masters against further marginalization

[eegan]

who's double dipping? which region has the most ridiculous
ratio of bids to nationals to teams playing in the tourney?
is cincy really driving and flying for one game against
surly, or at least is it to 47 or something really high?
wildwood affects participation, among other things less
regionally associated. by loose count 16 of 28
participating teams nationally (are canada teams in this
year?) will make nationals. who are the startling players
that opted for the grand masters division instead of
continuing success at masters level? nexgen starts soon, but
any masters fodder will fill the void. i miss the club
season; still having a hard time getting motivated for team
success like past years/format. retiring to university
intramural sports assortment. looking forward to meeting
some teammates this weekend...at regionals and i'll meet the
rest in denver should we qualify.
--
Posted from http://www.rsdnospam.com

[anakin gerics]

what the heck are the fan and eegan talking about?

[Dan Naylor]

here's my take.

USA-U wasnt trying to kill masters, but they certainly didnt
care about it (there is no sponsorship money for masters and
the only revenue comes from the players themselves...)

Increasingly this is not usa-u's model. IF you look at
revenue, the percentage of it that comes from members
dropped the last year, and i think that drop accelerates
going forward. No one is paying to watch masters. Sorry.
There is no MLU for masters, no sponsorship money, nothing.


here's where masters was a drag

1) The nationals at Sarasota/Lakewood ranch were GINORMOUS
money losers. Something on the order of $50k a year. There
were 60 teams. 20% of those were masters teams, and
therefore usa-u lost 10k or so prorated a year, and DIDNT
make it up in other revenue like they would with other
divisions.

(why you ask? simple. for every 50 dollar membership, some
of that is "profit" so to speak, especially if the person
barely uses usau-services. a large percentage of masters
players made nationals comared to other divisions, and there
wasnt a sectionals round so to speak).


2) I would argue the 10k loss was alot bigger. Why did they
move nationals from sarasota to Texas (and places tbd in the
future?)

Answer: money. Those polo fields were expensive and in an
expensive part of the country. More importantly, having all
4 divisions at one site pretty much eliminated many of
places that could host nationals but only had the requisite
number of fields for 48 teams, not 60.


Texas may or may not have been able to do 60, but the idea
is that it opens up the number of bids to more sites.


So the solution is...

Move masters. No need for a ginormous USA-U hq presence
(like at college and club nationals), and they can make up
whatever other reasons they one.

Ultimately they save five figures, and maybe don't get their
faces ripped off financially at the end of october.


NONE of this is really controversial.

The below may or may not be controversial.

Now, USA-U puts events wherever they want them and assume
the calendar will move for them (look at worlds). They have
under tom crawford shown zero regard for culturally
important tournaments such as potlatch etc.

So they host it on wildwood, not on purpose, but not
thinking about the consequences of conflicting with one of
the most popular and largest tournaments in the WORLD, and a
move that trolls the mid-atlantic community for sure. (and
for what it's worth i'd rather play wildwood than masters
nationals). I'm guessing alot of people in the philly-dc
area agree with me.

And alot of other people aren't jazzed about nationals if
it's not NATIONALS, if you get what i'm saying. By
relegating masters (which in and of itself is a reasonable
decision if thats what you want to do), you have made it
decline in relevancy.

More than anything though, this is about money. This ED and
staff is determined to grow their budget, their staff, and
their power, and they way they do that is raise money. They
will argue they are growing ultimate and ignoring the fact
that it had probably hit a tipping point 5 years ago on
account of their good work in the high school division.


Lou Burruss once said he'd never take Tom seriously until
Tom attended potlatch or poultry days. I don't think Lou
realized Tom DGAF about potlatch or poultry days, and could
care less if they vanish. You could add wildwood to the
list. I don't know if Tom or will is the driver of this. But
this is where we are going. Interestingly wildwood NO LONGER
uses usa-u insurance as of 2012. Alot of not so serious
players paid that one time fee to usa-u each year for the
insurance. My guess is USA-U lost 10k in revenue (and most
of that is profit i'm guessing because no magazine expense
etc), and since that change happened last year... well I'm
not that conspiratorial, but it's something that's probably
a pretty bitter coincidence at least.


