ultimate players vs. pros

[seanc]

this whole idea of elite ultimate players vs. professional athletes
keeps coming up, but i think we have some underlying problems that make
comparison difficult.

near as i can tell, discussion has covered two basic categories: 1)
whether or not it's fair to compare the athletic talents of amateurs
to professionals, and 2) how do ultimate players stack up against
NFL/NBA/MLB/NCAA/whatever players?

number one doesn't interest me so much. i do think it would be more
fair to compare elite ultimate players to their counterparts in amateur
club lacrosse, soccer, rugby, etc., but i don't really care (mostly
because i also have the completely biased and unscientific opinion that
ultimate players would clean up for the most part).

question two interests me more -- but i don't think we can even talk
about it until we define athleticism. what makes a good athlete? an
NFL lineman is probably a good athlete, right? certainly strong and
powerful, many of them are extremely dextrous, but not too many are
going to outrun zip or j dono, or out jump beau or danny clark. robert
cheruiyot, the kenyan who won the boston marathon in 2:07, is probably
a good athlete, too, but he's also got the upper-body strength of a
duck and he'll never match the explosive power of a sprinter. lance
armstrong = one of the best athletes on the planet, but he's
primarily fit in terms of endurance on a bike. he's a fucking stud
and i mean no disrespect to him, but that's a little one dimensional.

so it seems like speed, power, agility and endurance are all qualities
that make up exceptional athletes, but it's possible to be an elite
athlete without being in the upper echelon of each category. ultimate
places a great deal of emphasis on all four qualities: speed to close
on the disc or separate from your man, power for out-skying/jumping
over the crowd; agility and coordination for making sharp cuts, tricky
catches, good throws; and endurance for being able to do all of the
above throughout every game of a tournament.

basically: ultimate requires a well-conditioned, all-around athlete and
the best comparisons will be with other sports or positions that
require the same. we can talk about individually excellent athletes in
baseball, for example, but you'll never convince me that endurance is
a key attribute (except possibly for pitchers, catchers and the jaw
muscles necessary to crack sunflower seed shells). my favorite
comparisons are between ultimate players and soccer players, wide
receivers, basketball players, and hockey players, probably in that
order.

maybe we should toss in other characteristics, too, that are less
physical. spatial awareness, for example: that almost sixth sense that
allows the exceptional player to stay in bounds while making the catch,
lay out around the offense without initiating contact to make the d,
knowing where the disc is without seeing it, etc. i remember a
highlight play from one of the above and beyond videos between fortunat
(i believe) and another player, possibly a condor. they laid out into
the endzone simultaneously, landed basically on top of one-another, but
barely seemed to have any contact. it was a crazy example of reactive
proprioception. i imagine basketball players would get extremely high
scores in this area, too.

once we've agreed on what athleticism is, how do we measure it? what
data do we use for comparison? VO2 max is frequently used as a
benchmark for fitness, but it's going to skew heavily towards the
endurance athletes, i.e., the cross-country skiers and cyclists. we
could also mix up a bunch of events, like a decathlon or obstacle
course, and take the overall score (with the winner's picture on a box
of wheaties).

the folks over at crossfit.com bring up some of the same questions
about fitness. they've also got a boatload of bitterly nasty
workouts that stress anaerobic conditioning that could be used as tests
(do their workout of the day for a couple weeks; i bet it'd improve
your ultimate game no matter what level you play).

what else could be used? what about taking a balls-out conditioning
workout (minus the disc skills) from sockeye/furious/whoever and using
it as a test? run a cross-section of players from different sports
through it and see who does the best.

this is all anecdote and opinion, but, in the end, i think a fair
number of ultimate players would do pretty well. there's an elite
player who has two brothers who are professional athletes and it's my
understanding that he holds his own against them. i know that's an
N=1, but i don't think he's a complete exception.

my main reason for posting is that I think this question about
athleticism is interesting but it hasn't been very clearly defined.
also, all we've done so far is lob opinion back and forth at one
another. what, if anything, can we do to make it less subjective?

peace,

sean c

[PGe...@gmail.com]

And even if ultimate players could keep up in these workouts, pro
players are doing this at twice the size of ultimate players, which is
pretty impressive. And I'm certain pro athletes could do ultimate
workouts, its their job to do ridiculous workouts everyday. Which
really gives them an unfair advantage. Part of my reason I don't think
ultimate athletes compare is that I just think most pro athletes could
dominate an ultimate game without really learning the game all that
well. Just give them basic throws so they can get rid of it, and a
week or two to learn some random offense and they should be good to go.

[seanc]

you may be right about the workouts, but i think it would take longer
than a couple weeks for pros to dominate: the initial learning curve on
throws is too steep. their d would be sick, though.

i also don't think size is an inherent characteristic of athleticism.
it might help someone be effective at their sport, but it's not a
defining quality the way speed, power, agility, and endurance are.

still just opinion, though... what other tests can we use to measure
overall fitness? what do you think about these qualities as defining
characteristics? should spatial awareness be one of them? other
traits (e.g., strategic intelligence)?

sean c

[DikEar]

I don't want to bust anyones bubble here, but pro athletes (i concede,
in ultimate-esque skills, comparing golfers is beside the point) are
absolutely and in so many ways better athletes that ultimate players.
That's a simple fact. I would contend there are only a handful of
ultimate players in the world that are D-1 quality athletes. Yes I know
there have been a few D-1 athletes that play ultimate, and I would add
a few others like Beau, Nord, Grant, but I'm guessing there aren't much
over 20 ultimate players that could have played volleyball at Penn
State, or football at Georgia, or basketball at Stanford. And we're
still talking about amateur athletes, the pros that are succesful in
these sports are WAY more athletic than even those that only made D-1.
I'm sorry to say it, but that puts ultimate players way at the bottom
of the hierarchy. I think the reason anyone can even attempt to make
this comparison is because we only see ultimate players competing
against other ultimate players. The "playing field" is weak to begin
with. So those we think of as "pro athlete" quality are really just
that much better than the average of us, which is in NO WAY close to
the average football player, basketball player etc of a comparable
skillset.

