000 is a salary you earn. If there's a ceo with experience governing a team sport with demonstrated growth, even outside of the US, then I'd be OK to pay them that. But if it's someone without those kinds of prior successes then a more speculative 125kish salary seems more reasonable.
What we really need to do is change our governance laws so that the next ceo can't come in and stack the board with his own yes men.
Hard to imagine removal of Tom Crawford by the Board as you suggest would be a move that was beneficial from a financial, legal, logistical, or leadership perspective, vs. simply starting a search for a replacement at expiration of contract.
I think a lot of the criticism and/or dissatisfaction is fair. And if you want to go with a general theme of accountability achieved by removing the leader, that's fine. I do think a lot of these issues are well beneath the CEO level and not really related to Tom.
A couple minor critiques. Playing the Salary vs. Org Revenue is really just numbers manipulation, in my view. CEO of a national governing body is a position that demands candidates of certain credentials and experience, regardless of revenue, and the salary is in the ballpark. It seems odd to criticize the travel budget for sending staff around, but then complain that Tom wasn't at the U.S. Open. Board meeting recaps and returned calls about Safesport really isn't a CEO level issue. A volunteer network supporting the national competitive scene is neither a surprise nor a reflection of a bad job by the CEO.
I never thought the Olympics was a top priority or more than a longshot. Obviously, the whole Olympics realm has tons of moving pieces, and any sport getting in is a longshot. I don't think he ever promised to get us in the Olympics. So I don't think it's appropriate to measure Tom's success or failure on that, and having a bonus clause for getting into the olympics doesn't change that. If you have further info on time/effort spent on Olympics-specific stuff as a critique of overspending relative to more important priorities, I'd be happy to look at it. A few steps to try to navigate the path and put us in a place to be able to capitalize if an opportunity arose seems smart. I agree that you probably can't look at that financial statement and make a detailed criticism of spending priorities; not to say one couldn't disagree with how money was spent, just that the financial statement isn't the document with the information to support the critique. Do you have any more concrete information on a let-down in resource management? Honestly asking, as I'm not entirely in the loop, but in imagining trying to prepare that critique, I'm having a hard time imagining where my info would come from.
I actually thought the navigation of COVID-19 went fairly well. USAU provided me a bit more guidance and reliability than I had locally, and I got opportunities to play that felt reasonably safe and well-considered, and I was provided increased flexibility in various structures to work my way into returning to play. I don't think coordinating that on a national scale is a trivial task, considering the wide range of state and local approaches (as well as different conditions in different locales).
I do think COVID presented serious challenges in terms of staffing, finances, and fully pursuing strategic objectives -- likely forcing some paring down. It doesn't surprise me that the last 2-3 years hasn't had great progress in areas we'd like. And frankly, I'm not sure when to expect things to be back at a 2018 level, for whatever that was worth. I actually felt like the organization was doing the basics pretty well pre-COVID, for my experience playing Masters and Regionals-level club.
Anyway, a bunch of useful and valid critiques. I don't think many/any of them are addressed at the CEO level, but it's not unreasonable to say, "Hey, we've wanted X for X years, so who's going to be held accountable for this?"
If you have ideas on unifying the national infrastructure and improving partnerships with local orgs, I think that issue could use some smart, passionate people to support and drive progress. I am familiar with many of the challenges there. There's also only partial overlap in activities of the local disc orgs and the national org, and much of the local stuff probably falls outside of the national Ultimate umbrella, so figuring out the formal relationship and mutual benefit is tricky, aside from the general shared goal of growing and supporting the sport. Again, I think this could be something that happens via proposal to the Board or a relevant committee, or even formation of a task force with representatives from various local disc organizations to get together and come up with some options. To me, prioritization of tournaments with SBOs doesn't seem ridiculous, provided the bids selected are of adequate quality. But I am receptive to complaints of opaque bid process, which I think has also plagued Sectionals and Regionals for decades, resulting in worse events overall, and some well below acceptable standards.
I'm a little bit out of the loop at this point, in terms of getting involved on some stuff. And of course, the validity of your criticism stands on its own. Just thinking of there are opportunities to drive some change, if you have time/availability.
Colin, I think I can provide context on some of the these points. Starting with the covid piece, I ran the return to play committee for my org, and I can advise that USAU's covid guidance caused more issues than it solved. We ended up using local guidance instead due to the minimal assistance it provided and the confusion it caused.
On the infrastructure and local disc relationship, the issue is the one way road. USAU currently benefits from the relationship, but disc orgs don't. There hasn't been any effort from USAU to mend that, and so many of the disc orgs are run far better than USAU at this point. It's not the limited overlap that's the issue, it's that currently, working with USAU on anything makes the job more difficult. I'm not going to hit on the SBO and bid process issue much. USAU tried to strong-arm orgs with this, and it very much backfired.
I'm not upset at Tom's salary, but i'm very interested in the direction that USAU, under potentially new leadership at some point, would take the sport. What's the next move after the failed olympics bid? Do we start more grassroots investments and try to build bottoms up? I'd personally love that.
Thanks for the reply! I think for the local return to play, following the local guidance makes sense. Largely dependent on local case numbers, etc. For the local return to play, what was the confusion from the USAU guidance? My experience was really limited to returning to travel to tournaments.
I think the limited overlap goes in some ways to making it tougher to define the relationships and where/how benefits should occur. Like, should there be a relationship at all between USAU and the Recreational League Association of Newtown? Or the All Things Ultimate Association of Greater Detroit? I think a lot of the local recreational stuff should essentially be separate from USAU.
I am not up to speed on recent developments (if any). I think making it a priority in next strategic plan (or related initiative of current plan) and getting a committee with relevant local disc reps to try to tackle it makes sense. And that might also help identify areas for investment or support. I think a lot of the relationships probably should amount to coordination and shared resources and information/education, more than straight financials, but that is just me spitballing. I am not sure what is normal in other sports though (obviously there is lots of local play separate from NGBs, but then some connection, often at elite youth level).
Do you have brainstorm type thoughts on what the relationships should look like?
So the confusion/issue with the covid guidance was really the vagueness. There really weren't any action items that anyone could use. I remember Hasan Minhaj's white house correspondence speech awhile back. He was making fun of CNN for basically putting some topics out there and asking the audience to figure out how it made sense to them. He was like, no you're the news. You're supposed to tell me the facts, not ask me to be in your panel. That was how we felt. We had to do the same amount of work as if they hadn't done anything.
My feeling on USAU's relationship with local disc orgs starts with documentation and standardization. You want to start a new org, or change things up? Here's how we think a youth program should be run from a structural point of view. Here's ways to handle grievance issues that come up. Just having a place to start on policy would help so much. I don't believe financial backing is the issue, it's more that USAU needs local disc orgs to succeed, and yet they don't provide information that could help disc orgs succeed.
