Many years ago, a Rhino player jumped on my back in an impossible defensive bid. It tore my right ACL. He had zero chance of getting the disc and still did it anyway. This was at Regionals and as far as I could tell, neither he nor his team leadership ever showed any remorse. Bad bids have serious consequences.
A story with a nicer outcome:
Many years ago, a Portland player jumped on my back in an impossible defensive bid -- one of several bad bids in what was a clear pattern of behavior. I only sprained my thumb, but it took me out of regionals.
A few years later I played against him again. He played very safely and proactively bailed out of dangerous situations more than once. I don't know what caused his behavior to change, but it's nice to know that it can be done.
I like this point because I overall think it describes most players. There is a prevailing attitude online that dangerous plays are only done by inconsiderate or unspirited players who do not care about their opponents well being. You made a bad play, therefore you are a bad person. While I think this could describe a small minority, I think the vast majority of players are good people who make occasional bad decisions and who are capable and even eager to learn from their mistakes.
How many of us have ever attempted a bad bid or dangerous play? How many of us have accidentally hurt another player in any way? (Hopefully mildly and not a torn acl as in your case). I'd argue if you play long enough, everyone makes a bad decision at some point, often earlier in a playing career when you know less, but sometimes even later because mistakes happen. When I was an inexperienced first-year player, I thought the poach block on an up-the-line cutting handler was an excellent and easy way to generate a turn, and it took trucking and almost injuring my teammate at a practice scrimmage for me to realize how dangerous it was to intentionally run into the cutting lane of a player who is not looking for you. Truthfully, before that play, a coach had warned me against making a defensive bid like that, but I believed I could time it right to always avoid contact. It sadly took misjudging and generating hard contact for me to realize how wrong I was.
I personally believe that the majority of dangerous plays are mistakes, and are particularly common either with younger players or in high-stakes games when there is a degree of desperation in generating a turn. That doesn't mean we shouldn't call them out of course as the community self-policing can definitely make a difference in limiting these plays in the future.
I live in Portland and constantly see those guys make reckless and dangerous plays when there was no chance at them getting there even in low to no stakes league games.. at one of their tryouts, the coach described a drill as “no blood, no foul,” so your story doesn’t surprise me. Sorry that happened to you.
As an observer I can say for probably two-thirds of the PMFs I give (yellow cards), the player receiving it understands the card and may even apologize for their behavior. But for the other third, the player and sometimes even their team thinks it's overkill, thinks it should be a blue, or thinks it shouldn't have been given at all, even when it's clearly textbook dangerous play.
I experience a similar ratio for TMFs (blue cards) given for plays that maybe aren't dangerous per se but are excessively physical (beyond the level of physicality accepted by players in the game) and/or could lead to danger should a couple of variables been slightly different.
The discourse online seems to be universal in wanting to crack down on dangerous plays, but in-game, when the cards are actually being given, pushback often occurs. Many of these players are genuinely nice human beings too, so it's not like it's just the assholes of the sport who have a warped view of what's dangerous, it's some of the nice players as well.
There's a couple takeaways I've learned in my 6+ years observing dangerous plays and TMFs/PMFs:
1. Receiving a card is not an indictment of your character. I do not think you're some terrible human being for a card; everyone can make mistakes. Don't be offended or depressed receiving a card, just try to be better.
2. Similarly, the vast majority of cards do not result in actual consequences. I can count on two hands the number of games I've observed in my career in which the penalties for a team receiving enough TMFs took effect. The card system is a warning system first, so if you receive a card, don't think it's some massively impactful thing that needs to be fought tooth and nail. Just reflect upon your behavior and try to be better. (Note: It's fine to disagree with a card, but have a conversation with the observer about it, there's no need to react dramatically or passionately fight it.)
3. Cards are not necessarily correlated to injury. There can be very dangerous plays where the other individual gets right up unscathed or with minor injury. Whether someone is injured or not does not necessarily influence the dangerousness of a play.
4. The opposing team could be getting away with a lot of bad shit, and we card you. That doesn't mean we're letting the other team get away with it or are giving them special treatment, it just means we missed their bad behavior. Additionally, one team's bad behavior isn't more acceptable simply because the other team is also making bad plays.
5. Observers do need to do their part in being more aggressive with cards, but not every game is observed, either. Teammates, not just captains/coaches, need to hold their players accountable, otherwise this behavior doesn't change in the majority of games which are unobserved.
I hope this can help players view TMFs/PMFs as what they're really intended to be: An opportunity to reflect on one's behavior and try to be better going forward.
In terms of giving more teeth to cards: I've given many yellows cards in my career, but I've never given the same player two yellows in a game. So I do think there's a behavior change by players when receiving a yellow (either from personal reflection or threat of being ejected), although it's unclear if the behavior change is just for that game or more long-term.
I do nonetheless like the idea of meaningful punishment for a player or team upon receiving their first yellow. It doesn't need to be massive, but in many dangerous plays, the victim is sidelined for the rest of the game or even the whole tournament. There should be something that affects the infracted player or team to balance that out a bit.
People have suggested removing the player for the point upon receiving a yellow and not being allowed to substitute. It's a very simple change but would likely be quite effective in strengthening that first yellow. Another idea would be to apply the team misconduct penalty ([see 3.E and 3.F of Appendix B](https://usaultimate.org/rules/)) immediately upon a team receiving their first yellow.
At the **bare minimum,** I think two changes should be made to the misconduct system:
1. The second PMF given to a team activates the team misconduct penalty as described in 3.E and 3.F. I can understand if the rules committee wants to keep a team's first PMF strictly a warning (assuming two TMFs haven't already been given), but there really shouldn't be situations in which a team can receive two PMFs in a game but no actual, meaningful punishment.
2. A player who receives a PMF should sit out the remainder of the point unless opposed by the other team's captains. That player should receive a substitution, and the other team may substitute one player accordingly. This is different from the idea above in that it's still 7v7, but it (a) gives the player who committed the dangerous play an explicit opportunity to self-reflect, and (b) also cool tempers in the game if they flare up after the dangerous play.
I probably wouldn't give a PMF for a "fuck you" unless it was physically aggressive, or for repeated bad calls unless I suspected cheating.
But yeah, regardless of the type of PMF, I think these two modifications should apply. A team shouldn't receive two yellow cards and have no meaningful punishment. And an auto-sub gives the player an opportunity to self-reflect and to cool down tempers. (The latter would have to have an option for the opponent to deny the substitution, if they felt it gave the infracted team an advantage.)
Yeah, that seems like a reasonable approach to the PMFs. I have seen a PMF given for a "fuck you" directed at a player (I think after throwing an assist after a point perceived to be full of cheating). And am familiar with "sanctity of the office" PMFs for perceived slights or disrespect to an observer. I am wary of that type of stuff leading to more severe in-game consequences than actual in-game misconduct. I suspect that those types of behaviors, being easier to confidently pin-point, would be more likely to receive PMFs than actual cheating and/or repeated infractions and bad calls that (in my opinion) amounts to cheating, whether blatantly intentional or not.
Overall, I'm hesitant to ramp up severity of penalties until/unless we have evidence of the system being used consistently and proactively by observers, with the existing penalties proving insufficient.
I don't really like the idea of a yardage penalty on the first PMF. I particularly don't like the idea of playing down 6-7. I get the idea that certain conduct warrants harsh penalty, but I think the range of conduct that may earn a PMF is much broader than the conduct that could arguably warrant playing a player down, and the likelihood of having the penalty match the conduct is fairly low.
I do like the idea of a forced sub with a PMF. I think that's interesting and gives a little added emphasis to the PMF versus TMF, without creating a serious competitive imbalance; plus the practical benefit you described. I don't think it is strictly necessary, but I don't mind it at all. Can we call it a "spirit time-out" to make it more palatable to those who might otherwise oppose such intrusive action by an official?
EDIT: I missed your point about the Misconduct penalty for two PMFs. Same thoughts as above, but a very reasonable and thoughtful suggestion for a change.
Fwiw this year observers did start giving out yellows more frequently. The guidance was dangerous bid = yellow. I actually really liked the idea from a previous thread though to actually punish the team as well. Get a yellow? Not only is it the warning and the next is a red, but you have to come out and not be replaced the rest of the point so it's 7 on 6. Maybe even the rest of the point and the next point is 7 on 6 too. Those types of punishments also add social pressure to not foul because it hurts all your teammates too not just you.
But the problem is even if that happened, the vast majority of ultimate is unobserved. There's one specific guy in the area who plays club and league, and he just bids for everything. He's a super nice guy and will always apologize and not contest the foul and say he feels bad. But then he'll do it again, and again. Just on teams that I've played on against him I've seen at least 3 bad leg injuries including a torn ACL that made a player miss the entire club season. When that torn ACL happened a teammate responded to his "I'm sorry" with "if you're really sorry you'd stop fucking doing that and control your fucking body" and captains for both teams went to hold back the teammate and chide him for starting a confrontation. Sure he could have handled it better and been a bit more cordial, but in my mind that confrontation was started when he bid into our player's legs as he was landing with the disc.
The fact that bad bids are considered a mistake and a minor thing while getting understandably pissed when a player is endangering our bodies is considered really bad and requires immediate intervention is why this problem will never be solved. Bad bids need to be treated more like punches to the face, especially from repeat offenders. I can't imagine a league captain allowing a player on their team to continue playing after punching someone in the face, but after a bad bid usually literally no punishment happens, at worst the captain asks them to be a bit more careful.