I am having trouble believing we need to have this discussion.

-dikear

[Daag Alemayehu]

My friends and I have this ongoing debate. It started out like this: if
you took Brian Harriford in his prime and put him up against Michael Vick,
how much time/ultimate training would you have to give Vick before he'd be
better than Harriford? For this comparison, we only consider defense and
cutting because learning the throws of the game could take anyone awhile.
I've always been of the opinion that Vick would need no experience at all to
be better. And he'd dominate. SOME people (coughFritocough) think
Harriford would not only hold his own but would dominate Vick. Mind
boggling, if you ask me.

Eventually, this debate evolved into "Who is the worst pro athlete that you
could put up against Harriford in his prime that would dominate in the field
with little to no ultimate experience?" I think there are just countless
athletes that fit into this category. Most, if not all, of the starting DBs
and WRs in the NFL as well as most of the forwards in the NBA. Toss in
several point guards, running backs, tight ends, and NBA centers too. And
that's with NO ultimate experience. If you give any top pro athlete just a
couple of months training, I can't see how he would NOT dominate the game.

I always bring up my lame little story of playing in a pickup game with
Chris Duhon (then captain of the Blue Devils, currently backup point guard
for the Bulls) because I'm amazed at how even Duhon, who's 6' on a good day
and has never been considered the most athletic player on any team he's been
on, completely dominated that game. He pulled discs out of the air so high
that nobody in his right mind would even consider challenging him. Give him
some cleats and some training and he's the world's best player, period.
It's just not fair to compare top pros to ultimate's top players.
Completely different plane.

[Skizip]

So I didn't read more than a few sentences of any of these posts,
because they were boring, but consider this.

Beau is by and far THE best athlete in the college game right now.
agreed? i mean, he freaking jumped over a dude in a game.

Still that is nothing compared to a lot of pro's vertical leaps. I am
roughly the same height as beau, and to clear a dude of that height,
I'd estimate I'd need a 36" vertical. While an average ultimate player
like me can dream all night about being able to jump like Beau, I'd bet
that 95% of NBA players have got a 36" vertical. Even a little dude
like TJ Ford has got a 44" vertical.

I think the matter of fact is that if anyone playing ultimate had the
pure athletic potential to be playing a sport professionally, then they
would be.

[thebolo...@hotmail.com]

I don't think many people here are taking into account what makes an
Ultimate Player, an as cheesy and cliche as it may sound, that thing is
"it" , and u don't get it from a sports drink. I hear alot of Talk
about Athleticism, and it's nice to check it off the list, and the
funny thing is we speak of it almost purely as leaping (though one
person measures speed of Vick I think) and we do this in quantity even,
not quality......I guarantee most of these professional athletes would
take at least a month to get a respectable flick and some of their
hands may be too big to ever grasp the disc right (think Shaq on a
basketball)......getting down the field really quick is awesome, but
the throw has to be good, and who's to say (since everyone here loves
the taste of his nuts) Beau isn't running with Vick, so he's got what 6
Inches on Vick at least plus the reach, plus a nice leap.....not to
mention that he's been there....Ultimate is Heart, no one signs you to
a deal when you're 12 years old so u can just exercise your way to
dissappointing everyone that ur amazing ups aren't converting to
points, stats, or rings......Ultimate is You versus yourself, almost
all the people I know that have the passion traveled from College to
College, and a couple travel from Tallahassee here to Tampa to play
with Bulge, and No one was ever pushing them, but to be sure they were
pulling themselves.......If ur going to make a value comparison,
compare the heart, the drive, the passion, and the lifestyle, don't
compare vertical leaps and 40 times, these mean nothing, throw a disc
and see who gets it, there's your measure, on field production, not
who's wining the combo and has the best pre-draft ranking.......and I
have a theory that one may be born with the flow that makes this game
such an artform.......Theories aside u just gotta know when to go
(ho?lol) and fantasy ultimate is great for the sideline, but how many
uberatheletes couldn't hang in their own sport? So I guess u can say my
verdict is this:
ESPN has a top 10, if Ultimate gets let in they should have 5-7 of
those clips every night, with the players playing now, with heart and
class , oh yeah and my sister dunked on Duhon so the Bulls signed her
too

[bob_...@hotmail.com]

Skizip wrote:

"I'd bet that 95% of NBA players have got a 36" vertical. Even a
little dude
like TJ Ford has got a 44" vertical. "

Which is more crazy, the 95% figure or thinking that being tall is
an advantage for vertical leap?

Bob Koca

[mui...@gmail.com]

I would bet that Beau has higher than a 36" vertical leap. First of
all, who says that was as high as he could possibly jump? 36" is the
absolute minimum his max could be. Second, he took off in stride off
his RIGHT leg, and he's right handed. For most right handers it is
more natural to go off the left leg, and the left leg may be stronger.
Off his left leg, Beau's vert could easily be 40" or even higher.