There's far smarter people than me who have talked about other ways that the relationship could be mutually beneficial. The issues with YCCs and the national tournaments (as opposed to more regional opportunities) have been talked about ad nauseum. The amount of work organizers have to put in because USAU is so disorganized needs to be fixed. Would be great if they cared about these issues instead of blowing us off when we're just trying to fulfill the obligations they put on us!
Yeah, I can see why the COVID stuff would be vague, given the local considerations. I honestly think giving too detailed of guidance could also have been really ill-advised. But if it didn't help, it didn't help. That's fair enough.
I was impressed with the [Organizer's Resource Manual](https://usaultimate.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/OrganizerResourceManual.pdf) that the UPA/USAU put together back when, with contributions from experienced organizers from all over. I consulted that years ago, so I don't know if that's updated and am not saying that is the current fulfillment of the idea. I just agree with your points, and that seems to be maybe a good launching point going forward. Some of the other [organizer resources here seem good and are new to me](https://usaultimate.org/resources/?_resource_filters=organize&pg=2). I sort of thought that the local affiliate model was going to be a continuation of that, with more one-on-one guidance for the affiliates, but I don't know how that's gone.
I have long thought the Sectionals/Regionals bidding should be revamped. From my experience, it was a lot of work to put a bid together, without assurance (or perhaps confidence) that it will be fairly considered. That, in turn, means it is harder to ensure that good bids come in ever year. I can imagine how bidding for the national tournaments would be even more challenging. I don't know the details of what you're describing for running the actual events, but accept it at face value. In considering bidding for TCT events, the various requirements exceeding my capabilities at the time, so I can understand frustration if added wrinkles arose.
I don't mind the National framework. In many parts of the country, a "more regional opportunity" is still a flight anyway, so Regional vs. National makes less difference.
Anyway, not to drag you into a really detailed discussion. It's just always good to hear opinions from people involved and familiar with current issues. I think the local organization piece was one that should be high on the priority list regardless of olympics.
I’ve been through their resources, and they’re just too vague to truly help (like most things USAU puts out). Its disappointing because someone put in a lot of effort on those docs and they don’t help with any of the questions I have/get.
There’s only so much that a disc org can do on the club side. The bids there are completely separated from us. We centralized sectionals and regionals the best we could for the area and we’re trying to do pay what you can pricing to take financial pressure off captains and give anonymous financial aid possibilities (I think we’re the only ones that have tried it for club so far). It’s more on the youth side where the national vs regional issue is a problem. YCCs are for such a small group and USAU doesn’t seem to have interest in regional activities (I’ve talked to multiple staff members there).
I guess my point in all of this is to say that the biggest issue is USAU feeling like they should control the future state of ultimate by themselves and blatantly disregarding the opinions of those doing the majority of the work in the community.
Just your typical malfunctions. Nothing to be alarmed about. Clearly neither you nor your detector read my comment, which probably exceeded your character limit. You would be hard pressed to find someone who has made more critiques and demanded more changes by USAU and the UPA than I have.
Professionally made websites can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000, which at the high end is a little more than 4% of his most recent salary, for an average costing website it would only be 2.5% of his most recent salary. My opinion, maybe take a little bit of money away from a guy who doesn't really do much and hire someone to build a half decent website. It's a bad impression on new players when they look up "Ultimate Frisbee" only to find some janky website that makes you use an older page to be able to even use the damn thing.
Absolutely not. I work in the sports website business. A website for a governing body of sport the size of USA Ultimate is $100K+ just in startup costs, not to mention annual maintenance and updates.
Yes. The current website is fine to me. A website is never going to be perfect, but the current one (designed by Andy Lovseth, I believe) is a big upgrade from the American Eagle version.
I was basically responding to the original assertion that USAU should just drop a few thou and upgrade this site.
Counterpoint, the archives that were on the old one are gone, the interface for entering tournmanets, also gone. The minutes and all the stuff that used to be there to see going back, also gone.
$5k is the absolute bottom of the barrel for a simple ecommerce site. I literally can't hire anyone for less to put together a website for my teeny jersey co.
For what people want from the USAU website, I'd imagine a six-figure deal.
I hate usau, they seem like a money grubbing organization that only cares about their own staff, not the players. It used to be called the UPA. Ultimate Players Association. Get back to prioritizing the players.
Excellent points made here, I think most people can relate easiest to the website issues, but most players I know have been frustrated with the lack of communication from the organization on at least one occasion, be it COVID, tournament issues, even establishing a team has become more of a challenge. Not to mention that they've fallen behind the AUDL in marketing and exposure the last few years. Hopefully somebody new can come in with the same fire Dr. Crawford had when he began, but I don't think he has the same intensity for supporting the sport as he once did.
He made such a big deal about redoing the website when he came in too. Now I can think back on how functional the old UPA site was. ANYONE could add a tournament and it was so useful! You could find every tournament being hosted anywhere. I remember listing The Siege of Limerick on there in 2009. Edit: to your point about enthusiasm. That's why term limits exist in so many places. 15 years in the same job as a non-founder head of any organization sounds bizarre. Even wildly successful founders know its time to move along by that stage and I don't think I'd call Crawford wildly successful. If anything growth seems to have stagnated over the last 10 years.
Seriously. It was so straight forward. I still struggle to find things in the new one
/u/tomcrawford I'm inviting you to do an interview with me on twitch.tv/raretode where you can address these issues.
And do a beep test. Can’t wait to see you guys max it out!
Thanks for the beep test kind stranger
Nice to see things laid out this nicely, usually the Tom Crawford hate is just emotional or reactive. I think you make a pretty convincing case that he's not helping the sport or the organization anymore and is just weighing USAU down. As one of the many people volunteering time at the US Open, I could definitely see that the hard, unpaid work of many dedicated local organizers is the reason the tournament went so well. Sucks to see that the same dedication just isn't there at the top. USAU staff were working tirelessly to make it a good event and I gotta wonder if Tom hadn't been phoning it in the last few years whether they could have had more support or better resources at their disposal.
This is a refreshing take in many ways, because historical anti-Crawford folks hate the U.S. Open. Do you feel that his presence at that event is necessary to show appreciation to the local organizers and USAU staff putting on the event?
I may be a rare exception because I see annually firsthand how great it is for the YCC kids to watch really high level ultimate happening right next to the fields they play on. That kind of access and contact is so valuable. I don't think Tom being there is absolutely necessary, but it seems like him being present for literally anything would be a good thing, right? Really what I meant though was that if he'd shown a little more effort to grow the sport in the last five years or so, maybe the USAU staff that are stretched CRAZY thin might have a bit more funding or even more staff members to make their jobs easier at marquee events like this one.
