What if we made some tweaks to add higher stakes to sleepy regular season events?
September 4, 2024 by Josh Katz in Opinion with 0 comments
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Welcome to Clubhouse Chatter, where the Ultiworld staff keep you caught up on the major events of the club season.
The Problem
Heading into Pro Championships this past weekend, there was some chatter online about the true merit of this tournament. Some of the criticism was specific to this year’s edition – the World Ultimate Championships won’t be siphoning off top players every year, for one – but other arguments were more general and hold value.
Some of those arguments include the format (an eight team tournament does not need three days, some teams dealt with extra long byes and rest imbalances, and every team made the bracket rendering pool play mostly irrelevant). There was also a general sense of “what’s the point of all this?” (just one bid changed regions between projections heading into the weekend and the official rankings released on Monday). USAU would do well to consider some changes, not just to Pro Champs but to the regular season overall. And today, I’ll help them get started on the path to returning the regular season to relevance.
The Plan
The most important part of this proposal is increasing the size of Nationals to 20 teams per division (I’ll get to why in a second). So, with 20 teams now attending Nationals, we have potentially 12 strength bids on the table. Except here’s the twist: we’re sticking with eight strength bids, same as now. In an effort to encourage teams to go all out to win TCT events, rather than just do well at them, we’re reserving two bids for the winners of the US Open and Pro Champs. After the regular season, we simply pull both of those teams out of the rankings. Their games still count in the rankings, but they aren’t ranked, as if they didn’t meet the minimum games threshold. If that means the next highest ranked team in the region is somewhere in the fifties, that’s fine.1 If the same team wins both events, we just add a strength bid back for someone else in the division to claim.
That’s just two bids though; where are the other two going? Those are open for more debate and discussion, and I’m not completely sold on the exact details, but there are some concepts I love. The third “extra” bid goes to the Pro-Elite Challenge, somehow. After PEC-East and West are complete, the two winners play each other for a bid. Ideally, both teams attend the same tournament later in the year, and some seeding shenanigans can be pulled to have the “PEC Champions Challenge” occur during pool play. If not, USAU can and should work with the two teams to find a way to play this game (some form of penalty should exist if this game doesn’t get played, but I haven’t thought it out this far). Alternatively, we go back to having a single PEC event and winning PEC gives the same reward as winning US Open or Pro Champs.
The final bid is a bit more convoluted; rather than going to a specific team, it goes to a region. Specifically, it goes to the region that wins the Elite-Select Challenge. ESC is by design a weaker field than any of the previous tournaments mentioned, so winning it doesn’t merit an autobid. But here’s the key: the winner of ESC does not get removed from the rankings. If the team that wins ESC also earns one of the eight strength bids, it’s a double dip for the region. Go win ESC, go earn yourself a backup chance to qualify for Nationals (and/or give your regional buddies a helping hand in their own quest to qualify).
As stated, a 20-team Nationals is necessary for this proposal to succeed.2 Maintaining the current structure with only 16 teams per division, there wouldn’t be enough strength bids to allow most teams to feel like they can earn one with four bids decided by TCT tournaments. My personal fear in that scenario is that we’d start seeing teams sit out the regular season entirely and focus their eyes solely on winning their regions, but there are plenty of potential pitfalls that would come with only having four strength bids available.
The Upshot
Now it’s time to see the proposal in action. As an example, I’ll lay out what the bid picture could have looked like this year for the Mixed Division. Assume, for the sake of this exercise, that Seattle BFG defeat Austin Disco Club in the PEC Champions Challenge.3 With that in mind, the three autobids would go to BFG, Ann Arbor Hybrid (for winning US Open) and Fort Collins shame. (for winning Pro Champs), who get pulled from the rankings and won’t play the Series. The North Central gets a bonus bid, thanks to Minneapolis Drag’n Thrust winning ESC. The final bid allocation would be:
- Great Lakes – 1+1 autobid
- Mid-Atlantic – 1
- Northeast – 4
- Northwest – 4+1 autobid
- North Central – 2
- Southeast – 2
- Southwest – 2
- South Central – 1+1 autobid
Highlights of this arrangement include: Chicago Parlay becoming the “holders” of the Great Lakes autobid while sitting 51st in the rankings, the North Central’s ESC bonus bid going to Madison NOISE (35th), and Burlington Big Rig sitting as the last team above the cutoff line, just one rankings point (!!) ahead of Nashville ‘Shine and Washington DC Rally. If every region went exactly according to the rankings, the Nationals field would contain:
- Great Lakes: Hybrid (auto), Parlay
- Mid-Atlantic: Philadelphia AMP
- Northeast: New York XIST, Lexington Sprocket, Boston Slow, Big Rig
- Northwest: BFG (auto), Vancouver Red Flag, Seattle Mixtape, Montana MOONDOG, Seattle Spoke
- North Central: Drag’n Thrust, NOISE
- Southeast: Durham Toro, Huntsville Space Force
- Southwest: Sacramento Tower, San Francisco Mischief
- South Central: shame. (auto), Disco Club
It’s not perfect, but nothing ever is. But it is (in my humble opinion) a good proposal, one that lends itself to a very exciting regular season and some especially interesting regionals. Teams such as Toronto UNION and Ithaca Townies will fancy their chances of stealing Big Rig’s bid, and the same is true for Oregon Scorch and Seattle Smack! staring at MOONDOG and Spoke. Or, take a look at Cincinnati Steamboat and Chicago RAMP, who sit just behind Parlay in the Great Lakes pecking order. All three now have a tangible bid to play for, instead of the privilege of (probably) getting blown out by Hybrid in the regional final.
To the readers, I’m not expecting you to love this idea. But just think about it, ruminate on it, consider its implications and its potential. And to USAU, let’s chat about how we can make the regular season fun again.