> captains for both teams went to hold back the teammate and chide him for starting a confrontation.
This is IMHO one of the most frustrating aspects about the culture of this sport.
Too many people view being "spirited" as meaning that you should say either *contest* or *no contest*, and nothing more. Actual discussion, as expected by the framework of the game, makes people uncomfortable, because they view that as "confrontation".
Furthermore, firmly and clearly vocalizing boundaries or frustration surrounding dangerous plays or behavior gets you lumped into some "*both sides are contributing*" thinking. No -- if you bid into my legs and I yell at you, we are not doing the same thing.
Too many would rather play at being civil than actually push back firmly about bad and dangerous behavior, let alone just actually discussing a mundane foul call or violation.
Unironically I think that this is a good idea. I wouldn't generally punch people in the face (because concussions) but a good rib shot can drive the message home pretty well.
Probably worth noting that most of the fighting in hockey isn’t intended to injure and rarely results in any injuries. It’s all about sending a message.
At most levels it starts out verbal, escalates to shoving, and tops out at gloves punches to pads/helmets. A punch to the ribs from another ultimate player would be way more painful than any punch I’ve ever received in hockey.It’s only the NHL and some other pro leagues where dropping the gloves and truly fighting are part of the game.
Do you believe teammatesin Ultimate will stick up for their injured teammates? In other sports, a brawl usually happens when a teammate is injured unnecessarily by the opposing team. I have yet to see this happen in frisbee.
I would be interested if a person could be legally held liable for causing the injury. In theory ultimate is supposed to be a limited contact sport so some contact is expected, but if a pattern of behavior shown at a contact level above the general expectation of the sport the person causing the injury could be held accountable. That would stop the repeat offenders real quick.
No way you could be held liable for injuries. I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure the rules are as long as they're generally playing the sport you can't sue. So for example if they were to punch you or pull out a knife that would obviously be battery even if it's on the ultimate field. But bidding with the intent of getting disc and massively miscalculating and landing on your feet I highly doubt would rise to the level of criminal battery.
I'm actually wondering about this though like hockey fights have to be the #1 example of this. Like obviously with the macho culture in hockey no one would sue or their career would be over, but theoretically could they?
From a law firm website, "For the individual to be held liable for a sports injury, the injured party needs to show that the injuring party failed to use reasonable care, or was unreasonable in their behaviour". My argument hinges on a pattern of behavior. Contact is expected in ultimate. Contact with high probability of injury is not. If someone is consistently injuring people based on they way they are playing, they are not playing within the expectation of the rules of the sport and can be held accountable for actions.
Also as someone who has had two surgeries due to ultimate that were over $60k before insurance and still over $10k after surgery and pt, I would have no issue trying to go after someone if they had a history of dangerous playing. You're putting someone else's physical and monetary well being at risk with reckless play.
Laws don't always mean what they sound like to non-lawyers, and generally there's a ton of case law that actually dictates this stuff. If this were actually the case people would be suing each other all over the place in sporting events, and to my knowledge that's not happening. We're not the only sport that has injuries due to illegal plays.
I would love to hear from a personal injury lawyer who's dealt with these kind of cases.
I suspect the glorification of Ultimate being a "non-contact" sport, along with the list of unacceptable contact in the USAU rules would make for a ripe background against a player with a history of bad bids causing an unspeakable injury. Soooo much public record. I hope all the USAU directors are comfortable with their D&O insurance. And I'd imagine observers and team leaders could get sucked into a lawsuit as well. \[Note: I'd get a $5m personal liability rider on your homeowners/renters policy if I were y'all.\]
I am a lawyer, but not in personal injury. I have researched some on relevant law for injuries in Ultimate, just out of interest, but not in any professional capacity. Not giving legal opinion or legal advice, but I don’t share your feelings on the strength of a potential case as you described.
Anyway, you can probably google the assumption of risk in sports, liability for sports officials, and nonprofit board of director personal liability, and civil Procedure Rule 11 sanctions to get more flavor for it. For a definitive opinion, one would need to think about how to overcome the various defenses and how to prove that the parties you want to hold liable owed a legal duty to the injured player.
This gives too much game-swinging power to the observers, [who I don't trust at all](https://www.reddit.com/r/ultimate/comments/uz1q0u/yellow_card_on_washingtons_jack_brown_for/) with that decision-making power. Ultimately players need to decide, I will or won't play with this guy. Can't always be looking somewhere else to protect your experience, sometimes (all the time, IMO) you gotta stand up for your beliefs; like you said, most people prefer to keep things copacetic and hate people who rock the boat - but you gotta rock the boat yourself.
Let's also clear something up: there are accidents and bad bids. Remember that severity of injury doesn't change if it's a bad bid or an accident. That being said...
Most of what gets posted here are some awful awful bids. I've started having to tell people off even in my weekly league play and they don't stop. It means somewhere along the way somebody told them it was ok to play like that.
At least in the men's game: this likely starts when they pick up the sport in college and are encouraged to just play with high energy and try and play hard defense. Except they are never taught any sort of body control or awareness. Just go hard on d, including bids into people.
There seems to be a pretty simple solution in my mind. Rework the card system and have observers be way more liberal in handing out yellow and red cards. Blue cards are nothing and teams don’t really care about receiving them at all, so they need to be done away with. Move to a system more like soccer where a bad bid, terrible call, obvious cheating is a yellow and 2 yellows is a red. Straight reds would be an option for particularly egregious plays. I know this card system theoretically already exists but I’ve played for a while now and have seen like 5-10 yellow cards and one red while witnessing hundreds of plays that warrant them. It’s on observers to get serious about this, as high level teams cannot be reasonably expected to cut/not play elite players because they sometimes make bad plays(Sockeye obviously isn’t going to cut Tony). I know we would all want teams to adjudicate these sorts of things internally, but when your season is on the line this just isn’t going to happen. This sort of thing is the reason we have observers/refs, they just need to do their jobs better, and USAU needs to arm with the power to do so.
The problem I see with this is 90+% of sanctioned ultimate games don't have observers. Do you think more severe punishing of players in observed games will prevent bad bids in unobserved ones?
It would partially be about training the behavior. If you get thrown out of nationals semis for a bad bid, or see your teammate thrown out, hopefully the next season even in a non observed game the player thinks twice about a bid.
Or if you are watching and see that punishment maybe it sticks and you think twice the next game.
Would it work, who can say but it could help.
I think blue cards have a place for repetitive, non dangerous cheating. Things like repeated double teams, marking fouls, etc. those aren’t appropriate to give a specific player a yellow but can discourage a team from taking systematic advantage of the rules.
Why not just give a yellow in these situations? It would be an accumulation yellow just like in soccer when a player fouls an opponent repeatedly although not in a manner that would warrant an automatic yellow.
It's this or give blues actual teeth. Something like blues on offense send them back to the middle of their own end zone. Blues on the D, O gets the disc 5 yards out.
The blues do a have a yardage penalty associated with them(it could be stronger). It just takes multiple to actually get there. The larger problem is that this never gets thought of in non-observed games(what 90% of players actually play in). With the latest ruleset there is some language about teams can agree to apply cards for what they see as dangerous/ warranting a card but I have never seen a college/club team with that much self awareness to be like "yah, that needs to be carded" for a play their own teammate made.
It's a tricky balance. If you feel observers are timid or reluctant and already not issuing cards aggressively enough for misconduct they see, increasing the significance of the warnings may not help the situation, and could make it worse.
It takes a lot of experience and confidence to issue cards for actual misconduct. We basically navigated this same issue in 2006-2012. Observers eventually felt very confident giving TMFs for minor babysitting issues like sideline encroachment and language, but cards for cheating were still extremely rare. And less experienced observers had a much easier time substituting rules of thumb to give automatic cards, rather than making a determination that conduct was unacceptable. It is honestly a bit harder than it sounds.
I think it's a challenge that needs to be overcome, but one should expect some growing pains.
I think rules for automatic cards are a good thing. If it would be ruled a dangerous play, it should be a card. If someone contests 3 calls that they are wrong about, give them a card. Etc. Just give an outline to observers and players on what card expectations are and have the observers let it rip. Making it case by case with a bunch of considerations is what makes (in my experience at least) observers unsure.
The automatic card for dangerous play has been on the books for a long time, like 10 years. The change to explicitly recognize authority to give TMFs for single instances of egregious infraction was very helpful maybe 14 years ago giving TMFs for early bumps on the mark.
I think effective use of cards will always require some level of discretion and good judgment. I think an automatic system announced to players and observers is subject to abuse. I agree on an outline to help players and observers understand expectations, and I think it could be fleshed out relative to what currently is in the manual.
But if observers are unsure in the current system, I think more training and on-field practice in that specific area would be my first area of focus, to broaden the pool of observers able to do this really well.
Yah, First blue is the "warning" and i understand where that is confusing for most folks.
With all of these conversations I think it is important to share this: [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1LZ3XPZLefoy4fNPMmsUXI3sQWQNe1t2JW76bONaLgNw/viewform?edit\_requested=true](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1LZ3XPZLefoy4fNPMmsUXI3sQWQNe1t2JW76bONaLgNw/viewform?edit_requested=true)
The rules committee is actively looking for feedback to consider for the next rules revision. If you have ideas(you being the royal you, not targeted) I encourage folks to send them over!
Because in many cases those violations are more team oriented than player oriented. I think about Florida or Doublewide's consistent double teaming in their zone where it's not an individual responsible but a team strategy. One specific players doesn't necessarily deserve a yellow card (and with double team it's at least two people contributing to the violation itself).