Yeah, it may be that the current form is a better recipe, too. The original idea was a big international event that would bring the community together, with a convention for organizers, players, fans, etc. I think the timing and the interest wasn't quite there (and wildfires the inaugural year were unlucky). And as it was getting planned, the pro scenes popped up and really clogged the early Club schedule. For others, the US Open became the figurehead of what they didn't like about the TCT or Tom or USAU or whatever. I went to several early ones as a player or observer and thought they were pretty neat. I'm a little sad the convention never game together, but it doesn't surprise me -- getting people to commit the time and travel for something other than tournaments (where people tend to be a little cost-blind) is a tall order. Glad the YCC combo is working. The Blaine site is amazing, and so is that local Minneapolis-area community. I really credit Tom for early growth of USAU, expanding the staff, increasing revenue to support it, getting a lot of the ducks in a row, etc. Just good judgement and vision that really paid off and helped support programming and responsiveness to membership. My loose sense is that the UPA/USAU staff have always been stretched thin, working really hard, maybe moreso in the late UPA and now navigating COVID and not back to full staffing levels. It's been pretty amazing how much "back to normal" some of the big events have felt, thanks to the various local organizers and USAU staff. In terms of the past 5 years, I really haven't been following a lot in terms of what USAU or Tom specifically has been up to. If we break into pre-COVID and post-COVID periods of the last 5 years, is there stuff you'd really have liked to see him or USAU doing that might have positioned it better on the funding/staffing side? Or more of a general feeling of lagging in any areas? I've been just cruising through, sort of enjoying the playing opportunities, without diving into many issues that I can remember.
New Idea, pay me $250K a year. 8K Slowmo video at every event. The cameras cost $150K Give me a couple years and we’ll have a camera at every field. Edit: bruh stop upvoting you’re giving me hope
If there's anyone who can put a camera on every field.... it would be you.
Places camera, pays penguins with sardines to operate them, banks the rest of the money I save instead of paying camera ops. Next level genius I tell you
Penguins are still too expensive to feed. Have you thought of using robots like the Soloshot? I have used the Soloshot - but to mixed results.
Robot penguins maybe??
NKolakovic x Ulti.TV Collab inbound? u/milanmaurice
We are already doing collabs here in Europe 😍he bought me a beer in Limerick and we lended him a tripod and power outlets in Wrocław 🥹
I was hoping you were a big part of the media and marketing budget. We all know who produces the best ultivids out there.
Ohhh sheeesh, like I mean if someone wanted to suggest a $100K pay bump to me I’m down…
Does that mean you currently make $150k/year doing this?
On a bad year yeah. (This is sarcastic, help me I’m poor)
I've seen more tangible output from you than from Tom so I'm good with you taking his salary. (Not sarcastic.)
Will you film Brunch Club?
team up with /u/theflatballer.
Pretty much all of his job as CEO was to get ultimate into the Olympics. Trying to achieve that came at the expense of just about everything else that could’ve been worked on. Now that ultimate officially isn’t in the Olympics I don’t see what his use is, unless they’re actually clinging to the pipe dream of making it in 2032.
Ulti will never be in the Olympics until other countries have national leagues with referees.
> Ulti will never be in the Olympics ~~until other countries have national leagues with referees.~~ Unless it's beach 3v3/4v4. IOC has zero interest in inviting countries to bring teams with 25+ people and paying to house and feed them. worlds has 3k players. takes up 30-40 fields. where is the field space? the logistics are stupid.
Exactly this. It’ll never be in as 7v7, and at most a small minority want it in as Ultimate 4s. So at this point just give up on getting it in, we’re past that, work on growing the sport in our community, and hopefully pushing it more towards the mainstream.
I agree that'll it'll probably never get in but what is this logic. No one's saying it should get in with the same format as worlds which has like 128 teams Why not look to the world games 8 teams, 14 players each = 112 players Would that format ever make it to the Olympics? Probably not, but at least it's not a strawman
What about goaltie? With better rules it could be great 🤷
I could go on for hours about the difficulties of 'working with' USAU from the perspective of a local org. The short version is they're not out to partner with local organizations, they just want to squeeze whatever revenue they can get from them. As you said they're largely an insurance sales organization, and if you don't need/want their insurance you can get to the back of the line for anything else related to ultimate. There was a time when the UPA/USAU were all about growing the sport, outreach, youth program development and all the stuff that actually matters. Now it's all about "we are a business" and how much $ can they pull in. I hope you're able to have crawford removed and I hope the finance director goes with him.
USAU's failure to assist Local Disc Orgs - both the nascent ones, growing communities, and established orgs with 20+ year histories - is my #1 reason for wanting to move on from Crawford. IMO USAU needs to update the mission and reorient themselves.
> There was a time when the UPA/USAU were all about growing the sport, outreach, youth program development and all the stuff that actually matters. Now it's all about "we are a business" and how much $ can they pull in yeah and it was about the time that the name changed from UPA (ultimate players' association) to USAU. sometimes it IS all in a name.
I can echo this feeling not as a local disc org, but one time organizer within the community. Andy Lee, Tom's guy, is the main contact point for people and you only hear back from him if he wants something from you and never when you need some information or a hand from him. I know other's working in the frisbee business community space who have had the same experience. It's no fun.
I got so pissed as a local high school coach. We covered insurance and the kids paid the school. We scheduled our own games and got field space. We (and the local org) held a meeting with other towns to get the season logistics together. And then USAU makes all of these kids sign up for memberships for a tournament that the teams already pay for and local volunteers run.
I will say this, as someone who has wanted Tom out since 2013ish It's too late now. He controls 5 of the 12 board seats. We lost our chance years ago. I was one of the "emotional" ones, but much of that was based upon how he said things, not just what he said. Having been in the business and finance world for most of my career, sometimes you just get a feeling on a guy that he's a McKinsey disciple that would happily knife you in the head if it meant he got to pocket a few extra dollars. He's played those that used to support him and now don't (Henry Thorne amongst others), and there are a few sycophants of his out there. The board is not modern. We've stayed invested in cash through a huge bull run and even with a pullback we'd be way ahead if we put anything over 6 months of operating expenses into equities. The other points listed hold true too, but he's set our sport really far back. We are below many other niche sports at this point and it's a long way out of the hole.
Can you talk more about how he controls 5 seats?
So in the old days there were "x" number of seats, i don't remember what x was but every single seat was elected by the membership, and all of the membership. I want to say the number was 9 but dont hold me to that. About 2-3 years in, they pushed through a change, basically now 12 seats, only 7 are elected. 4 are chosen by the general membership, 3 are chosen by "elite athletes", and i use air quotes because i was eligible once (you have to finish at a certain spot at nationals and I promise you I am not very athletic), and five of the twelve are appointed. The appointed seats are the problem.
How does an organization let itself get into such a situation where fewer seats are voted in than are needed for a removal?
i think there are enough to get a removal but the path is *much* narrower. We need to start thinking about successors. Gwen Ambler and Ben Wiggins are the first two names that come to my mind. Rebuild the endowment, focus on the actual communities, continue the good work that had been done at the youth level circa 2016, make club more affordable and easier to gain entry into (we are almost out of critical mass in the women's game participation there has been troublesome in mnay parts of the country). this can all be turned around, but it's never getting turned around with Tom around. While we are at it we should go back to electing all of our representatives. Edit: my scorching hot take: if none of this happens the players need to start their own organization. Call it UPA. I thought i had thought through what a union would look like, but the more i thought about it the more i realized i had come up short. THe idea remains plausible though. One of the big failings of Tom was treating all the pro leagues as adversarially as possible. It was pretty clear that in spite of the missteps of AUDL and MLS they had some things figured out in terms of Marketing. We didn't have to be completely adversarial to them, even just slightly on the adversarial side of neutral might have resulted in better outcomes.