[CR]

Another way to look at this discussion is to take one person and
imagine if they devoted all their time to one sport instead of another.
So, if Michael Vick were to have spent his whole life playing ultimate,
and Beau were to spend his whole life playing football, which would be
more successful? How about Nord and Wayne Gretzky, or Zip and Steve
Nash. Which one of these athletes (and yes, they are all athletes)
would do better. The choice among these options is obvious, but I
think it can be extended to Daag's point of who is the worst player
that could still beat them. I think that almost every SF, SG and PG,
and almost every WR, DB, Kick Returner, and a lot of RBs that plays in
their respective major league would dominate ultimate if they spent as
much time playing it as they did playing Football/Basketball when they
were younger. I would go as far as saying that if you took one of them
and gave them a 5 year college career, that they would be the best
player in the nation by the end of their career.

On another note, comparing the heart of athletes may be one of the
worst ideas ever. Do you think that Michael Jordan doesn't have any
heart, how about Brett Favre. Once again, almost all professional
athletes have heart, both the great ones and the mediocre ones.

This a good discussion to have, but it is clear that professional
athletes are better. If they weren't, they wouldn't be getting paid for
it, and the professional sports we all know and love would not be the
money makers that they are today.

[tatc...@hotmail.com]

Jordan will slit his wrists over card games, he would be going crazy
during ultimate.

Wikipedia has an entry about the vertical leaps of some nba, and non
NBA players.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verts_of_the_NBA

[mui...@gmail.com]

I'd like to see where that data came from. Kobe can only jump 6"
higher than Shaq?

[Ma$e]

An interesting article on espn (or maybe it was si.com) a year or two
ago was where they judged how difficult various sports are to play.
They took in to consideration the discrepancies between sports (such as
the power involved to hit a home run versus the power involved to make
a tackle), as well as cognitive aspect (like the decision making a
quarterback has to make). Endurance and acceleration/agility were also
factors. They had all the big sports - football, baseball, basketball,
and also some lame random ones like gymnastics and the biathalon. The
winner was boxing. Anyways, I'd be interested in how ultimate would
rank in this equation. I think it's obvious that people who are paid to
play professional or Div-I sports are better athletes than most
ultimate players, but how would they handle the actual game of
ultimate, or playing against comprably athletic people?

[Vinnie]

I heard Beau does backflips from standing, with his body competely
straight, to warm up.

[Jake]

This is crazy, there is no comparison between Ultimate players and pro
athletes. Look at it this way. Think how many people have started to
play ultimate in their lives and are currently in their athletic
primes. Now think how many played baseball, soccer, football,
basketball, or any other major sport. The second number is
astronomically higher than the first. It's a reasonable assumption that
all these sports are starting with equal talent distributions. So, the
top of ultimate will have far fewer great athletes than the top of any
pro sport.

Now lets do a further, completely unscientific, test. How many ultimate
players did not previously play one of those major sports. Now, there
are currently some and there are an increasing number, but it is still
a tiny fraction of ultimate players. Most of us were soccer, tennis,
football players first. And, guess what? If we had been good enough
athletes to compete at the highest level in these sports, we wouldn't
have switched to a sport with less national recognition, no college
scholarships, and no professional level to aspire to. This is not to
mean any disrespect to the best ultimate players out there, but the
sport doesn't have the athletes in it that the NFL, NHL, NBA, or even
MLB have. This isn't a bad thing. It's a product of the fact that
ultimate is a young, relatively unpopular sport. As ultimate continues
to grow and expand, it will attract better athletes. There is nothing
intrinsically less athletic about an ultimate player except the fact
that the sport hasn't yet reached the level were it can attract the
best athletes. That's just a fact.

[Droske]

> Now lets do a further, completely unscientific, test. How many ultimate
> players did not previously play one of those major sports. Now, there
> are currently some and there are an increasing number, but it is still
> a tiny fraction of ultimate players. Most of us were soccer, tennis,
> football players first. And, guess what? If we had been good enough
> athletes to compete at the highest level in these sports, we wouldn't
> have switched to a sport with less national recognition, no college
> scholarships, and no professional level to aspire to. This is not to
> mean any disrespect to the best ultimate players out there, but the
> sport doesn't have the athletes in it that the NFL, NHL, NBA, or even
> MLB have. This isn't a bad thing. It's a product of the fact that
> ultimate is a young, relatively unpopular sport. As ultimate continues
> to grow and expand, it will attract better athletes. There is nothing
> intrinsically less athletic about an ultimate player except the fact
> that the sport hasn't yet reached the level were it can attract the
> best athletes. That's just a fact.

it doesnt always have to do with skill... most of us just aren't big
enough.

[seanc]

some great points. i'm willing to concede that i'm daft if i think
ultimate players could keep up with pros. i especially like CR's line
of reasoning. can't totally agree with jake, though, or others who
claim that any of us who could be professional athletes necessarily
would be. yes, major sports draw from vastly larger pools of potential
talent, but i am of the completely unsupported opinion that something
about our sport creates a special draw. there are reasons so many of
us played other sports but chose to devote so much of our time to disc
hurling.

okay, fine, we're not, for the most part, professional caliber
(although who knows how the top 300 would do if they were paid and
worked out the same amount as an NBA player). where do we fit? how
athletic are we and how could we, hypothetically, find out? ma$e, if
you can find that SI article, pop in a link, eh? i'd be interested to
know how they collected their data.

sean c

[MapQuest]

I heard that he eats iron filings and shits fully functional automobile
parts.

-MapQuest

[CR]

Hardest sport link
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/sportSkills

ESPN also did a thing a year or two ago where they had a 64 person
bracket, and people voted on who they thought was the best (current)
athlete. I searched for it, but its only available on insider
(bastards) now. I think the finalists were Kevin Garnett and Michael
Vick with Vick winning, though I could be mistaken. It was pretty
cool...