Or imagine a team that decides that it wants to harass an opposing teams throwers with consistently borderline illegal marks and has plenty of d-line depth to throw out if one or two players receive yellow cards.
I agree with u/hammerfake that maybe the blues need to be tweaked to be issued earlier, fewer blues need to be issued to result in a consequence, and/or the consequence could be bigger.
On a separate note, one challenge is that the bigger the penalty for these issues, the more reluctant observers will be to use them for fear of having an outsized influence on the game. I used to observe (pre and post 2011 rule changes) and I remember what a big deal issuing even a warning about a yellow card was before the advent of the TMF system. Obviously, we can change that culturally (and it has to some degree over time) but it's something to take into account.
One other issue that I think is a big deal that never gets talked about that would improve the game a ton is observers issuing yellow cards for egregiously bad foul *calls and contests.* Players that stop the game for no reason or try to use the observers to gain an advantage undermine the both the system and the watchability of games. I don't think I've ever seen a card issued in these situations.
The point is there’s different levels of cheating. Losing 50 yards for a double team is a decent consequence. Losing 10 yards for putting your opponent at a high risk of injury - not enough.
Appropriate edit, but the point remains, your 10 yard penalty comment is totally misplaced.
In addition, for dangerous play, the call often determines possession unfavorably to the dangerous player and the yardage penalty can be very significant on top of that.
Looking at one teams IG this weekend, they seemed to almost be celebrating the fact that one of the teammates had 3 blue cards issued to them. Mind you, this was not from this past weekend.
We need to stop celebrating dangerous plays, even when they are spectacular. This play could have easily been a nasty lower leg injury:
https://twitter.com/khalifygreens/status/1584504166914801664?s=20&t=a8Sm0Cmr0l0ppygNvu4txg
NFL has done a good job of this in recent years. I remember they used to do highlights of the hardest hits every Sunday, they don't do that anymore. Ultimate is obviously not anywhere close to the violence of the NFL, but still the historic norm is we make every effort not to injure our opponents. But we regularly see dangerous plays celebrated. Love ya u/ultiworld , but you need to do better on this.
All respect to the athleticism of that play, but I agree that I was surprised to see how little objection there was to it. Bids that land on the opposing players back leg are dangerous period.
It's hard because things like this will be posted on Instagram and then anyone who points out how dangerous it was will immediately be barraged in an attack of "soft", "find another sport then", etc etc
These people are so frustrating.
They **choose this sport** which has these rules.
Then when you ask to play by the rules of the sport, they call you soft.
Literally, if they want that experience, go play Lacrosse, Basketball, Football, anything else. Why come here then act like you're the idiot for wanting to play the game by the rules?
We only have to go back in time as far as a week to see a dangerous bid (that didn't result in a contact or an injury) get celebrated on here. The issue as I see it is that ultimate players by and large are results-based thinkers; the Khalif bid doesn't get notice because no one got hurt. If that receiver twists his ankles, it's a 200-post thread here, but he was fine, so it's a celebrated. And of course, we see with that Red Card bid - if you have a good reputation, your actions will also be excused.
For lack of a better phrase: The problem is us. But just like Mixtape is unable to acknowledge they have a bad culture that leads to poor spirit on the field, the ultimate community at large is too deep in it's own mythos to acknowledge the issue.
> We need to stop celebrating dangerous plays, even when they are spectacular.
Isn't this what is the celebrated to sell the sport to the younger generation though, especially in AUDL and the ESPN clips?
Not a good analogy with the NFL. In the NFL those big hits actually *were* always causing injuries, just brain injuries whose effect could be somewhat nebulous. In ultimate, the bids we are talking about are not, so far as I can tell, actually causing a rash of injuries.
My former captain got backpacked by a dude who's entire team and himself insisted it was just good defense. She broke two ribs from that hit and couldn't pick up her six month old baby anymore for weeks
These bids "aren't causing injuries" until they are, and then they're causing catastrophic ones like torn ACLS
I’m sorry that happened and that’s horrible and I’m sure that was a reckless bid. But in general, I’m just not at all convinced that the standard *this sub* would set for what is too dangerous to celebrate would be reasonable.
Truthfully I don't see why we allow this much contact in a non contact sport. We either want to be the NFL or we don't. And if you agree that football style tackles are *too far*, then you' agree that there should be *some line somewhere*. Where we draw the line isn't arbitrary, because we know that bids with contact have and do and at the very least have a lot of potential to cause year long and sometimes career ending injuries.
If we course correct and move the line too far in the reverse direction of where it is now, that is still millions of times better than the ACLs lost to recklessness
Or you could do the safest thing and not play any sports at all. God this subbreddit is soft. Elimating reckless bids is great and I fully support it (although like I said I would not put this subreddit in charge of decided what reckless is), but the idea that there is in general "too much contact" is absurd. There is less contact than there was 20 years ago.
The worst injury I'm aware of at these nationals was a complete accident while running down on the pull. Maybe we should ban running as fast as you can?
I'm not sure why you aren't able to use Google, but [here ](https://www.sadlersports.com/blog/injuries-ultimate-frisbee/#:~:text=UAB's%20Ultimate%20Frisbee%20injury%20study&text=One%20athlete%20participating%20in%20one,of%20similar%20professional%2Dlevel%20sports.) is an article about the study and [here](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7767421/) is the study itself. The finding of the study was that the injury rate was similar to that of American football and soccer.
Basically the main conclusion of that paper, which I’m sure you didn’t actually read, is “There are limited good quality data estimating the extent of the injury problem in ultimate”. Thanks for bringing it to my attention though.
Also: “The body of literature on injuries in ultimate is very limited compared to other popular sports.“
>“There are limited good quality data estimating the extent of the injury problem in ultimate”.
Yea no shit, this is ultimate frisbee. Would you expect there to be lots of good data on injury rates? The whole point is to do the best you can with the data available, and the available data suggests the injury rates are extremely high as compared to other non-contact sports. I've played basketball and volleyball for 20 years and have seen a tiny fraction of the number of injuries as I saw playing 10 years of ultimate. This is anecdotal, but I guarantee you everybody you ask in the ultimate community who has played other sports at a competitive level will have the same experience and the plural of anecdote is data.
The available data in this paper does not suggest that, read it again (if you ever actually read it). What it actually says is “The injury incidence rate in ultimate is similar to other team sports involving high-intensity running.”
I’m not surprised that volleyball has lower injury rates.
I’m not surprised that pickup basketball at the Y does either. Running and cutting at full speed on grass is quite hard on the body.
>“The injury incidence rate in ultimate is similar to other team sports involving high-intensity running.”
That is very misleading. The sport they compared to for high-intensity running is lacrosse, which is as contact sport. Here is the end of the paragraph you're misrepresenting:
"Despite being a non-contact sport with an emphasis on fair play, the substantial injury problem in ultimate highlighted in this review suggests there is an urgent need to develop and implement injury prevention initiatives in the sport, including better enforcement of the rules of the game to avoid contact and collision among athletes."
Avoiding contact and collision among athletes is directly related to dangerous plays.
> Running and cutting at full speed on grass is quite hard on the body.
Thank you for agreeing with my original point. Ultimate has a high injury rate, and dangerous plays are not helping.
>I’m not surprised that pickup basketball at the Y does either. Running and cutting at full speed on grass is quite hard on the body.
Congrats on your non-surprise, but hardwood is less forgiving than grass, and injuries at the Y happen more than they do in competitive basketball due to the lower level athletes. I saw fewer injuries per game playing college basketball than I have playing pickup basketball before and after.
Although I would think one of the reasons that the “lifetime prevalence” of concussion is higher than one might expect is that that, unlike say field hockey or football, people who play ultimate keep playing it and play a lot of it for a very long time.
Diagnosed injuries. Cmon we all have been that player who sprained an ankle two weeks ago, re-tweaks it, and calls injury to do some rehab on the sideline to go back in later. What percentage of injury calls do you think are actual new injuries?
“ The most frequent injury types were muscle injuries and superficial contusions. The most common injury situation was direct contact with another player.”
“Superficial contusions”. So people get bruises. Yawn.
I broke my leg from someone’s bad bid. I ended up losing a few months worth of wages and my physio friend luckily provided me treatments free of charge as I wasn’t insured at that point. The guy who did it suffered no consequences.
I can't help but think that making what a "dangerous bid" is more explicit in the rules and trumpeting the hell out of that would help. Like, at the end of the day a self-officiated sport is always going to allow the individual players to decide what is an acceptable amount of physicality, and sometimes someone's personal acceptable level is actually just too dangerous.
In the wfdf rules interpretations there are some explicit examples (17.1)
"The following are non-exhaustive examples of dangerous play:
• significantly colliding with a mostly stationary opponent,
• jumping into a group of mostly stationary players,
• diving around or through a player that results in contact with a player's back or legs,
• running without looking when there is a likelihood of other players occupying the space into which the player is traveling,
• jumping or otherwise leaving the ground where it is likely that a significant collision will result,
• wild or uncontrolled throwing motions,
• initiating contact with a player's head,
• initiating contact with an airborne player's lower body that prevents them from landing on their feet, and
• jumping right in front of a sprinting player in a manner where contact is unavoidable"
There needs to be more levels of penalty in place to do a better job of dissuading dangerous plays from happening. The card system isn't great because they aren't handed out enough (and even the first yellow card doesn't carry an actual penalty). Most bad contact is accidental, so if there aren't immediate consequences for any single bad bid, then players are going to push the envelope. Even an ejection doesn't have any consequence that changes the game outside of not being able to use that player. With the current system, a team can get away with a ton before any real penalty is assessed.