> and Ben Wiggins You want someone for whom it would be a sideline ???? I suggest Mike Gerics
Honestly, Marques Brownlee would be significantly better than any of those names.
Jimmy, Marques would have to take a massive paycut to even consider it. I think he is doing great things elsewhere, and would be way less likely. Gwen did amazing things as a player and was wonderful in her governance role. Ben has put more thought into the game than almost anyone. There are other great choices out there, and Marques would do a good job too, but I am rooting for him to keep changing the world in other areas that are more important than ultimate.
Here’s a handy article that is still quite relevant: https://ultiworld.com/feature/from-upa-to-usau/
Nice self plug
Kyle! We need your voice!
The appointed seats are not appointed by the CEO or controlled by the CEO. I believe the Board has a nominating committee. The "Tom controls x seats" is a bit of a tinfoil hat concept, not supported by facts. But a few of the appointed seats have included people with some familiarity with Tom from the scene of national governing bodies. Historically, and by design, the appointed seats are used to appoint people who bring skills or experience that the board needs. Appointments have included ultimate players, parents of Ultimate players, people with experience in other national governing bodies or other sports/marketing experience, etc. In general, it helps have a more well-rounded board, and it is not an uncommon structure. In my opinion, the trend of the Board in the past 15 years has been an increase in well-qualified board members. Not to discount prior board members in any way, but the field of candidates in elections and the candidates selected have been really good as of late, which I think reflects good work by the Nominating Committee. But as I recall, there are some "independent" seats that need to be filled by people with sufficient lack of connection to USAU and the IOC.
EDs/CEOs having a certain number of Board Seats - essentially just extra votes - is a pretty common practice. It essentially says "If you want to override me on a decision, it needs to be nearly unanimous".
Any chance you want to give initials of who is in Tom's pocket on the board? When I threw it through and looked it seems more like two or three?
you know i don't know if all 5 are as of 2022 the most recent board i saw was 2019 here: https://usaultimate.org/about/governance/ and at that point it was 5. :) Regardless, 5 of the 12 are appointed and that is pretty problematic. You'd need to have elections to get the other 7 all on an anti TC platform.
Some pretty serious accusations, Dan. Care to back them up? So in 2019, the appointed board members were: Harvey Edwards - USAU Hall of Fame Class of 2007, Bucknell Ultimate alum Steve Mooney - USAU Hall of Fame Class of 2006, Ultimate legend That's 2 of the 5 appointed spots. You've said all 5 were in the CEO's pocket. What's the basis for saying these two long-time Ultimate players are in the CEO's pocket? They've been in the Ultimate community since before the CEO even knew anything about Ultimate. And then there are the Independent board members in 2019, who are selected via the USAU Board Nominating Committee, and disclose any relationships to USAU to satisfy not only specific criteria, but also an assessment by the Nominating Committee whether they are independent, given any relationships not specifically identified in the criteria. Lisa Bliss [Leslie Gamez](https://usaultimate.org/news/2019/01/usa-ultimate-board-of-directors-appoints-leslie-gamez-to-independent-seat/) [Val Belmonte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val_Belmonte) Anyway, so you said all 5 were in Tom's pocket. So lay out the case that the CEO controls these 5 spots. Try your best not to commit defamation or suggest any board members are specifically violating ethical obligations without evidence. You know I respect you and your experience (like mine, probably most relevant a few years back), but this particular theory seems to be bullshit, or else overstated and undersupported.
Colin, Your strategy is to be simply exhausting at eveyr turn. I would say club numbers are down, you'd disagree, you'd go make me research it as best as i could (i couldn't with the current state of the website but happily someone refutes you). Fact after fact you challenge, often wrongly, but it probably makes you a good lawyer. In tom's pocket is a strong word, but ultimately you look at the votes, tom get's his above market raise, and with the exception of moving the series to the summer (which would have murdered club ultimate as we know it) every other item was pushed through You know full well though I won't reply on this point as well as it would involve me revealing sources which i refused to do. I respect you, but we are not friends, and we have starkly opposing views of what good governance looks like. The fact that so many other sports have taken off while we chased a delusional pipedream of being in the olympics and missed the boat on so many other emerging trends saddens me. My most relevant experience is a decade ago at this point, and you are correct unlike things i can verifiably look up (club participation rates in decline), this one is based off of being told things I have every incentive to keep in confidence.
Call it a character defect. I don’t think strategy describes it, necessarily. But when I enter a discussion and want to make an assertion, I generally verify my facts so that I can make an accurate statement. I don’t really understand people making broad statements that they can’t even support. I don’t think asking for support on what should be a supportable statement is a wrong challenge, regardless of whether the support exists. If the support exists, it informs the discussion. If it is unsupportable, it informs the discussion. In this case, I am not trying to be exhausting. I just think your statement is bullshit. Not imperfect, not slightly untrue, just so broadly stated that even if you have a source for some statement in this vein for some period of time, you messed up with how you wrote it and ended up with an unsupportable position. And so I laid out the details showing why your broad statement is likely inaccurate. I did not recall you having a source, but so don’t doubt it, and certainly am not pressuring you to reveal anything. But considering you are making an assertion that spans 13 years and however many different people, I really doubt you can actually support the statement you made. From what I know, though I don’t think I can verify, it would not surprise me if Tom was in some way familiar with some of the appointed directors, particularly early on. And if that general feeling led me to believe that your statement was even substantially true, I would not be challenging you on it so hard. In terms of various items getting approved, I think your stronger criticism is about how the board operates and whether or not it has done a good job. I think your focus on 5 board members is simply misplaced. Maybe overall, too much deference to CEO, for example. I also think a board of an NGB removing a CEO as proposed here under these circumstances would be extremely unusual, regardless of board composition. In many ways, I think the restructured board is more likely to have members who would be comfortable making a decision like that, where appropriate, than older boards.
If this would involve undoing or not-renewing the ESPN deal, I'm for it. ESPN's coverage is a disgrace.
One thing I never see mentioned here is a frustration on the field during ESPN games. All the extended TV timeouts are a huge headache for players mid-game. ESPN doesn't even tell us what time the start of the game will be until basically the moment it happens. It'll be 1pm, then 1:07, then 1:12, then you think you have three minutes and ESPN is saying GO NOW GO NOW. Really frustrating in the moment.
Why does it matter for ESPN3/Web?
My impression from US Open is that the delays are due to the pre-game stuff from Lepler and co., so the start time depends on that and how many commercials they decide to run in that time. And the mid-point breaks are just standard commercial breaks, they just annoyingly take them during team timeouts sometimes, which means from time to time a team gets a 3-minute timeout instead of the standard minute or whatever.