[Borat]

To be fair, people keep taking "professional athelete" as only those in
the NFL or NBA and using Vick and Lebron as examples This is unfair
for a few reasons, first the superstars of the NBA/NFL are among the
top 100 athletes in the entire world, if you would take them and put
them in most any sport outside of the Big 4 (NBA, NFL, MLB, World Class
Soccer) and they would dominate the sport inside of a year.

I think it also should be noted that there is a significant drop off
athleticism in the professional sports outside of the NFL or NBA. It
is obvious that no one in the Ultimate world would be able to hang for
two seconds with NFL or NBA athletes in terms of speed, agility, or
explosiveness. But the athleticism of professional
Lacrosse/Volleyball/Soccer is several notches lower. Not saying that
the top ultimate players are on part with those, but I'm saying that it
is much more realistic for that, and I would not be surprised to find
25+ top level players would could easily hold their own in those
environments.

I have personally played sports with several guys that have gone on to
play football, soccer, and lacrosse at the top tier D1 schools and I
have played both with and against guys that I feel are just as
fast/quick as those guys were. The big difference is that they arn't
6'2" 215. I do honestly feel top level ultimate players could hang
with D1 atheletes. Even more so with college sports outside of
Football/Basketball.

[seanc]

props to them for an interesting article, but it's still subjective.
alright, heck, it's something to go on...

anyone still reading this thread?

on a scale of 1-10, with 1 representing the least amount of challenge
and 10 the greatest degree of difficulty imaginable, how would you rate
ultimate in terms of:

ENDURANCE: For example, marathon runners
STRENGTH: Sheer force, like those Mtrx strongest men.
POWER: Bursts of strength, e.g., Ali's knockout punch.
SPEED: Justin Gatlin.
AGILITY: Pele, Jackie Chan.
FLEXIBILITY: yoga types.
NERVE: Steely calm in the face of danger. UFC fighters, maybe.
DURABILITY: How many times can you get from being knocked down? How
many points can you play consecutively without tearing something?
HAND-EYE COORDINATION: Getting the right amount of backspin on a long
approach to the green.
ANALYTIC APTITUDE: Being able to take in volumes of fast moving
information and still make a good decision, e.g., timing your inside
move in horse racing, an NFL safety predicting where the running back
is going at the line of scrimmage.

[Daag Alemayehu]

"CR" <cric...@uiuc.edu> wrote in message
news:1147671978.9...@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

> (bastards) now. I think the finalists were Kevin Garnett and Michael
> Vick with Vick winning, though I could be mistaken. It was pretty

I'm pretty sure the finalists were Vick and Lance Armstrong, with Lance
Armstrong winning. I held my own little personal riot because of that
result, but I don't think ESPN heard me.

[ultima...@hotmail.com]

I honestly think that if you're going to compare pro athletes to
ultimate players, you need to compare athletes in sports that are at
least similar to ultimate in most ways. For instance, look at soccer
players first. I'd say the ideal build, speed, vert are all pretty
similar for both soccer and ultimate.

Comparing ultimate players to football or basketball players isn't
appropriate because physically, the body types (with a few exceptions)
are very different.

Match up a world class ultimate player against a world class soccer
player and athletically the ultimate player is going to lose... now.
Supposing ultimate players could afford to train as much as world class
soccer players, and I'd say the gap dissappears.

-Dane

[Edelman]

END: (are we talking 1 game, or tournament? 1 game: 6.5, tournament:
8.5)
STR: 4
POW: 6
SPE: 6
AGIL: 7
FLEX: 4.5
NER: 4.5
DUR: 6.75
HAND-EYE: 7
ANALYTIC: 8.75

TOTAL: 61

i did these without adding them all up first (ie, aiming), and that
places ultimate just outside the top 10 (right under soccer). however,
if you add 2 for my tournament assessment (what other sport has a 2
day tourney w/5+ games? none in the top 15), you get 63, putting
ultimate at #7.

[huckit]

Another point to take into consideration is skill with the sport's
tool. This is a soccer ball, hockey puck, football, basketball,
baseball, disc, or whatever else. If you took a look at how much time
and effort is put into learning the skills, ultimate does not compare.
How many ultimate players can say they lived and died by the disc since
age 3? In all other sports there is a fairly large group that
dedicates their entire childhood to the sport. Think about south
america and soccer, innercity america and basketball, canada and
hockey. If there was this much acquired skill in ultimate, the rate of
error on throws would be ridiculous as well as the types of throws
being thrown.

As an atheleticism comparison, only comparing elite ultimate players
and pros while playing ultimate is not accurate. Sure some ultimate
players would be able to keep up with some other pros in ultimate, but
put those ultimate players in the pros sport, and they would have no
shot.

Also, to whoever said the athleticism of soccer is several notches
lower than that of the NFL or NBA is very much mistaken. While
football and basketball may draw the best athletes from America, soccer
draws the best athletes from the world. Last time I checked, the world
was much larger than the US.

[DikEar]

Tennis has multiple day tournaments with multiple matches each day.
Some matches can last upwards of 3+ hours. Thats the only thing I've
felt is near the wear and tear of a frisbee tournament. (remember, no
subs, no teammates, you vs your opponent for 3 hours).

-dikear

[PGe...@gmail.com]

>Second, he took off in stride off
>his RIGHT leg, and he's right handed. For most right handers it is
>more natural to go off the left leg, and the left leg may be stronger.

is this true? i know it is for me, but when i ran track in high school
i thought i remembered more people jumping off their right legs than
left. and aren't most NBA vertical leaps measured standing still?
Beau had a running start. Not that I'm arguing he can't jump higher,
but that its still tough to compare.

[PGe...@gmail.com]

>you may be right about the workouts, but i think it would take longer
>than a couple weeks for pros to dominate: the initial learning curve on
>throws is too steep. their d would be sick, though

I was just giving them a couple weeks to be able to throw well enough
to dump it, and then they would dominate.