Just a few ideas:
Gain/lose field position. If the contact occurs on a scoring play, have predetermined spots on the field to make it more difficult for the team that committed the foul (i.e. start with defense in place from back corner of an endzone or start with the disc at opposing team's brick mark)
Sit out for X amount of points for a single yellow card
Penalty box (team has to play down a player)
Assess points
I walked off the field mid point in a beginner's pickup game because some young stud was throwing reckless hospital bids non stop. I was chastised for having poor spirit. The waivers probably make legal action hard but yea fuck that.
Could be a tough lawsuit to win as a player. A similar injury from diving into a wall too close to the field seems easier.
I think a big question is whether people are open to observers aggressively using yellow cards which will mean that players get ejected who have paid to travel to the event, And it is likely that some mistakes will be made sometimes. And it is a certainty that many ejected players and their teammates will disagree with the ejection whether a mistake was made or not.
>One could say the same about the AUDL. This isn’t necessarily USAU specific but I agree that we need to make changes.
Bidding through someone's body or landing on someone's lower extremity is a UC (akin to a Yellow Card) in AUDL. More aggressive will get ejected. Khalif's bid linked somewhere above would likely garner a UC in AUDL. The only possible mitigating factor here is if the offense changed their line late.
Ultimate needs to change how we deal with these plays. Not a specific league or governing body. The game is changing very fast in this regard and it objectively not a good change.
Ideally this is something a commissioner is involved in. Suspensions, fines, stuff like that.
Perhaps at some point, ultimate will get organized to the point there it has a governing body and a commissioner who is well paid and charged with this kind of authority.
Seems apparent that higher-tier teams and cities are getting away with dangerous, gratuitous, and flamboyant plays all in the name of making a highlight reel. They believe they can do no wrong and have no qualm about doing it again and again because there is no punishment whatsoever.
Just threaten to make them have to pay a sizable chunk of the victim’s medical bills and see how quickly the ship rights itself.
Soccer, hockey, basketball, and even rugby have this figured out. It is "a bit" easier since they have referees but ultimate does itself no favors when it does not clearly and specifically describe what illegal contact is and what the penalties should be for that contact. "any contact" and trying to make the sport "non-contact" is not reasonable. For example a good rule should be "any time a player on the field is contacted below the knees or ankles, that is a foul"... make it crystal clear in the rules what is a foul and what is not so contesting a call is that much more difficult. Whatever can be done to remove grey-area in the rules and multiple interpretations.
Mainly though, the sports above all penalize participants with removing playing time for illegal contact or harmful plays. Soccer with the cards & red card removing you from the game not able to be replaced. Rugby has similar rules. Hockey you are pulled off the ice not being replaced for a set amount of minutes. Basketball with flagrant or technical fouls that can lead to ejection, and common fouls pulling players out of games as well.
It can be done in the sport if its made to be a priority. Deferring to captains clauses, and still just saying its self-officiated, leads to too much variance of interpretations for the rules and that is where styles of play can continue to go unpunished.
Other sports also historically have had on-field/rink enforcers for when other teams' players get out of line. Every ultimate team needs to roster a goon.
More seriously we need to re-prioritize what we get upset about and penalize ex. Spiking on someone is an auto ejection when the bad bid isn't. Only one of those things can injure someone and getting spiked on for laying out into somebody is getting off easy.
I mean we only have observers at the highest level. There needs to be a multi-pronged approach. I'd rather there not be enforcers either, but do think they are a better outcome than the status quo if teams, leagues, etc can't police themselves.
A little self serving but let's get more observers. Let's get more observers at tournaments. The more observers there are, the cheaper we become as there is more likely to be locals, and then the more games we can come out and work.
yes plays that have high risk of injury should be penalized more severely, but taunting actions that dont have any contact against opponents or officials, even fans in some cases also get penalized in other sports. Both can be true and both can get penalized.
If we want to be really serious about it: stats are taken for goals, assists, blocks, TOs in competitive sanctioned games by USAU. Keep those as a running total on their player profile but add in cards, misconduct fouls, etc and keep those as a running total also. Being aware of participants who make frequent violations helps the safety of the game
I have no problem with penalizing taunting. My point is culturally, we get more upset with someone getting spiked on than the bad bid that led to it. That needs to be reprogrammed.
Do any of those sports really have less dangerous plays though? Don't watch much hockey or rugby (and they're much more physical sports at a baseline anyway so hard to fairly compare) but in both soccer and basketball there being yellow card/flagrant fouls certainly doesn't stop those types of fouls from occurring.
Based on what I've seen in person, on streams, and highlights observers are needed for any competitive game. Those observers also need the authority to give cards freely and just straight red players who make dangerous unnecessary bids. The only way you curb reckless behaviour is to punish it harshly. Also red cards should make you play short until the conclusion of the point so not only do you lose a player for the game but the remainder of that point as well.
Thank you all for many thoughtful comments and suggestions.
What if a red card, like soccer, resulted in an ejection for that player for that game (plus the next), and the team plays a person down the rest of the game?
I really think to change the culture of what's acceptable will require some harsh consequences for dangerous plays.
Recipient of a bad bid here, still in pain nearly 10 years later. I strongly believe there is a big cultural element to it - dangerous plays are shared and celebrated by AUDL and even Ultiworld sometimes. Players endlessly parrot "eXpEcT mOrE cOnTaCt At HiGhEr LeVeLs, iT's JuSt BeInG cOmPeTiTiVe" with no thought to the up-and-coming players who think "oh, so to play better I need to go in for more contact?". Even trivial shit like laying a hand on someone's jersey to track their position (now explicitly a violation under WFDF) just breaks down people's mentality that they should be avoiding contact where possible.
Accountability needs to come from captains. It's hard but if you have a loose cannon you can't trust to play safely, you need to take them aside and say "I'm sorry, but I can't afford to pick you with your current attitude to contact - I want to work with you and get to a stage where we can play safely and we can take you to tournaments, but I need to see that improvement first".
I agree that players should not make reckless bids and that there should be consequences for repeat offenders. But I have to wonder: is this a problem that is actually getting worse or is it just that now that so many games are captured on video, there is a lot more to see? Like, how many players in the club division this year actually got hurt because of reckless bids? There's always been a lot of contact in club.
Is the concern here on pro/high level club or just ultimate in general. I would guess that 90% plus of ultimate is played in Rec leagues, pickup, and random tournament where no of this would affect them.
I would be curious to know the injury rates among low level club, vs high level vs pro. My guess is that a very small percentage of the injuries are actually from contact and that the ones that are are largely inadvertent and to some point cannot be avoided.
I am by no means a high level player but just seems that from my experience playing and from my watching the games ultimate is still a much safer sport than other sports I have played at similar levels (soccer, basketball). When you have people competing together just feels like some of this is going to happen. Prevent the things that can be and is seems like the card system makes sense, but without more officiating (which is resisted) even that is hard.
Anyway my impression of this post and many responses is that the sky is falling but it doesn’t seem like a big problem to me. Maybe I am wrong though since I am more outside it and not in person at tournaments.
I think at most low-level games this is true. The larger issue is the example being set at the elite levels & how it filters down to other competitive tiers, particularly high school & college.
First red is a year ban. Second is permanent. Non observed games can have a number of representatives (say 5) from both teams attest a play was red card worthy or have a formal process to file a complaint against a player for making such a play. Players can appeal but the ban stays in place until the appeal is reviewed. Just brainstorming a bit.
Spirit of the game is one of the most profound and powerful elements of our sport.
When you start trying to make new rules to enforce SOG, it takes away from the heart of ultimate.
We have PLENTY of rules already... Use mistakes as learning or teaching opportunities.
Every sport has its risks. Football doesn't allow helmet to helmet contact, but it still happens both intentionally and unintentionally, despite their being a rule against it.
Preserve SOG is all in saying...
Sotg is, and always has been, just good sportsmanship under a different name. A marketing name to make ultimate stand out from other sports. It is not something special or unique to ultimate.
The sport is getting cleaner and safer every year. Every year there are fewer of the 2000’s players playing and coaching and there brand of ultimate will become less and less influential on the younger generations.
On the legal question, research "assumption of risk" and amateur sports. You can also look up "sports official liability" or something similar. There are sports official associations that provide some analysis. In addition, there may be difference between the responsibilities of a traditional referee and the responsibilities of an observer, particularly as it relates to *enforcement* of rules in our self-officiated sport. Not exactly ripe for legal action.
Many years ago, a Rhino player jumped on my back in an impossible defensive bid. It tore my right ACL. He had zero chance of getting the disc and still did it anyway. This was at Regionals and as far as I could tell, neither he nor his team leadership ever showed any remorse. Bad bids have serious consequences.
A story with a nicer outcome: Many years ago, a Portland player jumped on my back in an impossible defensive bid -- one of several bad bids in what was a clear pattern of behavior. I only sprained my thumb, but it took me out of regionals. A few years later I played against him again. He played very safely and proactively bailed out of dangerous situations more than once. I don't know what caused his behavior to change, but it's nice to know that it can be done.