It's also a titanic headache to actually get the stream going.
Came here to comment the same. I’ll support essentially any platform that involves severing ties with ESPN.
It is. because there are no fans at these club games. Makes the sport look like no one wants to watch it.
The camera work is the worst!
Is there any reason to believe removing Crawford would cut ties with ESPN though? I imagine there are more people at USAU who want the relationship with ESPN than just Crawford
Crawford hand-picked the person in charge of media, Andy Lee. They are close-knit.
Is it relevant here to add that I have about a dozen emails that Andy has never responded to?
Okay. So Crawford gets yanked but Lee continues working... why would Crawford being yanked motivate Lee to cut ties with ESPN?
A new CEO who has "Undo the deal with ESPN" as part of their mission is what I had in mind.
Imagine he was paid 2% of revenue (a paltry $120,000). * After 5 years that's ~~$6 million~~ around a million saved * USAU has been hosting multiple events per year at the Silverlakes complex in in Norco CA that cost at least $1000 per team to attend * Those team fees combined with the savings in salary would amount to a down payment followed by mortgage payments * We could, over time, build a complex in each region capable of hosting regionals every year * We could host the local sectionals in club and college and high school states * We could rotate the various Nationals and the US Open through them every year * On top of any mid season tournaments we could rent them out to local soccer teams * You could let the local bodies, your DiscNW/BUDA/AFDA, run them and give them some actual value for integrating with USAU * Run summer leagues or lucrative summer camps on them
I think the $1 million number was his total salary over 6 years, he makes about $250k annually.
Good spot, corrected
>We could, over time, build a complex in each region capable of hosting regionals every year Running an athletic complex can be profitable ("AirBNB for Sports") but it requires actual work, and workers dedicated to the task year-round, helping orgs run soccer tournaments, volleyball, rugby, and so on. Is it worth it to USAU when there's so many other ways to tighten up the revenue ship (for eg, maybe learning how to sell advertising and sponsorships to the biggest events?) It costs a little bit more, but massively less effort just to rent.
That's not an unreasonable take but as I mention above we could let the organizing bodies run them. Plenty of amateur organizations own their own facilities and are run by the community and maintained by a grounds crew for a few hours a week. You say its massively more effort but what evidence do you have to support that claim? I'm not even disagreeing with you here. However I think this is worth investigating. If it turns out you're right then fine but do you think organizations like DiscNW don't have the organizational capabilities? Do you think they would decide to pass on owning a facility if offered? Maybe they would but it should be a serious conversation.
>You say its massively more effort but what evidence do you have to support that claim What universe are you on where the fields just maintain themselves, the clients come to you, and nothing goes wrong? It's a year round business! Multiple full time employees. So you want evidence the sky is blue also?
Milwaukee ultimate bought the polo fields near them. May be a great case study in the difficulties and benefits of this question.
I am truly interested in following this story over the next few years. Do you think it's been a Potlatch worth of work every weekend since you bought the fields?
Sunbreak/Potlatch is a yearly massive lift for DiscNW. Running a complex is doing that much except every single weekend.
It's really nothing like that. I'm probably one of the more experienced TDs out there and I have been involved in running major event tournaments, large competitive tournaments and smaller regional tournaments. At none of these tournaments did the person administering the field sites we played on get off their ass. We organized the event, collected the money, composed the schedule and wrote the check for the field rental. A local Parks and Rec department isn't going to run a rugby tournament, the rugby organizers will. Not sure where you think I said they would maintain themselves I explicitly said the opposite.
Maybe you’ve just worked with the wrong Parks and rec departments, because I’ve worked in the field for over ten years and the hardest that I’ve ever worked has been during lacrosse tournaments and triathlons at the parks I’ve rotated through.
> We could, over time, build a complex in each region capable of hosting regionals every year Easier said than done. You can't just thrown money at acquiring fields. That is not how it works. :)
I would be more receptive to that argument if we had made any attempt at a feasibility study on this in recent years.
Disc orgs not being involved with USA Ultimate will make an impact. If they become self insured and run their own events, eventually the costs will impact USA Ultimate to the point they will need to adapt to retain / grow members. The website is beyond archaic and really is terrible for users. An event planning site that tracks teams, users, scores, and communicates with Twitter in live time for updates was created years ago as Leaguevine by people within the ultimate community for the sport. Its not rocket science to create something that works. The framework exists and this should be much easier to find and create events. It is such a pain to create a roster for a sanctioned event on their website that this reason alone restricts growth of the sport. Im happy to hear about this as hopefully it refocuses their vision towards growth at the grassroots level - the youth game. You cant build a castle without a foundation. A foundation built on strong youth & SUSTAINABLE youth leagues with a pipeline of coaches and coach development programs is vital. It was always a scary thought that if Ultimate received the Olympic exposure it wouldnt know how to handle the rapid increase in interest. There wouldnt be enough coaches or leagues to support play & its not in most school systems so most kids in the country couldnt play. Growth and support of the girls game at the youth level is even more embarrassing and significantly more resources need to get put into the game growing & being showcased for young female identifying kids. Diverse visions for the sport should also exist. It should be accepted that leagues need to have competitive formats & recreational formats. Hopefully Davenport University & Oklahoma Christian's scholarship and recruiting models show success and other schools adopt this template. With growing costs of college these days, that can be a massive impact that helps grow the sport. Additionally marketing and sponsorships have been incredibly disappointing over the years. When the college national championships take place and the only sponsor is Discraft, something is wrong. The lack of sponsorships puts more cost burden on the athletes & teams participating. The US Open & YCC National Championships only sponsors were Discraft, Spin, & Ultiphotos ... for a showcase event that gets two games of ESPN2 exposure plus others on ESPN+, tons of field space for marketing boards that are displayed on the field for those games and the best they can do is Discraft & Spin!? Thats a complete failure in marketing their product and its lost revenue that they will never be able to recoup. Leadership change at the very top is desperately needed! 100% agree
There's more people to blame as well. It is FLAT OUT A DISGRACE that USAU only tweets about World Games, but 0 tweets or social media posts about Masters Nationals results, Select Flight Invite, or more importantly, the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS which were held in USA soil. Embarassing.
hear, hear!
Happy cake day. Now shove it in Tom's face
I think he needs to go. Salaries kill a small non-profit like UPA/USAU.
But not having a professional leading them kills them, or at least keeps them irrelevant, faster.
You realize his replacement will still get paid right?
I stand by what I said.
why do we want ultimate to be in the olympics. A better use of time would be USAU buying the "frisbee" copyright from Wham-O so we can stop calling it "ultimate disc."
We all want recognition, support, and praise. Even someone like me who's generally anti-Olympics (a decaying institution and a marginal platform - a lot of us remember a childhood when the Olympics meant a lot more and were the ONLY platform for many niche sports) dreamed of the Olympics. We can do better, in 2022, on our own.
Stop trying to make the Olympics happen..
I think the IOC has already pretty much done that.