>i also don't think size is an inherent characteristic of athleticism.
>it might help someone be effective at their sport, but it's not a
>defining quality the way speed, power, agility, and endurance are.

I agree, but its harder to have similar levels of these qualities at a
larger size. Picture Shaq with the speed and quickness of Iverson,
never going to happen because hes too big. But a lot of pros do have
the speed and quickness of top level ultimate players, and they are a
lot bigger.

[PGe...@gmail.com]

I hate this heart crap. Pros work their ass off to become a pro
athlete. They lazy ones work as hard as any ultimate player. Sure,
once they become a pro they might lose some of what got them there, and
just want the money. But to get there, they had to work. You are
right about the throwing, but pro athletes wouldn't need to throw well
to dominate a game. There are even a lot of dominant ultimate players
already that can't throw all that well. And I agree with the ESPN top
10, but its not because of the ultimate players, but the sport itself.
It just lends itself to making cool ass plays. Its a lot easier to
catch a disc while flying through the air than a football. And it
comes up a lot more than in baseball. Ultimate is awesome. And I
still don't understand how scrabble can get onto ESPN and ultimate
can't.

[KRDo...@gmail.com]

The original post saying NFL lineman don't have much speed is crazy.
Those guys fast, 300 lbs or not. Have you ever seen the numbers from
the combine?

I always think its weird when I see NBA players or tall players in
Ultimate. Most guys arent like Nord or Madzinkski...most guys are tall
and kind of awkward and slow. However, the fastest guys in the NBA are
6'2, which is kind of tall for Ultimate, and a guy like Kobe Bryant or
Shawn Marion is between 6'8 and 6'10 and faster than anybody in
frisbee. Kind of scary.

[david e kelly]

PGe...@gmail.com wrote:
> >you may be right about the workouts, but i think it would take longer
> >than a couple weeks for pros to dominate: the initial learning curve on
> >throws is too steep. their d would be sick, though
>
> I was just giving them a couple weeks to be able to throw well enough
> to dump it, and then they would dominate.

Are they going to dump it all the way up the field? I am still unclear
what someone means when they say the professional athlete would
"dominate" the sport. Do you mean a team of 7 Kevin Garnett's, or a
good team of 6 + KG? Perhaps this is another perspective to take on the
subject. I just feel like different definitions of dominate might be
being used here

[pgw]

david e kelly wrote:

> Are they going to dump it all the way up the field? I am still unclear
> what someone means when they say the professional athlete would
> "dominate" the sport. Do you mean a team of 7 Kevin Garnett's, or a
> good team of 6 + KG?

I think what people probably mean is the latter, at least in the
immediate case. But give me a roster with KG, Kobe, Iverson, Steve
Nash, Mike Vick, Ty Law, Tony Gonzalez, Manu Ginobli, Ron Artest,
LeBron James, Freddy Adu, Champ Bailey, Shawn Marion, and Reggie Bush,
and a season to teach them the basics, and it'll be everyone else
fighting for second place in Sarasota. Hell, I'll go one better --
give me each of those guys' backups and I think they make a run at a
championship.

I think most of the people here so far have overestimated the extent to
which learning to throw would be an obstacle to success. I am not an
exceptionally gifted athlete, and I could throw fairly accurate,
game-ready ten- or fifteen-yard forehands and backhands within a few
weeks of my first practice. I think an absurd athlete like Kobe Bryant
would be ready to not embarrass himself with the disc in his hands
within a few days. And Vick will definitely be dropping bombs from
deep within his own endzone in a matter of weeks.

Besides, you don't have to dump it from the end zone. I once heard a
stat line something like this for a person playing at her first
nationals a couple months after picking up the sport: 26 touches, 1
turnover, 25 goals. So, throwing percentage, 0%. Value to team, huge.

[katie...@yahoo.com]

I love this thread because I think some ultimate egos come out. That,
and it proves how much ticket prices are to good seats at pro events
nowadays. I honestly think we have no idea how good and fast these pro
athletes are.

How about some team try the NFL Combine drills? They are general drills
that measure explosive strength (power), speed, and cutting ability.
Sounds pretty relevant to ultimate to me.
Drills are:
40 yd dash
bench press (some positions)
vertical jump
broad jump
3 cone drill
20 & 60 yd shuttle

i'm sure you can google "NFL Combine Drills" for more specific
directions.
Results of Vernon Davis - a top draft pick (TE) -
4.38 40 yd
10 ft 8 broad jump
42" vertical
7 sec 3 cone drill
4.17 20 yd shuttle
(and 33 on the wonderlic, in case you're curious)
I think he also did about 20+ reps of 225 lbs on the bench press.

I think we'd forget to keep running if we saw this kind of athlete on
the ultimate field.
Just eons better than anyone else.

[pgw]

> Comparing ultimate players to football or basketball players isn't
> appropriate because physically, the body types (with a few exceptions)
> are very different.

This is like saying that comparing a .22 pistol to a bazooka isn't
appropriate. Sure, they're very different shapes and sizes -- but
anything you can kill with the .22, you can kill better with the
bazooka.

Your statement that "the body types ... are different" only proves the
point. Do you actually believe that the kinds of athletes who can play
point guard, shooting guard or small forward in the NBA, or cornerback,
wide receiver or halfback in the NFL wouldn't destroy people on the
ultimate field?

[PGe...@gmail.com]

Good point, what I was thinking was that if you put Kobe on DoG he
would dominate. I don't think you could put a bunch of pro athletes on
a team together and expect them to win games in the first couple of
weeks based on their athleticism. They would need to learn to throw
pretty well for that. But if you put a pro on an already existing
ultimate team, he would only need to be able to get the disc away and
flat, and he'd be fine.