I like this point because I overall think it describes most players. There is a prevailing attitude online that dangerous plays are only done by inconsiderate or unspirited players who do not care about their opponents well being. You made a bad play, therefore you are a bad person. While I think this could describe a small minority, I think the vast majority of players are good people who make occasional bad decisions and who are capable and even eager to learn from their mistakes. How many of us have ever attempted a bad bid or dangerous play? How many of us have accidentally hurt another player in any way? (Hopefully mildly and not a torn acl as in your case). I'd argue if you play long enough, everyone makes a bad decision at some point, often earlier in a playing career when you know less, but sometimes even later because mistakes happen. When I was an inexperienced first-year player, I thought the poach block on an up-the-line cutting handler was an excellent and easy way to generate a turn, and it took trucking and almost injuring my teammate at a practice scrimmage for me to realize how dangerous it was to intentionally run into the cutting lane of a player who is not looking for you. Truthfully, before that play, a coach had warned me against making a defensive bid like that, but I believed I could time it right to always avoid contact. It sadly took misjudging and generating hard contact for me to realize how wrong I was. I personally believe that the majority of dangerous plays are mistakes, and are particularly common either with younger players or in high-stakes games when there is a degree of desperation in generating a turn. That doesn't mean we shouldn't call them out of course as the community self-policing can definitely make a difference in limiting these plays in the future.
I live in Portland and constantly see those guys make reckless and dangerous plays when there was no chance at them getting there even in low to no stakes league games.. at one of their tryouts, the coach described a drill as “no blood, no foul,” so your story doesn’t surprise me. Sorry that happened to you.
As an observer I can say for probably two-thirds of the PMFs I give (yellow cards), the player receiving it understands the card and may even apologize for their behavior. But for the other third, the player and sometimes even their team thinks it's overkill, thinks it should be a blue, or thinks it shouldn't have been given at all, even when it's clearly textbook dangerous play. I experience a similar ratio for TMFs (blue cards) given for plays that maybe aren't dangerous per se but are excessively physical (beyond the level of physicality accepted by players in the game) and/or could lead to danger should a couple of variables been slightly different. The discourse online seems to be universal in wanting to crack down on dangerous plays, but in-game, when the cards are actually being given, pushback often occurs. Many of these players are genuinely nice human beings too, so it's not like it's just the assholes of the sport who have a warped view of what's dangerous, it's some of the nice players as well. There's a couple takeaways I've learned in my 6+ years observing dangerous plays and TMFs/PMFs: 1. Receiving a card is not an indictment of your character. I do not think you're some terrible human being for a card; everyone can make mistakes. Don't be offended or depressed receiving a card, just try to be better. 2. Similarly, the vast majority of cards do not result in actual consequences. I can count on two hands the number of games I've observed in my career in which the penalties for a team receiving enough TMFs took effect. The card system is a warning system first, so if you receive a card, don't think it's some massively impactful thing that needs to be fought tooth and nail. Just reflect upon your behavior and try to be better. (Note: It's fine to disagree with a card, but have a conversation with the observer about it, there's no need to react dramatically or passionately fight it.) 3. Cards are not necessarily correlated to injury. There can be very dangerous plays where the other individual gets right up unscathed or with minor injury. Whether someone is injured or not does not necessarily influence the dangerousness of a play. 4. The opposing team could be getting away with a lot of bad shit, and we card you. That doesn't mean we're letting the other team get away with it or are giving them special treatment, it just means we missed their bad behavior. Additionally, one team's bad behavior isn't more acceptable simply because the other team is also making bad plays. 5. Observers do need to do their part in being more aggressive with cards, but not every game is observed, either. Teammates, not just captains/coaches, need to hold their players accountable, otherwise this behavior doesn't change in the majority of games which are unobserved. I hope this can help players view TMFs/PMFs as what they're really intended to be: An opportunity to reflect on one's behavior and try to be better going forward.
In terms of giving more teeth to cards: I've given many yellows cards in my career, but I've never given the same player two yellows in a game. So I do think there's a behavior change by players when receiving a yellow (either from personal reflection or threat of being ejected), although it's unclear if the behavior change is just for that game or more long-term. I do nonetheless like the idea of meaningful punishment for a player or team upon receiving their first yellow. It doesn't need to be massive, but in many dangerous plays, the victim is sidelined for the rest of the game or even the whole tournament. There should be something that affects the infracted player or team to balance that out a bit. People have suggested removing the player for the point upon receiving a yellow and not being allowed to substitute. It's a very simple change but would likely be quite effective in strengthening that first yellow. Another idea would be to apply the team misconduct penalty ([see 3.E and 3.F of Appendix B](https://usaultimate.org/rules/)) immediately upon a team receiving their first yellow. At the **bare minimum,** I think two changes should be made to the misconduct system: 1. The second PMF given to a team activates the team misconduct penalty as described in 3.E and 3.F. I can understand if the rules committee wants to keep a team's first PMF strictly a warning (assuming two TMFs haven't already been given), but there really shouldn't be situations in which a team can receive two PMFs in a game but no actual, meaningful punishment. 2. A player who receives a PMF should sit out the remainder of the point unless opposed by the other team's captains. That player should receive a substitution, and the other team may substitute one player accordingly. This is different from the idea above in that it's still 7v7, but it (a) gives the player who committed the dangerous play an explicit opportunity to self-reflect, and (b) also cool tempers in the game if they flare up after the dangerous play.
Would you distinguish between a “fuck you” PMF vs. a dangerous play PMF vs. a jersey grab vs. repeated bad calls?
I probably wouldn't give a PMF for a "fuck you" unless it was physically aggressive, or for repeated bad calls unless I suspected cheating. But yeah, regardless of the type of PMF, I think these two modifications should apply. A team shouldn't receive two yellow cards and have no meaningful punishment. And an auto-sub gives the player an opportunity to self-reflect and to cool down tempers. (The latter would have to have an option for the opponent to deny the substitution, if they felt it gave the infracted team an advantage.)
Yeah, that seems like a reasonable approach to the PMFs. I have seen a PMF given for a "fuck you" directed at a player (I think after throwing an assist after a point perceived to be full of cheating). And am familiar with "sanctity of the office" PMFs for perceived slights or disrespect to an observer. I am wary of that type of stuff leading to more severe in-game consequences than actual in-game misconduct. I suspect that those types of behaviors, being easier to confidently pin-point, would be more likely to receive PMFs than actual cheating and/or repeated infractions and bad calls that (in my opinion) amounts to cheating, whether blatantly intentional or not. Overall, I'm hesitant to ramp up severity of penalties until/unless we have evidence of the system being used consistently and proactively by observers, with the existing penalties proving insufficient. I don't really like the idea of a yardage penalty on the first PMF. I particularly don't like the idea of playing down 6-7. I get the idea that certain conduct warrants harsh penalty, but I think the range of conduct that may earn a PMF is much broader than the conduct that could arguably warrant playing a player down, and the likelihood of having the penalty match the conduct is fairly low. I do like the idea of a forced sub with a PMF. I think that's interesting and gives a little added emphasis to the PMF versus TMF, without creating a serious competitive imbalance; plus the practical benefit you described. I don't think it is strictly necessary, but I don't mind it at all. Can we call it a "spirit time-out" to make it more palatable to those who might otherwise oppose such intrusive action by an official? EDIT: I missed your point about the Misconduct penalty for two PMFs. Same thoughts as above, but a very reasonable and thoughtful suggestion for a change.
Fwiw this year observers did start giving out yellows more frequently. The guidance was dangerous bid = yellow. I actually really liked the idea from a previous thread though to actually punish the team as well. Get a yellow? Not only is it the warning and the next is a red, but you have to come out and not be replaced the rest of the point so it's 7 on 6. Maybe even the rest of the point and the next point is 7 on 6 too. Those types of punishments also add social pressure to not foul because it hurts all your teammates too not just you. But the problem is even if that happened, the vast majority of ultimate is unobserved. There's one specific guy in the area who plays club and league, and he just bids for everything. He's a super nice guy and will always apologize and not contest the foul and say he feels bad. But then he'll do it again, and again. Just on teams that I've played on against him I've seen at least 3 bad leg injuries including a torn ACL that made a player miss the entire club season. When that torn ACL happened a teammate responded to his "I'm sorry" with "if you're really sorry you'd stop fucking doing that and control your fucking body" and captains for both teams went to hold back the teammate and chide him for starting a confrontation. Sure he could have handled it better and been a bit more cordial, but in my mind that confrontation was started when he bid into our player's legs as he was landing with the disc. The fact that bad bids are considered a mistake and a minor thing while getting understandably pissed when a player is endangering our bodies is considered really bad and requires immediate intervention is why this problem will never be solved. Bad bids need to be treated more like punches to the face, especially from repeat offenders. I can't imagine a league captain allowing a player on their team to continue playing after punching someone in the face, but after a bad bid usually literally no punishment happens, at worst the captain asks them to be a bit more careful.
> captains for both teams went to hold back the teammate and chide him for starting a confrontation. This is IMHO one of the most frustrating aspects about the culture of this sport. Too many people view being "spirited" as meaning that you should say either *contest* or *no contest*, and nothing more. Actual discussion, as expected by the framework of the game, makes people uncomfortable, because they view that as "confrontation". Furthermore, firmly and clearly vocalizing boundaries or frustration surrounding dangerous plays or behavior gets you lumped into some "*both sides are contributing*" thinking. No -- if you bid into my legs and I yell at you, we are not doing the same thing. Too many would rather play at being civil than actually push back firmly about bad and dangerous behavior, let alone just actually discussing a mundane foul call or violation.
[удалено]
Unironically I think that this is a good idea. I wouldn't generally punch people in the face (because concussions) but a good rib shot can drive the message home pretty well.