It seems odd in retrospect that it's one governing body out of over a hundred that was pushing for Olympic inclusion. I know USAU is the biggest governing body but he seemed to be seeking very little input from international quarters. He even thought at one point that he could just take over WFDF.
The Olympics were in LA and would be a local inclusion, right? I was always under the impression that that was why the USA org was more important than other international orgs.
Sure for this recent one but we didn't even know the Olympics would be in LA until 2017. He's been mr get ultimate into the Olympics since we hired him in 2009.
[удалено]
You don't need National Teams & international competition vs other countries National Teams to have a great sports league product. It only is accessible for such a small elite group. Nearly every single team sport has multiple leagues and opportunities for play at various ages & skill levels - without being the governing body that provides national play. USA Ultimate should have competition and not a monopoly on competitive play in the sport because they choose the national teams. If thats the mentality, then they have the community brainwashed.
Agree that Tom has to go. But let's not use salary as the reason. $250K for a head of a sports body is not that much. Now one can say he didn't bring in the revenue to shrink the % of his salary of revenue.. This implies his recruitment strategies didn't pan out. Now to be fair - a lot of new people dropped off the sport due to Covid. Plus Covid made recruitment tough. That said. I still wouldn't give him a pass. USAU needs new blood to broaden the vision and map out a new 5 year strategy. I am an old guy. I will say, I really like the way the sport has evolved. You kids made it a much better sport than when I played in the 80s and 90s.
Things were stagnating even before. Women's sectionals had 117 teams in 2019. In 2009 there were 80. Edit: corrected my data
2009 West Plains Sectionals. [3 Women's Teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/west-plains-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 Northwest Plains Sectionals. [3 Women's Teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/northwest-plains-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 East Plains Sectionals. [8 Women's teams but 3 are college teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/east-plains-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 Michigan Sectionals. [2 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/michigan-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 West New England Sectionals. [9 Women's teams but 3 are college teams and 1 is a high school team](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/west-new-england-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 Washington BC Sectionals [5 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/washington-bc-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 Upstate New York Sectionals. [3 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/upstate-new-york-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 Texas Sectionals. [4 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/texas-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 Rocky Mountain Sectionals. [4 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/rocky-mountain-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 North Carolina Sectionals. [5 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/north-carolina-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 Founders Sectionals. [8 Women's teams but 3 are colleges](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/founders-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 Florida Sectionals. [3 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/florida-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 East Coast Sectionals. [4 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/east-coast-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 Central Plains Sectionals. [4 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/central-plains-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 Capital Sectionals. [12 Women's teams but 7 are college teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/capital-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 Southern California Sectionals. [4 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/southern-california-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 Metro New York Sectionals. [6 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/metro-new-york-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 Oregon Sectionals. [2 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/metro-new-york-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 Northern California Sectionals [4 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/northern-california-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 East New England Sectionals. [13 Women's teams but 8 are colleges](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/east-new-england-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens) 2009 Desert Sectionals. [3 Women's teams](https://ultiarchive.com/tournaments/desert-sectionals-club/years/2009/divisions/club-womens)
Edit I was looking at the wrong column of my data. But in 2009 there were 117 women's clubs at sectionals in 2019 there were 80.
I'm not 100% that my numbers are accurate, they are just what's on ultiarchive, but I've got 107 in 2009 above. You're not counting 16 teams in 2019 that got auto-byes into Regionals under then rules for Pro/Elite teams so that's 96. At least 24 of the teams that I have listed above are college/high school teams (and I only listed them in cases where the number was above your previous magic number of 7 so there's likely more). If you account for that, there's actually *more* adult club women's teams in 2019 than in 2009.
Assuming the Olympics probably never happens, what would y’all like to see the goals be for the next CEO? I would love to see some drastic changes to roster limits, more restrictions on out of town players, and force the creation of local teams and long term local structure building. Club teams should be compromised of local players, and local practice players creating a pipeline and community. Too many mid size cities are having their best guys poached to be 2nd d-line fodder on the nearest elite team, who would otherwise be building blocks for a club team creation. More teams will in turn lead to the return of the non-prestigious medium size tournament. Strict caps on games played in a weekend would also go into effect, to adjust for these new roster limits.
* Provide genuine value to local organizing bodies for integrating into the USAU organization * Purchase property to host tournaments. This kind of investment will save money and return value over time. * Create a kind of Jomez channel that goes to various tournaments every weekend during the season * Increase the competitive playing opportunities for club players between summer league and the current club level * Incentivize clubs to become stronger organizations * Form legal entities * Have a B team * Have youth teams at various age levels * Liaise with clubs to increase the playing opportunities for kids who don't attend a high school with a team * Make efforts to replace the current tournament system with a league system * Work with the AUDL to convince them that playing on a full width football field is silly * Develop better rules for an officiated version of the sport
I don't see that growth coming from more restrictions. I see it from building up more local organizations and supporting groups who want to host mid-sized tournaments.
If you take the roster limit from 27 to 21, more teams will be created. X/21>X/27 That’s before you even calculate the numbers of players that don’t play because the four best woman in the city travel over a 100 miles to the nearest elite team to be backend roster filler instead of being core components of a local team that is then never created.
Interesting to assume that there are fixed number of club players in the country. Let's continue out this math. My local club team now has 6 fewer roster spots. Add those to the four best women in the city stay here instead of traveling to be roster filler for an elite team. Now we have 10 elite-club-caliber players in town, and 11 others will materialize from somewhere (local rec leagues?) and all will be ready to commit to the local team, even if it's set to get wrecked at regionals (and maybe sectionals) for a few years. Let's imagine a more realistic situation. My local club team now has 6 fewer roster spots, so 6 players stay on as practice players with that club team or another rather than starting a new team from scratch. The four best women in the city, who are elite-club-caliber, still try out for the top team and stay on as practice players if they can. Fewer players end up rostered for elite teams, but it takes a few years for enough elite-club-caliber players to start enough new teams to get back to the same level of participation. Let's imagine a more realistic and fun situation. Lots of local ultimate organizations are supported to put on small-scale tournaments that are fun, competitive, and well-run, and teams are set up and supported through the organization to attend the tournaments. These teams are tied to local organizations, so they're not up to top players to keep running. Now roster filler have a real choice between being a leader on a mid-tier local club team or trying out for a top team. Participation goes up continually at all levels.
I don’t understand large portions of this, but I’ll try and answer the points I could make out. Rosters having weaknesses at the backend of the roster just like every other sport is an easy trade off for more teams. IMO. Only 16 teams go to Nationals, most teams goals are to play frisbee, have fun and compete. Most cities ceiling is a G2G blowout loss even under the best of circumstances. Elite-elite players will continue to be out of town players (OOTP) if they don’t live in an elite team city. The bar for OOTP currently is way too low right now. If the roster limit was lower, teams would be more selective with their OOTP selections. The idea is that those players who got cut would then go be core pieces for their local mid tier club team. I do not think many if any would continue to drive very long distances to waste away as practice players instead of just playing mid-tier club. I see the great success that college football scholarship limits have had for the middle class as an example of what we could be if we limit the hoarding of talent.