[PGe...@gmail.com]

I haven't read all the posts, but this seems to be one of the better
ones. I never made comparisons to other sports like soccer and lacross
because I don't really know about them. But I think soccer athletes
worldwide can compete with NFL or NBA guys. Soccer is bigger in other
parts of the world, and I would assume it gets all the top athletes
outside of the US. And I definitely agree that ultimate players can
compete with D1 sports, but D1 sports typically can't hang with pros.
I always hate those comparisons where they say some college team is
better than a pro team. Its stupid, at best the college team has a few
players that go pro, where the pro team has a full team of them. I
guess thats probably not related to this conversation though.

[Jim Strathmeyer]

Skizip <ski...@gmail.com> schrieb:
> While an average ultimate player like me can dream all night about
> being able to jump like Beau, I'd bet that 95% of NBA players have got
> a 36" vertical. Even a little dude like TJ Ford has got a 44"
> vertical.

I'd take the bet.

Ooops, you lose.

http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/conditioning/a/verticaljump.htm

--
Jim Strathmeyer

[seanc]

USA soccer team currently ranked 5th in the world

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1929106,00.html

if you are correct and our best athletes don't include our soccer
players, what would happen if we fielded a team of NFL or NBA players
who had chosen soccer instead?

frankly, i think american soccer players are in great shape; we just
don't pay much attention.

sean c

[Vinnie]

I haven't read much of any of these posts, but professional athletes
are just that for a reason. They are that much better than the average
Joe who plays ultimate. How much better? Millions of dollars better.
I'm not saying ultimate isn;t athletic, because that notion is the one
thing that gets the sport so little respect, but if you take a team of
7 pro athletes, whether they be wide receivers or running backs in
football, NBA players, or even infielders and outfielders in the
majors, give them 3 or 4 months to learn the sport, they will dominate
any team anywhere.

And they won't have to dump-swing either.

[Luke Smith]

so... much... crap... so little time... i feel a thread review coming
on...
but in the mean time...

watch pro v joes... sometimes the average guy is better in the say...
swimming comp. joe v. kevin greene... dominique was awful in the punt
pass kick... hershel... alll 40 years old of him... was just good
enough to beat his individual opponent... but I THINK he was a ppk
champ... or at least reallly good... i think he took it easy...

1) talent, pure talent, is important, and measurable... by combines...
or whatever...
2) but that's not what money ball measures... and it works...
3) read the nytimes article that stresses the value of work and
effort...
4) no, it's not div one anything now...
5) but... it's pretty good.

can a bunch of linemen defeat a top tier team? no.
can a bunch of nba point guards? maybe one day. NBA POINT GUARDS.

in the mean time... the best players who want to play disc are
playing...

that will hopefully change

[Jake]

Tennis has no such thing. Tennis has multiple day tournaments. However,
except a few major tournaments (the slams and one or two others)
tournaments are either singles or doubles. You play one match a day. In
the slams, you play a match every other day (this compensates on the
men's side for having to play 5 sets instead of 3). Almost no high
level men play doubles ever. Some women do in the slams. This is
because the extra day of rest gives them an opportunity to play doubles
since they don't have to play extra sets in singles. The only time
multiple matches occur for a player in a day is if they are playing two
different tournaments at the same time (singles and doubles are really
different competitions) or if there are extreme weather problems and
even then it's pretty much always just one and a half matches at most.
Unless you are talking about juniors tournaments or extreme low level
adult tournaments. And, even these generally require you to play at
most 2 matches in a game. Some college tournaments stretch number of
matches in a day also. Pro tournaments do not. Since we are comparing
ultimate to pro sports, I chose to respond as if you were discussing
pro tennis. I'm sorry if that wasn't your intention.

Also, as a former tennis player and current ultimate player, a long
tennis match is a significantly greater challenge than an ultimate
game. A tennis match can last up to 3 hours (3 sets). You play every
point. You have to go 100% during all time when the ball is in play.
And, the mental wear is inmeasurably greater. Now, when you consider an
ultimate tournament, things change. But, you still have numerous
advantages as an ultimate player. You get to take time off when you're
tired. You have teammates to pick you up when you struggle. If you get
hurt, you get a sub. (Have you ever played through cramps, where you
could barely move in between points but somehow managed to get to the
ball and put it back in play? Or tried to finish a match after pulling
a back muscle and still having to come up with a 100 mph serve?) Now, I
don't want to say that tennis is harder than ultimate. I think both
sports have their own challenges. I do think, however, that tennis is a
greater endurance test, both physically and mentally. Most of that has
to do with the individuality of tennis. Some of it has to do with the
games themselves. None of it has to do with the people who play those
games.

[lumberjack]

I guarantee that if the annual budgets for UPA and NFL were swapped,
world-class athletes would be playing Ultimate and all the football
players would be on rec.sport.nfl asking, "how long would it take for
11 Ultimate players to beat my football team?"

This entire thread is predicated on money attracting the best pool of
athletes. If pro sports paid nothing, there would be no reason for
LeBron to serve up triple-doubles as opposed to skying y'alls asses.

Yes, pro atheletes will dominate Ultimate if they chose to. Likewise,
there are a very small number of Ultimate players who have enough
athleticism to play pro sports. The athletic question is moot. The
more athletic one is, the better one tends to be at athletic competions
whether it is Ultimate, basketball, soccer, or extreme ironing.