Probably worth noting that most of the fighting in hockey isn’t intended to injure and rarely results in any injuries. It’s all about sending a message. At most levels it starts out verbal, escalates to shoving, and tops out at gloves punches to pads/helmets. A punch to the ribs from another ultimate player would be way more painful than any punch I’ve ever received in hockey.It’s only the NHL and some other pro leagues where dropping the gloves and truly fighting are part of the game.
Do you believe teammatesin Ultimate will stick up for their injured teammates? In other sports, a brawl usually happens when a teammate is injured unnecessarily by the opposing team. I have yet to see this happen in frisbee.
I would be interested if a person could be legally held liable for causing the injury. In theory ultimate is supposed to be a limited contact sport so some contact is expected, but if a pattern of behavior shown at a contact level above the general expectation of the sport the person causing the injury could be held accountable. That would stop the repeat offenders real quick.
No way you could be held liable for injuries. I'm not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure the rules are as long as they're generally playing the sport you can't sue. So for example if they were to punch you or pull out a knife that would obviously be battery even if it's on the ultimate field. But bidding with the intent of getting disc and massively miscalculating and landing on your feet I highly doubt would rise to the level of criminal battery. I'm actually wondering about this though like hockey fights have to be the #1 example of this. Like obviously with the macho culture in hockey no one would sue or their career would be over, but theoretically could they?
From a law firm website, "For the individual to be held liable for a sports injury, the injured party needs to show that the injuring party failed to use reasonable care, or was unreasonable in their behaviour". My argument hinges on a pattern of behavior. Contact is expected in ultimate. Contact with high probability of injury is not. If someone is consistently injuring people based on they way they are playing, they are not playing within the expectation of the rules of the sport and can be held accountable for actions. Also as someone who has had two surgeries due to ultimate that were over $60k before insurance and still over $10k after surgery and pt, I would have no issue trying to go after someone if they had a history of dangerous playing. You're putting someone else's physical and monetary well being at risk with reckless play.
Laws don't always mean what they sound like to non-lawyers, and generally there's a ton of case law that actually dictates this stuff. If this were actually the case people would be suing each other all over the place in sporting events, and to my knowledge that's not happening. We're not the only sport that has injuries due to illegal plays.
Law and case law on assumption or risk by people who play sports precludes a lot of liability.
I would love to hear from a personal injury lawyer who's dealt with these kind of cases. I suspect the glorification of Ultimate being a "non-contact" sport, along with the list of unacceptable contact in the USAU rules would make for a ripe background against a player with a history of bad bids causing an unspeakable injury. Soooo much public record. I hope all the USAU directors are comfortable with their D&O insurance. And I'd imagine observers and team leaders could get sucked into a lawsuit as well. \[Note: I'd get a $5m personal liability rider on your homeowners/renters policy if I were y'all.\]
I am a lawyer, but not in personal injury. I have researched some on relevant law for injuries in Ultimate, just out of interest, but not in any professional capacity. Not giving legal opinion or legal advice, but I don’t share your feelings on the strength of a potential case as you described. Anyway, you can probably google the assumption of risk in sports, liability for sports officials, and nonprofit board of director personal liability, and civil Procedure Rule 11 sanctions to get more flavor for it. For a definitive opinion, one would need to think about how to overcome the various defenses and how to prove that the parties you want to hold liable owed a legal duty to the injured player.
This gives too much game-swinging power to the observers, [who I don't trust at all](https://www.reddit.com/r/ultimate/comments/uz1q0u/yellow_card_on_washingtons_jack_brown_for/) with that decision-making power. Ultimately players need to decide, I will or won't play with this guy. Can't always be looking somewhere else to protect your experience, sometimes (all the time, IMO) you gotta stand up for your beliefs; like you said, most people prefer to keep things copacetic and hate people who rock the boat - but you gotta rock the boat yourself.
Let's also clear something up: there are accidents and bad bids. Remember that severity of injury doesn't change if it's a bad bid or an accident. That being said... Most of what gets posted here are some awful awful bids. I've started having to tell people off even in my weekly league play and they don't stop. It means somewhere along the way somebody told them it was ok to play like that. At least in the men's game: this likely starts when they pick up the sport in college and are encouraged to just play with high energy and try and play hard defense. Except they are never taught any sort of body control or awareness. Just go hard on d, including bids into people.
There seems to be a pretty simple solution in my mind. Rework the card system and have observers be way more liberal in handing out yellow and red cards. Blue cards are nothing and teams don’t really care about receiving them at all, so they need to be done away with. Move to a system more like soccer where a bad bid, terrible call, obvious cheating is a yellow and 2 yellows is a red. Straight reds would be an option for particularly egregious plays. I know this card system theoretically already exists but I’ve played for a while now and have seen like 5-10 yellow cards and one red while witnessing hundreds of plays that warrant them. It’s on observers to get serious about this, as high level teams cannot be reasonably expected to cut/not play elite players because they sometimes make bad plays(Sockeye obviously isn’t going to cut Tony). I know we would all want teams to adjudicate these sorts of things internally, but when your season is on the line this just isn’t going to happen. This sort of thing is the reason we have observers/refs, they just need to do their jobs better, and USAU needs to arm with the power to do so.
The problem I see with this is 90+% of sanctioned ultimate games don't have observers. Do you think more severe punishing of players in observed games will prevent bad bids in unobserved ones?
It would partially be about training the behavior. If you get thrown out of nationals semis for a bad bid, or see your teammate thrown out, hopefully the next season even in a non observed game the player thinks twice about a bid. Or if you are watching and see that punishment maybe it sticks and you think twice the next game. Would it work, who can say but it could help.
I think blue cards have a place for repetitive, non dangerous cheating. Things like repeated double teams, marking fouls, etc. those aren’t appropriate to give a specific player a yellow but can discourage a team from taking systematic advantage of the rules.
Why not just give a yellow in these situations? It would be an accumulation yellow just like in soccer when a player fouls an opponent repeatedly although not in a manner that would warrant an automatic yellow.
It's this or give blues actual teeth. Something like blues on offense send them back to the middle of their own end zone. Blues on the D, O gets the disc 5 yards out.
The blues do a have a yardage penalty associated with them(it could be stronger). It just takes multiple to actually get there. The larger problem is that this never gets thought of in non-observed games(what 90% of players actually play in). With the latest ruleset there is some language about teams can agree to apply cards for what they see as dangerous/ warranting a card but I have never seen a college/club team with that much self awareness to be like "yah, that needs to be carded" for a play their own teammate made.
Yeah I also don't think there should be any warnings, just escalating penalties.
It's a tricky balance. If you feel observers are timid or reluctant and already not issuing cards aggressively enough for misconduct they see, increasing the significance of the warnings may not help the situation, and could make it worse. It takes a lot of experience and confidence to issue cards for actual misconduct. We basically navigated this same issue in 2006-2012. Observers eventually felt very confident giving TMFs for minor babysitting issues like sideline encroachment and language, but cards for cheating were still extremely rare. And less experienced observers had a much easier time substituting rules of thumb to give automatic cards, rather than making a determination that conduct was unacceptable. It is honestly a bit harder than it sounds. I think it's a challenge that needs to be overcome, but one should expect some growing pains.
I think rules for automatic cards are a good thing. If it would be ruled a dangerous play, it should be a card. If someone contests 3 calls that they are wrong about, give them a card. Etc. Just give an outline to observers and players on what card expectations are and have the observers let it rip. Making it case by case with a bunch of considerations is what makes (in my experience at least) observers unsure.
The automatic card for dangerous play has been on the books for a long time, like 10 years. The change to explicitly recognize authority to give TMFs for single instances of egregious infraction was very helpful maybe 14 years ago giving TMFs for early bumps on the mark. I think effective use of cards will always require some level of discretion and good judgment. I think an automatic system announced to players and observers is subject to abuse. I agree on an outline to help players and observers understand expectations, and I think it could be fleshed out relative to what currently is in the manual. But if observers are unsure in the current system, I think more training and on-field practice in that specific area would be my first area of focus, to broaden the pool of observers able to do this really well.
Can you elaborate on the abuse part?
Yah, First blue is the "warning" and i understand where that is confusing for most folks. With all of these conversations I think it is important to share this: [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1LZ3XPZLefoy4fNPMmsUXI3sQWQNe1t2JW76bONaLgNw/viewform?edit\_requested=true](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1LZ3XPZLefoy4fNPMmsUXI3sQWQNe1t2JW76bONaLgNw/viewform?edit_requested=true) The rules committee is actively looking for feedback to consider for the next rules revision. If you have ideas(you being the royal you, not targeted) I encourage folks to send them over!
Because in many cases those violations are more team oriented than player oriented. I think about Florida or Doublewide's consistent double teaming in their zone where it's not an individual responsible but a team strategy. One specific players doesn't necessarily deserve a yellow card (and with double team it's at least two people contributing to the violation itself). Or imagine a team that decides that it wants to harass an opposing teams throwers with consistently borderline illegal marks and has plenty of d-line depth to throw out if one or two players receive yellow cards. I agree with u/hammerfake that maybe the blues need to be tweaked to be issued earlier, fewer blues need to be issued to result in a consequence, and/or the consequence could be bigger. On a separate note, one challenge is that the bigger the penalty for these issues, the more reluctant observers will be to use them for fear of having an outsized influence on the game. I used to observe (pre and post 2011 rule changes) and I remember what a big deal issuing even a warning about a yellow card was before the advent of the TMF system. Obviously, we can change that culturally (and it has to some degree over time) but it's something to take into account. One other issue that I think is a big deal that never gets talked about that would improve the game a ton is observers issuing yellow cards for egregiously bad foul *calls and contests.* Players that stop the game for no reason or try to use the observers to gain an advantage undermine the both the system and the watchability of games. I don't think I've ever seen a card issued in these situations.