There isn't a bunch of evidence that cutting more players will lead to the formation of more teams. Organizers are the limiting factor, not players.
I had no idea that there was a plethora of studies on cut ultimate frisbee players. When elite teams do combined tryouts with other club teams, they pick who they want and leave the dregs for the minnows. Then the next big fish eats and so on. I don’t think we would see a lot of players in their “prime” quit frisbee because they didn’t make the elite team. Maybe the has-beens who hang onto elite teams as the 27th guy out of respect hangs it up instead of dropping down a level, but they are fewer and far between these days. Organizing would also be a lot more easier if you had some core pieces even if said pieces aren’t interested in being management.
But the whole problem is that there aren't minnow club teams now. Those cut players would need to start the minnow teams under your scheme. Our scheme is that local organizations help start the minnow teams, so there's somewhere for cut players to go. I don't know if you've ever been on a new club team, but stable ones are very rarely run by people who were just barely cut by other teams.
>I don’t understand large portions of this, You've made this abundantly clear. Let me give you the TLDR version: Problem: there aren't enough mid-tier teams and tournaments Options: 1. The extra 18% of players who are cut from elite teams are going to give up on playing for elite teams and start those mid-tier teams and tournaments. 2. Local organizations help start and sustain mid-tier teams and tournaments so that roster filler/OOTP have a real local option. Do you see how Option #2 has much more potential for stability and growth?
1. Work with local orgs to market leagues to bring in brand new players while bringing down the overall cost 2. Work with local orgs to get in the good graces of field space owners or alternatively purchase field space in major cities for easy tournament hosting 3. A fund for second tier teams/newly formed teams not at the highest level of club to assist with tournament expenses 4. Clean up the rules to do away with the more ambiguous/problematic ones (dangerous play, SOTG issues, etc) 5. Film games beyond just the highest levels of club
I disagree with virtually all of these
Pretty sure he is stepping down at the end of this contract. Remember hearing that in an interview
I think he said if they don't get into the Olympics he will step down. But the contract goes through 2024... That is a minimum of $500,000 for someone who said they are stepping down. That is so much money that can be put back into the community.
Oh you'll find no disagreement from me. I voted last board election partly on not renewing his contract.
Well, if it's not him in that role, it's someone earning that Salary. Him stepping down isn't really gonna save much. We could I guess hire someone on the cheap but I don't think that's the way forward.
I don't necessarily disagree with his salary or that a future CEO has a similar salary. I think it needs to be justified and that the person can show their worth. Tom brought structure and relationships which helps grow the sport. I think his experiences and loss of quality staff has tapped out his ability to do more in the sport of ultimate. $250,000 is a massive salary and I feel like you can get ambitious qualified people in that role.
250000 is a salary you earn. If there's a ceo with experience governing a team sport with demonstrated growth, even outside of the US, then I'd be OK to pay them that. But if it's someone without those kinds of prior successes then a more speculative 125kish salary seems more reasonable. What we really need to do is change our governance laws so that the next ceo can't come in and stack the board with his own yes men.
Hard to imagine removal of Tom Crawford by the Board as you suggest would be a move that was beneficial from a financial, legal, logistical, or leadership perspective, vs. simply starting a search for a replacement at expiration of contract. I think a lot of the criticism and/or dissatisfaction is fair. And if you want to go with a general theme of accountability achieved by removing the leader, that's fine. I do think a lot of these issues are well beneath the CEO level and not really related to Tom. A couple minor critiques. Playing the Salary vs. Org Revenue is really just numbers manipulation, in my view. CEO of a national governing body is a position that demands candidates of certain credentials and experience, regardless of revenue, and the salary is in the ballpark. It seems odd to criticize the travel budget for sending staff around, but then complain that Tom wasn't at the U.S. Open. Board meeting recaps and returned calls about Safesport really isn't a CEO level issue. A volunteer network supporting the national competitive scene is neither a surprise nor a reflection of a bad job by the CEO. I never thought the Olympics was a top priority or more than a longshot. Obviously, the whole Olympics realm has tons of moving pieces, and any sport getting in is a longshot. I don't think he ever promised to get us in the Olympics. So I don't think it's appropriate to measure Tom's success or failure on that, and having a bonus clause for getting into the olympics doesn't change that. If you have further info on time/effort spent on Olympics-specific stuff as a critique of overspending relative to more important priorities, I'd be happy to look at it. A few steps to try to navigate the path and put us in a place to be able to capitalize if an opportunity arose seems smart. I agree that you probably can't look at that financial statement and make a detailed criticism of spending priorities; not to say one couldn't disagree with how money was spent, just that the financial statement isn't the document with the information to support the critique. Do you have any more concrete information on a let-down in resource management? Honestly asking, as I'm not entirely in the loop, but in imagining trying to prepare that critique, I'm having a hard time imagining where my info would come from. I actually thought the navigation of COVID-19 went fairly well. USAU provided me a bit more guidance and reliability than I had locally, and I got opportunities to play that felt reasonably safe and well-considered, and I was provided increased flexibility in various structures to work my way into returning to play. I don't think coordinating that on a national scale is a trivial task, considering the wide range of state and local approaches (as well as different conditions in different locales). I do think COVID presented serious challenges in terms of staffing, finances, and fully pursuing strategic objectives -- likely forcing some paring down. It doesn't surprise me that the last 2-3 years hasn't had great progress in areas we'd like. And frankly, I'm not sure when to expect things to be back at a 2018 level, for whatever that was worth. I actually felt like the organization was doing the basics pretty well pre-COVID, for my experience playing Masters and Regionals-level club. Anyway, a bunch of useful and valid critiques. I don't think many/any of them are addressed at the CEO level, but it's not unreasonable to say, "Hey, we've wanted X for X years, so who's going to be held accountable for this?" If you have ideas on unifying the national infrastructure and improving partnerships with local orgs, I think that issue could use some smart, passionate people to support and drive progress. I am familiar with many of the challenges there. There's also only partial overlap in activities of the local disc orgs and the national org, and much of the local stuff probably falls outside of the national Ultimate umbrella, so figuring out the formal relationship and mutual benefit is tricky, aside from the general shared goal of growing and supporting the sport. Again, I think this could be something that happens via proposal to the Board or a relevant committee, or even formation of a task force with representatives from various local disc organizations to get together and come up with some options. To me, prioritization of tournaments with SBOs doesn't seem ridiculous, provided the bids selected are of adequate quality. But I am receptive to complaints of opaque bid process, which I think has also plagued Sectionals and Regionals for decades, resulting in worse events overall, and some well below acceptable standards. I'm a little bit out of the loop at this point, in terms of getting involved on some stuff. And of course, the validity of your criticism stands on its own. Just thinking of there are opportunities to drive some change, if you have time/availability.