Point is, we are having this discussion only because the best athletes
gravitate toward the sports with the most money. To make a living,
see. Some great athletes choose to make a living without their bodies
and therefore play sports at a non-professional level. That doesn't
make them less of a world-class athlete (provided they keep fit).

[Manzell Blakeley]

elite ultimate players are built nothing elite soccer players.

An elite soccer player is something like 5'10 with relatively short,
powerful legs.

Elite ultimate players today (Nord, Chase, Lugsdin, Beau) are tall,
with long legs and long wingspans. the only place you could find guys
like that on the soccer field are in the net.

[seanc]

if we manage to pull a thread review out of luke, then all has been
worthwhile.

[KRDo...@gmail.com]

Money is not the only thing separating basketball and NFL players from
Ultimate. Switching the budgets wouldnt do it. Plenty more people play
basketball and football who never intend to go pro than people play
Ultimate.

[MillerForehand]

I don't know if this has been said already, since I blacked out
somewhere halfway down page 1 from all the big words, but the main
reason there will always be a major discrepancy between the athletic
abilities of the top ultimate players and those of even the mediocre
professional athletes is that ultimate is not a job. It's a pastime and
although it may be many people's main use of free time, they still have
to work some kind of day job. This is as opposed to professional
athletes who (obviously) get paid to be athletes. Which means that all
of their time is spend training, working out and getting better at what
they do and more athletic. If you made a pro football player work a
desk job all day and then allowed him to train for maybe 4 hours a day
(being generous there), then we might have some kind of fair
comparison. Until then, there's not much point.

[Fetch]

Yeah I used to play soccer and was good at it at a DII school that has
made it to nationals once sinc I left.. I now suck at soccer in
comparison to what I used to be, as far touch is concerned. I did a
VO2 max test with the guys in my ex. phys lab and a lot of them only
thought I played Ultimate. They were very suprised. "Why don't you
play soccer still?" "Ultimate is way more fun, I said. I think there
are a great deal of athletes in the same boat. I never played
football, but having played Ultimate I now think I would have done
great with it.

Someone made a point that pros get paid to do workouts all day. Not
that I need money as an incentive to play Ultimate, but if I were to
get paid anything more than what I am currently making as a student
then I think I would be able to afford a lot more time which would
translate into working out all the time, not to mention my injuries
would get fixed as soon as I had a symptom of any kind.

Having said that, T.O. would clean house on me in about three hours.

Fetch

[mcy]

Just some notes to this post...

1) I'm with the consensus on this one, pro athletes win v. ultimate
players here and now... almost immediately... if you have someone who
can teach them effectively -- look at teams who succeed more on
athleticism than on throws now in the sport at the collegiate and club
level... there are systems of offense that are fundamentally unreliant
on great throwing... it's easy to picture pro NBA guys or tallish NFL
TEs who are much larger than the current superstuds of our sport
(taller than 6'4, height-weight proportionate, tall enough to be tall
but not so tall that they are lanky/gawky/awkward/uncoordinated)
becoming as proficient as they are at throwing/catching, your average
NFL WR running around the field relying on their natural speed to win
short cuts and throw dump passes, or 6'10+ F/C from the NBA making
normally unreasonable throws catchable... just because they can.

2) Michael Vick has been mentioned several times in this thread, and
it should be noted that he alone would probably be sufficient to "make"
a team of pros trying to compete in the UPA. I have twice verified
with people who played Ultimate either recreationally or collegiately
at Virginia Tech that Vick (a) has experience playing Ultimate and (b)
has about a 90-yard flick (which I would love to see). So there's your
handler. Along those lines, here's a post from '03 discussing athletes
with Ultimate experience, perhaps it should be revived so we can put
together the all-star pro ultimate team (can we identify 7 pros who
have played Ultimate at one point?).

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.sport.disc/browse_thread/thread/7815d14e824b4646/e8090070545efccc?q=%22Michael+Vick%22&rnum=2#e8090070545efccc

That's it. So goes the eternal debate. This is a GREAT thread.

[pgw]

mcy wrote:

> 2) Michael Vick has been mentioned several times in this thread, and
> it should be noted that he alone would probably be sufficient to "make"
> a team of pros trying to compete in the UPA. I have twice verified
> with people who played Ultimate either recreationally or collegiately
> at Virginia Tech that Vick (a) has experience playing Ultimate and (b)
> has about a 90-yard flick (which I would love to see). So there's your
> handler.

Naw, dude. Put him upfield. Give me somebody like Steve Nash, teach
him to throw competently to the open side (won't take long), give Vick
the whole field in which to get absurdly open, then watch him bomb it.
To Larry Fitzgerald. Or Mike Williams.

[max?]

size may not have anything to do with athleticism, but thats like
saying shaq is bad at basketball, or like saying colin mahoney isnt
good at ultimate, sure hes slow and cant throw but he can still easily
score half his teams points and when he gets horizontal he dosent need
speed, hes already there

[Jeff]

In case anyone still wants to argue the point that the best ultimate
players could compete with pro athletes, let me give some examples from
my high school playing days:

I played on the Amherst Regional High School varsity team for three
years. While there, I had the privilege to play with many great
players, one of them being Josh Ziperstein. Zip, as everyone knows, won
the Callahan last year, played on team USA and is considered if not one
of the top ultimate players in the world, at least one of the very
elite. Obviously, a lot of different skills contribute to Zip's
greatness, including his decision-making, hand-eye coordination and
determination. But he is also generally known to be a very fast
ultimate player. Josh ran track in high school until he joined our
ultimate team his senior year (he had previous playing experience, so
it wasn't like he had no throwing skills). My point is that before he
joined ultimate, Josh wasn't the fastest kid on the track team, or the
best athlete. Obviously this depended somewhat on the distance, but if
my memory serves me, we had some kids who were faster than him at every
distance. These kids all did football, track and basketball
exclusively. Tiina Booth would have loved to have them on our team, and
many recruiting attempts were made, but they stuck to their traditional
sports. So, while Zip is an amazing ultimate player and one of the best
I've ever played against, he was not even one of the fastest kids in
his HIGH SCOOL. Some of the kids faster than him went on to play
division 1A or 1AA football, but imagine how Zip would compare to PRO
athletes who train as their job. Granted, Zip has worked his ass off
since high school and probably gotten a fair amount faster. Zip also
possesses other skills that make him a great player. But I'm sure that
if these faster players from ARHS had played ultimate, they could reach
an elite status as well. And that's just one high school with a student
body of about 1,200. Pro athletes are the best in the world.