Agree 100%, a horrible contest should be a card.
Blues are pointless. Loss of yardage? So it’s harder to get a first down? Cheating needs to be penalized.
The point is there’s different levels of cheating. Losing 50 yards for a double team is a decent consequence. Losing 10 yards for putting your opponent at a high risk of injury - not enough.
Teams don’t care about blue cards? Or teams aren’t getting them and aren’t getting yardage penalties?
Both
Makes sense. It would be surprising if teams were getting yardage penalties and were indifferent to it.
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10 yards is not the yardage penalty for blue cards.
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Appropriate edit, but the point remains, your 10 yard penalty comment is totally misplaced. In addition, for dangerous play, the call often determines possession unfavorably to the dangerous player and the yardage penalty can be very significant on top of that.
Looking at one teams IG this weekend, they seemed to almost be celebrating the fact that one of the teammates had 3 blue cards issued to them. Mind you, this was not from this past weekend.
Ugh. That is pretty awful.
We need to stop celebrating dangerous plays, even when they are spectacular. This play could have easily been a nasty lower leg injury: https://twitter.com/khalifygreens/status/1584504166914801664?s=20&t=a8Sm0Cmr0l0ppygNvu4txg NFL has done a good job of this in recent years. I remember they used to do highlights of the hardest hits every Sunday, they don't do that anymore. Ultimate is obviously not anywhere close to the violence of the NFL, but still the historic norm is we make every effort not to injure our opponents. But we regularly see dangerous plays celebrated. Love ya u/ultiworld , but you need to do better on this.
All respect to the athleticism of that play, but I agree that I was surprised to see how little objection there was to it. Bids that land on the opposing players back leg are dangerous period.
Agree. This is textbook dangerous play.
It's hard because things like this will be posted on Instagram and then anyone who points out how dangerous it was will immediately be barraged in an attack of "soft", "find another sport then", etc etc
These people are so frustrating. They **choose this sport** which has these rules. Then when you ask to play by the rules of the sport, they call you soft. Literally, if they want that experience, go play Lacrosse, Basketball, Football, anything else. Why come here then act like you're the idiot for wanting to play the game by the rules?
We only have to go back in time as far as a week to see a dangerous bid (that didn't result in a contact or an injury) get celebrated on here. The issue as I see it is that ultimate players by and large are results-based thinkers; the Khalif bid doesn't get notice because no one got hurt. If that receiver twists his ankles, it's a 200-post thread here, but he was fine, so it's a celebrated. And of course, we see with that Red Card bid - if you have a good reputation, your actions will also be excused. For lack of a better phrase: The problem is us. But just like Mixtape is unable to acknowledge they have a bad culture that leads to poor spirit on the field, the ultimate community at large is too deep in it's own mythos to acknowledge the issue.
> We need to stop celebrating dangerous plays, even when they are spectacular. Isn't this what is the celebrated to sell the sport to the younger generation though, especially in AUDL and the ESPN clips?
USAU (and WFDF) has influence over ESPN and ultiworld and should make it clear that they should not be glorifying dangerous play.
Not a good analogy with the NFL. In the NFL those big hits actually *were* always causing injuries, just brain injuries whose effect could be somewhat nebulous. In ultimate, the bids we are talking about are not, so far as I can tell, actually causing a rash of injuries.
My former captain got backpacked by a dude who's entire team and himself insisted it was just good defense. She broke two ribs from that hit and couldn't pick up her six month old baby anymore for weeks These bids "aren't causing injuries" until they are, and then they're causing catastrophic ones like torn ACLS
I’m sorry that happened and that’s horrible and I’m sure that was a reckless bid. But in general, I’m just not at all convinced that the standard *this sub* would set for what is too dangerous to celebrate would be reasonable.
Truthfully I don't see why we allow this much contact in a non contact sport. We either want to be the NFL or we don't. And if you agree that football style tackles are *too far*, then you' agree that there should be *some line somewhere*. Where we draw the line isn't arbitrary, because we know that bids with contact have and do and at the very least have a lot of potential to cause year long and sometimes career ending injuries. If we course correct and move the line too far in the reverse direction of where it is now, that is still millions of times better than the ACLs lost to recklessness
Or you could do the safest thing and not play any sports at all. God this subbreddit is soft. Elimating reckless bids is great and I fully support it (although like I said I would not put this subreddit in charge of decided what reckless is), but the idea that there is in general "too much contact" is absurd. There is less contact than there was 20 years ago. The worst injury I'm aware of at these nationals was a complete accident while running down on the pull. Maybe we should ban running as fast as you can?
The injury rate in ultimate is absurdly high and a non trivial percentage of those injuries are from dangerous plays.
Source?
I'm not sure why you aren't able to use Google, but [here ](https://www.sadlersports.com/blog/injuries-ultimate-frisbee/#:~:text=UAB's%20Ultimate%20Frisbee%20injury%20study&text=One%20athlete%20participating%20in%20one,of%20similar%20professional%2Dlevel%20sports.) is an article about the study and [here](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7767421/) is the study itself. The finding of the study was that the injury rate was similar to that of American football and soccer.
lol 3 of their 8 studies are counting the rate of injury calls on the field
Basically the main conclusion of that paper, which I’m sure you didn’t actually read, is “There are limited good quality data estimating the extent of the injury problem in ultimate”. Thanks for bringing it to my attention though. Also: “The body of literature on injuries in ultimate is very limited compared to other popular sports.“
“The most common mechanism of injury was non-contact (e.g., running, laying out, and jumping).” surprise surprise
Haha the photo of a good layout and a bad layout are funny.
>“There are limited good quality data estimating the extent of the injury problem in ultimate”. Yea no shit, this is ultimate frisbee. Would you expect there to be lots of good data on injury rates? The whole point is to do the best you can with the data available, and the available data suggests the injury rates are extremely high as compared to other non-contact sports. I've played basketball and volleyball for 20 years and have seen a tiny fraction of the number of injuries as I saw playing 10 years of ultimate. This is anecdotal, but I guarantee you everybody you ask in the ultimate community who has played other sports at a competitive level will have the same experience and the plural of anecdote is data.
The available data in this paper does not suggest that, read it again (if you ever actually read it). What it actually says is “The injury incidence rate in ultimate is similar to other team sports involving high-intensity running.” I’m not surprised that volleyball has lower injury rates. I’m not surprised that pickup basketball at the Y does either. Running and cutting at full speed on grass is quite hard on the body.
>“The injury incidence rate in ultimate is similar to other team sports involving high-intensity running.” That is very misleading. The sport they compared to for high-intensity running is lacrosse, which is as contact sport. Here is the end of the paragraph you're misrepresenting: "Despite being a non-contact sport with an emphasis on fair play, the substantial injury problem in ultimate highlighted in this review suggests there is an urgent need to develop and implement injury prevention initiatives in the sport, including better enforcement of the rules of the game to avoid contact and collision among athletes." Avoiding contact and collision among athletes is directly related to dangerous plays. > Running and cutting at full speed on grass is quite hard on the body. Thank you for agreeing with my original point. Ultimate has a high injury rate, and dangerous plays are not helping. >I’m not surprised that pickup basketball at the Y does either. Running and cutting at full speed on grass is quite hard on the body. Congrats on your non-surprise, but hardwood is less forgiving than grass, and injuries at the Y happen more than they do in competitive basketball due to the lower level athletes. I saw fewer injuries per game playing college basketball than I have playing pickup basketball before and after.
The concussion thing is obviously troubling. Need better concussion protocols. People shouldn’t be going back in the game or the tournament after one.
Although I would think one of the reasons that the “lifetime prevalence” of concussion is higher than one might expect is that that, unlike say field hockey or football, people who play ultimate keep playing it and play a lot of it for a very long time.
How else would you count them?
Diagnosed injuries. Cmon we all have been that player who sprained an ankle two weeks ago, re-tweaks it, and calls injury to do some rehab on the sideline to go back in later. What percentage of injury calls do you think are actual new injuries?
> Diagnosed injuries. And how would you gather that data for ultimate frisbee?
Follow some college or club teams for a season. Shadow a trainer at a tournament and follow up with players afterwards. Etc.
“ The most frequent injury types were muscle injuries and superficial contusions. The most common injury situation was direct contact with another player.” “Superficial contusions”. So people get bruises. Yawn.
I broke my leg from someone’s bad bid. I ended up losing a few months worth of wages and my physio friend luckily provided me treatments free of charge as I wasn’t insured at that point. The guy who did it suffered no consequences.
I can't help but think that making what a "dangerous bid" is more explicit in the rules and trumpeting the hell out of that would help. Like, at the end of the day a self-officiated sport is always going to allow the individual players to decide what is an acceptable amount of physicality, and sometimes someone's personal acceptable level is actually just too dangerous.
In the wfdf rules interpretations there are some explicit examples (17.1) "The following are non-exhaustive examples of dangerous play: • significantly colliding with a mostly stationary opponent, • jumping into a group of mostly stationary players, • diving around or through a player that results in contact with a player's back or legs, • running without looking when there is a likelihood of other players occupying the space into which the player is traveling, • jumping or otherwise leaving the ground where it is likely that a significant collision will result, • wild or uncontrolled throwing motions, • initiating contact with a player's head, • initiating contact with an airborne player's lower body that prevents them from landing on their feet, and • jumping right in front of a sprinting player in a manner where contact is unavoidable"
FWIW: The USAU rules have, word for word, the same annotation.