The real question is: is there an appetite to write a 6
figure check to tom and probably a check for 30-50k to
Deaver to go away? Replace them with an ED making 100k a
year instead of 180, take a hit on some fundraising revenue,
and maybe hire an actual CFO at a decent salary that can be
the behind the scenes person for whoever takes over.

My guess is there isn't, both for apathy reasons, and
becuase there is at least on whale on the current board that
could blow any such efforts out of the water if he wanted. I
certainly wouldnt want to pick a fight with him.

[thefan]

I don't know that there is anything to be done. sure,
Master's ultimate is nice to have, fun to play, a great way
to stay in shape/keep competing but you're dead on about
money and field space. if you're trying to get more sponsor
dollars, you need more exposure. need more exposure, you
have to be more flexible than to say, "hey, we hold the best
tournament in the world in a remote corner of the country
because there's no where else to have it." Solution? easy.
eliminate the 20% of the teams that NO ONE cares about.
I've been on here ragging coed plenty of times but if i'm
honest, which I am part of the time, masters is worse and
less relevant.

if master's wants to be less relevant, it's going to be up
to master's players to make it so. and from my experience,
lots of us can barely make it practice. if you're looking
to make something happen, i'd probably jump on board and
push.

disappointed to have been relegated to a summer season
devoid of playing opportunities and left out of the big show
with all the super studs. . . looking forward to watching a
lot of football and enjoying large plates of wings guilt
fee.

[thefan]

reply to OP:

Boneyard has a few double dippers who came to us. don't
know how many who've been with us a while who will be
looking to double down in the fall. we came to masters to
keep playing and competing but not be chained to ultimate so
tight, not so we could play twice as much.

down here, 5 teams, 3 bids. there can't be a more
ridiculous ratio than that.

there was some talk, briefly, that the Central teams needed
to attend a separate regional qualifier, the MA in NC was
thrown out for consideration. the end result is that, yes,
the two Central teams, I had figured Chicago and Surly, will
meet for a one game playoff. apparently some beer was part
of the bargaining process. Those Surly guys and their beer
. . it's good.

Mike, who's eegan?

[southwestultimate]

Do you think USAU ever thought about just adding a round or
two of games so that masters could still be part of the
tournament. It looked like last year the first game was
9:30 and the last round was at 4:00. What do you think the
average Masters National team would choose if you gave them
the following choice:
You can have your Nationals be during the summer with GM and
Womens Masters or you can play one game at 8:00 am and a
second game at 5:30 PM each day and still get to be part of
the big show? That is basically the schedule they gave to
some college teams this year, and that was just to cater to
the Friday fans.
And if it truly was a revenue question, most venues charge
an hourly fee or a daily fee, and after 8 hours it doesn't
cost any extra to use the field for the entire day. So USAU
could have still had the revenue from the Masters teams
without having to pay for the extra fields at GM/WM
nationals.
I'll bet that if some outside organization announced a plan
to run a Masters national championship, that USAU would
magically find a way to make the Masters division happy and
keep them included with the other divisions.

[mgd.mitch]

southwestultimate wrote on Tue, 18 June 2013 17:11

> I'll bet that if some outside organization announced a
> plan to run a Masters national championship, that USAU
> would magically find a way to make the Masters division
> happy and keep them included with the other divisions.

I'd bet that you're wrong.

1st, it's not like an outside organization could offer them
what they want, which is to be included in the other
divisions, only USAU can do that unless that outside company
offered to take over *every division* and combine them
again. The outside organization could only compete on cost
and/or quality of the event.

As for additional rounds, some of the coolest pictures from
Sarasota are the warm up photos, where the morning mist was
so thick you couldn't see down the length of the fields. I
think there is a photo of Ring lined up pulling into a fog
to a team you couldn't see (staged, not an actual game). Not
the case for every venue, but earlier rounds were certainly
not an option in Sarasota. Sunset in Sarasota in october is
7:00 (same for dallas). The last round ending at 6:00ish
doesn't offer additional rounds. You now added completely
lit fields (not just a few) to your venue requirements, as
well as a climate that doesn't often have fog in the
morning. Separating masters was all about lowering the
number of field restrictions, not merely changing them to
other concerns.