Another example concerning ARHS:
Amherst High School beat Tufts this year at Yale Cup. Tufts is ranked
38th in the UPA rankings. Can you imagine a high school basketball
team, even the best in the country, beating the 38th ranked college
basketball team? That wouldn't even be close. The stars of top high
school basketball programs frequently struggle as freshmen in college,
and even the exceptions, such as Carmelo Anthony, could not carry a
high school team passed a good college team (when Melo was in high
school). The reason this can happen in ultimate is that the talent pool
is thinner. There is less of a difference between the top and the
bottom athletically than in most sports. This happens because most of
the best athletes don't end up playing ultimate. This makes pretty good
athletes stand out as superstars in ultimate when they would be average
at best in any other sport with a deeper talent pool. If a pro athlete
like Vick, LeBron or whoever played ultimate, they would be
unstoppable. Even D-1 athletes would be better than just about everyone
in ultimate. You can't realize how fast, quick and powerful these guys
are until you see them up close.

Finally, someone asked how there's all these stupid things nobody has
ever heard of on ESPN but no ultimate. The answer is money. Certain
time blocks on ESPN, as on many other cable channels, can be bought to
show programs. This is how some of the ridiculous stuff gets on:
someone just has the money to spend and wants to put it on the air. If
someone were to invest the money, I'm sure they could get ultimate on
ESPN.

-Jeff Irvine
ARHS Ultimate '00-'02
Syracuse Ultimate '02-'06

[seanc]

"In case anyone still wants to argue the point that the best ultimate
players could compete with pro athletes, let me give some examples from

my high school playing days:"

hey, very nicely argued. makes me wonder how zip would've progressed
in college in a different sport; say he'd chosen soccer or tennis
instead of ultimate.

i like to think that at a couple times in my life i've been pretty
fit... this probably leads to the myopia of not being able to imagine
the gap that truly exists between my highest level of fitness and that
of a professional athlete -- and it's easy to say that in my case, in
all honesty, we could probably fit several ocean liners into that gap.

i still believe that there are a number of ultimate players who could
play a sport professionally given the time and resources to train full
time. why? look at what lugsdin or beau or brandon steets can do
while working out in their spare time. we already have plenty of pro
sports players in the world, so kudos to them for doing something else
with their lives -- still, it'd be interesting to see how much better
they could get if ultimate had the resources for a professional league!

sean c

[seanc]

watched the european league soccer championships last night. gotta
say, a lot of 'em looked like ultimate players, albeit with a lower
center of gravity. i'd love to turn ronaldhino into a handler!

sean c

[ps...@umich.edu]

I saw a clip of Hensley Sejour the other day and I thought to myself,
"now that man is an athlete!". I feel if you are lightning quick, have
a tremendous vertical leap, great hands, etc basically if you are a
superior athlete.

A superior athlete oftentimes translates their abilities to another
sport (see Charlie Ward, Bo, Allen Iverson, Lebron James - apparently
he played HS football, Antonio Gates)

So, again, I feel that if you are a pure athlete you can be groomed to
be awesome at basketball, football, soccer, ultimate, etc.

If you line up, say, Alex Nord with Terrell Owens, who is the better
athlete? Or Zip up with Allen Iverson, who is the better athlete?

[D. Smith]

> great hands, etc

We're still talking about Hensley here?

Good points, though. I feel the same way; an athlete is someone who
could pick up another sport and compete at a high level with out any
specific training, coaching, etc.

Another way to measure athleticism is ratio of Type I to Type II muscle
fibers (slow twitch vs fast twitch). Sprinters, olympic lifters,
jumpers and the like tend to have a very high percentage of type II-b
fibers compared to the average person. Coincidentally, these are some
of the quickest athletes around. I'd be curious to know Iverson or
Vick's ratio.

[seanc]

type I to type II fibers only measures the kind of athleticism one is
likely to exhibit, not athleticism in and of itself. yes, explosive,
anaerobically conditioned athletes are better served by the high
concentration of type II's, but the endurance athlete better have that
ratio shift back towards type I's. in your favor, however, i've heard
that prefontaine, the distance runner, had an unusually high ratio of
fast twitch fibers and this made his finishing sprint a killer. i'd
hazard that lance probably has his share as well given some of the
charges he's made.

i appreciate the suggestion of another objective measure for
athleticism, but i'm not sure this is right one. also, ratio of fiber
type gives no indication of how fit the person is, just an idea of what
they might excel at if they trained.

sean

[MillerForehand]

Taking Ronaldinho out of soccer would be the most tragic waste of
talent in all the history of the world of sports.

[Joe Buck]

MillerForehand wrote:
> Taking Ronaldinho out of soccer would be the most tragic waste of
> talent in all the history of the world of sports.

Yes, a tragic waste. Mostest tragical ever.

or...

http://sportsmed.starwave.com/media/pg2/2001/0619/photo/a_bias4_i.jpg