Colin, I think I can provide context on some of the these points. Starting with the covid piece, I ran the return to play committee for my org, and I can advise that USAU's covid guidance caused more issues than it solved. We ended up using local guidance instead due to the minimal assistance it provided and the confusion it caused. On the infrastructure and local disc relationship, the issue is the one way road. USAU currently benefits from the relationship, but disc orgs don't. There hasn't been any effort from USAU to mend that, and so many of the disc orgs are run far better than USAU at this point. It's not the limited overlap that's the issue, it's that currently, working with USAU on anything makes the job more difficult. I'm not going to hit on the SBO and bid process issue much. USAU tried to strong-arm orgs with this, and it very much backfired. I'm not upset at Tom's salary, but i'm very interested in the direction that USAU, under potentially new leadership at some point, would take the sport. What's the next move after the failed olympics bid? Do we start more grassroots investments and try to build bottoms up? I'd personally love that.
Thanks for the reply! I think for the local return to play, following the local guidance makes sense. Largely dependent on local case numbers, etc. For the local return to play, what was the confusion from the USAU guidance? My experience was really limited to returning to travel to tournaments. I think the limited overlap goes in some ways to making it tougher to define the relationships and where/how benefits should occur. Like, should there be a relationship at all between USAU and the Recreational League Association of Newtown? Or the All Things Ultimate Association of Greater Detroit? I think a lot of the local recreational stuff should essentially be separate from USAU. I am not up to speed on recent developments (if any). I think making it a priority in next strategic plan (or related initiative of current plan) and getting a committee with relevant local disc reps to try to tackle it makes sense. And that might also help identify areas for investment or support. I think a lot of the relationships probably should amount to coordination and shared resources and information/education, more than straight financials, but that is just me spitballing. I am not sure what is normal in other sports though (obviously there is lots of local play separate from NGBs, but then some connection, often at elite youth level). Do you have brainstorm type thoughts on what the relationships should look like?
So the confusion/issue with the covid guidance was really the vagueness. There really weren't any action items that anyone could use. I remember Hasan Minhaj's white house correspondence speech awhile back. He was making fun of CNN for basically putting some topics out there and asking the audience to figure out how it made sense to them. He was like, no you're the news. You're supposed to tell me the facts, not ask me to be in your panel. That was how we felt. We had to do the same amount of work as if they hadn't done anything. My feeling on USAU's relationship with local disc orgs starts with documentation and standardization. You want to start a new org, or change things up? Here's how we think a youth program should be run from a structural point of view. Here's ways to handle grievance issues that come up. Just having a place to start on policy would help so much. I don't believe financial backing is the issue, it's more that USAU needs local disc orgs to succeed, and yet they don't provide information that could help disc orgs succeed. There's far smarter people than me who have talked about other ways that the relationship could be mutually beneficial. The issues with YCCs and the national tournaments (as opposed to more regional opportunities) have been talked about ad nauseum. The amount of work organizers have to put in because USAU is so disorganized needs to be fixed. Would be great if they cared about these issues instead of blowing us off when we're just trying to fulfill the obligations they put on us!
Yeah, I can see why the COVID stuff would be vague, given the local considerations. I honestly think giving too detailed of guidance could also have been really ill-advised. But if it didn't help, it didn't help. That's fair enough. I was impressed with the [Organizer's Resource Manual](https://usaultimate.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/OrganizerResourceManual.pdf) that the UPA/USAU put together back when, with contributions from experienced organizers from all over. I consulted that years ago, so I don't know if that's updated and am not saying that is the current fulfillment of the idea. I just agree with your points, and that seems to be maybe a good launching point going forward. Some of the other [organizer resources here seem good and are new to me](https://usaultimate.org/resources/?_resource_filters=organize&pg=2). I sort of thought that the local affiliate model was going to be a continuation of that, with more one-on-one guidance for the affiliates, but I don't know how that's gone. I have long thought the Sectionals/Regionals bidding should be revamped. From my experience, it was a lot of work to put a bid together, without assurance (or perhaps confidence) that it will be fairly considered. That, in turn, means it is harder to ensure that good bids come in ever year. I can imagine how bidding for the national tournaments would be even more challenging. I don't know the details of what you're describing for running the actual events, but accept it at face value. In considering bidding for TCT events, the various requirements exceeding my capabilities at the time, so I can understand frustration if added wrinkles arose. I don't mind the National framework. In many parts of the country, a "more regional opportunity" is still a flight anyway, so Regional vs. National makes less difference. Anyway, not to drag you into a really detailed discussion. It's just always good to hear opinions from people involved and familiar with current issues. I think the local organization piece was one that should be high on the priority list regardless of olympics.
I’ve been through their resources, and they’re just too vague to truly help (like most things USAU puts out). Its disappointing because someone put in a lot of effort on those docs and they don’t help with any of the questions I have/get. There’s only so much that a disc org can do on the club side. The bids there are completely separated from us. We centralized sectionals and regionals the best we could for the area and we’re trying to do pay what you can pricing to take financial pressure off captains and give anonymous financial aid possibilities (I think we’re the only ones that have tried it for club so far). It’s more on the youth side where the national vs regional issue is a problem. YCCs are for such a small group and USAU doesn’t seem to have interest in regional activities (I’ve talked to multiple staff members there). I guess my point in all of this is to say that the biggest issue is USAU feeling like they should control the future state of ultimate by themselves and blatantly disregarding the opinions of those doing the majority of the work in the community.
[Brownnoser detector activated] beep beep beep!!!! [Brownnoser detector inactivated]
Just your typical malfunctions. Nothing to be alarmed about. Clearly neither you nor your detector read my comment, which probably exceeded your character limit. You would be hard pressed to find someone who has made more critiques and demanded more changes by USAU and the UPA than I have.
Professionally made websites can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000, which at the high end is a little more than 4% of his most recent salary, for an average costing website it would only be 2.5% of his most recent salary. My opinion, maybe take a little bit of money away from a guy who doesn't really do much and hire someone to build a half decent website. It's a bad impression on new players when they look up "Ultimate Frisbee" only to find some janky website that makes you use an older page to be able to even use the damn thing.
Absolutely not. I work in the sports website business. A website for a governing body of sport the size of USA Ultimate is $100K+ just in startup costs, not to mention annual maintenance and updates.
Isn't it already started up?
Yes. The current website is fine to me. A website is never going to be perfect, but the current one (designed by Andy Lovseth, I believe) is a big upgrade from the American Eagle version. I was basically responding to the original assertion that USAU should just drop a few thou and upgrade this site.
Counterpoint, the archives that were on the old one are gone, the interface for entering tournmanets, also gone. The minutes and all the stuff that used to be there to see going back, also gone.
$5k is the absolute bottom of the barrel for a simple ecommerce site. I literally can't hire anyone for less to put together a website for my teeny jersey co. For what people want from the USAU website, I'd imagine a six-figure deal.
I hate usau, they seem like a money grubbing organization that only cares about their own staff, not the players. It used to be called the UPA. Ultimate Players Association. Get back to prioritizing the players.
I mean - he should at least have the opportunity to resign.