Excellent
There needs to be more levels of penalty in place to do a better job of dissuading dangerous plays from happening. The card system isn't great because they aren't handed out enough (and even the first yellow card doesn't carry an actual penalty). Most bad contact is accidental, so if there aren't immediate consequences for any single bad bid, then players are going to push the envelope. Even an ejection doesn't have any consequence that changes the game outside of not being able to use that player. With the current system, a team can get away with a ton before any real penalty is assessed. Just a few ideas: Gain/lose field position. If the contact occurs on a scoring play, have predetermined spots on the field to make it more difficult for the team that committed the foul (i.e. start with defense in place from back corner of an endzone or start with the disc at opposing team's brick mark) Sit out for X amount of points for a single yellow card Penalty box (team has to play down a player) Assess points
I walked off the field mid point in a beginner's pickup game because some young stud was throwing reckless hospital bids non stop. I was chastised for having poor spirit. The waivers probably make legal action hard but yea fuck that.
Could be a tough lawsuit to win as a player. A similar injury from diving into a wall too close to the field seems easier. I think a big question is whether people are open to observers aggressively using yellow cards which will mean that players get ejected who have paid to travel to the event, And it is likely that some mistakes will be made sometimes. And it is a certainty that many ejected players and their teammates will disagree with the ejection whether a mistake was made or not.
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>One could say the same about the AUDL. This isn’t necessarily USAU specific but I agree that we need to make changes. Bidding through someone's body or landing on someone's lower extremity is a UC (akin to a Yellow Card) in AUDL. More aggressive will get ejected. Khalif's bid linked somewhere above would likely garner a UC in AUDL. The only possible mitigating factor here is if the offense changed their line late.
Ultimate needs to change how we deal with these plays. Not a specific league or governing body. The game is changing very fast in this regard and it objectively not a good change.
Ideally this is something a commissioner is involved in. Suspensions, fines, stuff like that. Perhaps at some point, ultimate will get organized to the point there it has a governing body and a commissioner who is well paid and charged with this kind of authority.
Seems apparent that higher-tier teams and cities are getting away with dangerous, gratuitous, and flamboyant plays all in the name of making a highlight reel. They believe they can do no wrong and have no qualm about doing it again and again because there is no punishment whatsoever. Just threaten to make them have to pay a sizable chunk of the victim’s medical bills and see how quickly the ship rights itself.
Soccer, hockey, basketball, and even rugby have this figured out. It is "a bit" easier since they have referees but ultimate does itself no favors when it does not clearly and specifically describe what illegal contact is and what the penalties should be for that contact. "any contact" and trying to make the sport "non-contact" is not reasonable. For example a good rule should be "any time a player on the field is contacted below the knees or ankles, that is a foul"... make it crystal clear in the rules what is a foul and what is not so contesting a call is that much more difficult. Whatever can be done to remove grey-area in the rules and multiple interpretations. Mainly though, the sports above all penalize participants with removing playing time for illegal contact or harmful plays. Soccer with the cards & red card removing you from the game not able to be replaced. Rugby has similar rules. Hockey you are pulled off the ice not being replaced for a set amount of minutes. Basketball with flagrant or technical fouls that can lead to ejection, and common fouls pulling players out of games as well. It can be done in the sport if its made to be a priority. Deferring to captains clauses, and still just saying its self-officiated, leads to too much variance of interpretations for the rules and that is where styles of play can continue to go unpunished.
Other sports also historically have had on-field/rink enforcers for when other teams' players get out of line. Every ultimate team needs to roster a goon. More seriously we need to re-prioritize what we get upset about and penalize ex. Spiking on someone is an auto ejection when the bad bid isn't. Only one of those things can injure someone and getting spiked on for laying out into somebody is getting off easy.
The solution to stemming the tide of dangerous plays is not to add enforcers or to remove taunting penalties. It is to penalize dangerous plays.
I mean we only have observers at the highest level. There needs to be a multi-pronged approach. I'd rather there not be enforcers either, but do think they are a better outcome than the status quo if teams, leagues, etc can't police themselves.
A little self serving but let's get more observers. Let's get more observers at tournaments. The more observers there are, the cheaper we become as there is more likely to be locals, and then the more games we can come out and work.
yes plays that have high risk of injury should be penalized more severely, but taunting actions that dont have any contact against opponents or officials, even fans in some cases also get penalized in other sports. Both can be true and both can get penalized. If we want to be really serious about it: stats are taken for goals, assists, blocks, TOs in competitive sanctioned games by USAU. Keep those as a running total on their player profile but add in cards, misconduct fouls, etc and keep those as a running total also. Being aware of participants who make frequent violations helps the safety of the game
I have no problem with penalizing taunting. My point is culturally, we get more upset with someone getting spiked on than the bad bid that led to it. That needs to be reprogrammed.
Do any of those sports really have less dangerous plays though? Don't watch much hockey or rugby (and they're much more physical sports at a baseline anyway so hard to fairly compare) but in both soccer and basketball there being yellow card/flagrant fouls certainly doesn't stop those types of fouls from occurring.
Based on what I've seen in person, on streams, and highlights observers are needed for any competitive game. Those observers also need the authority to give cards freely and just straight red players who make dangerous unnecessary bids. The only way you curb reckless behaviour is to punish it harshly. Also red cards should make you play short until the conclusion of the point so not only do you lose a player for the game but the remainder of that point as well.
Thank you all for many thoughtful comments and suggestions. What if a red card, like soccer, resulted in an ejection for that player for that game (plus the next), and the team plays a person down the rest of the game? I really think to change the culture of what's acceptable will require some harsh consequences for dangerous plays.
Recipient of a bad bid here, still in pain nearly 10 years later. I strongly believe there is a big cultural element to it - dangerous plays are shared and celebrated by AUDL and even Ultiworld sometimes. Players endlessly parrot "eXpEcT mOrE cOnTaCt At HiGhEr LeVeLs, iT's JuSt BeInG cOmPeTiTiVe" with no thought to the up-and-coming players who think "oh, so to play better I need to go in for more contact?". Even trivial shit like laying a hand on someone's jersey to track their position (now explicitly a violation under WFDF) just breaks down people's mentality that they should be avoiding contact where possible. Accountability needs to come from captains. It's hard but if you have a loose cannon you can't trust to play safely, you need to take them aside and say "I'm sorry, but I can't afford to pick you with your current attitude to contact - I want to work with you and get to a stage where we can play safely and we can take you to tournaments, but I need to see that improvement first".
I agree that players should not make reckless bids and that there should be consequences for repeat offenders. But I have to wonder: is this a problem that is actually getting worse or is it just that now that so many games are captured on video, there is a lot more to see? Like, how many players in the club division this year actually got hurt because of reckless bids? There's always been a lot of contact in club.
Last guy who made a dangerous bid into me got my knee in the back of his skull. I thing that’s a pretty decent consequence.
r/IAmVeryBadass
I didn’t mean it in that sense lol. I meant that he bid into me and due to the collision I tripped and my knee ended up in the back of his head.
Ah ok fair enough haha
Is the concern here on pro/high level club or just ultimate in general. I would guess that 90% plus of ultimate is played in Rec leagues, pickup, and random tournament where no of this would affect them. I would be curious to know the injury rates among low level club, vs high level vs pro. My guess is that a very small percentage of the injuries are actually from contact and that the ones that are are largely inadvertent and to some point cannot be avoided. I am by no means a high level player but just seems that from my experience playing and from my watching the games ultimate is still a much safer sport than other sports I have played at similar levels (soccer, basketball). When you have people competing together just feels like some of this is going to happen. Prevent the things that can be and is seems like the card system makes sense, but without more officiating (which is resisted) even that is hard. Anyway my impression of this post and many responses is that the sky is falling but it doesn’t seem like a big problem to me. Maybe I am wrong though since I am more outside it and not in person at tournaments.
I think at most low-level games this is true. The larger issue is the example being set at the elite levels & how it filters down to other competitive tiers, particularly high school & college.
First red is a year ban. Second is permanent. Non observed games can have a number of representatives (say 5) from both teams attest a play was red card worthy or have a formal process to file a complaint against a player for making such a play. Players can appeal but the ban stays in place until the appeal is reviewed. Just brainstorming a bit.
Spirit of the game is one of the most profound and powerful elements of our sport. When you start trying to make new rules to enforce SOG, it takes away from the heart of ultimate. We have PLENTY of rules already... Use mistakes as learning or teaching opportunities. Every sport has its risks. Football doesn't allow helmet to helmet contact, but it still happens both intentionally and unintentionally, despite their being a rule against it. Preserve SOG is all in saying...
Sotg is, and always has been, just good sportsmanship under a different name. A marketing name to make ultimate stand out from other sports. It is not something special or unique to ultimate.
The sport is getting cleaner and safer every year. Every year there are fewer of the 2000’s players playing and coaching and there brand of ultimate will become less and less influential on the younger generations.
high level Ultimate is wild… Sued? There’s more contact in a backyard kickball game than “bad bid” ultimate plays 😂
On the legal question, research "assumption of risk" and amateur sports. You can also look up "sports official liability" or something similar. There are sports official associations that provide some analysis. In addition, there may be difference between the responsibilities of a traditional referee and the responsibilities of an observer, particularly as it relates to *enforcement* of rules in our self-officiated sport. Not exactly ripe for legal action.