Money

Open up the paper on any given day and there are a plethora of current scandals in professional sports that titillate our moral core. Doping, corrupt refs, labor holdouts, and, perhaps the most egregious of all, a punter offing another punter for a starting spot. I am sure that you will be beguiled by the powers of my observation when I saw that that it all comes down to money. When one starts to consider the incentives and potential rewards in the current pro sports world, can we really be that surprised? If not surprised, then at least we have to be cynical. Maybe both reactions are unfair. Pro athletes are expected to be role models and it does seem a bit disappointing when we learn that they are not all nice guys (and gals? There doesn't really seem to be equivalent scandals in women's pro sports). While it is pretty easy, from the comfort of the daily drudgery of our office veal pens, to claim that we wouldn't be seduced by the money, are we really that sure? This post will take a speculative look at the impact of money on our precious little amateur sport.

I was at PT the other day and, during my exercises, an interesting conversation happened between two of the PT's. They were talking about a third PT, a common friend of theirs. It turns out that he was hired by Pedro the year he barely made it through the year due to his shoulder problems. Pedro's contract was structured such that he would receive bonuses after 20, 25, and 30 starts that year. In total, my numbers might not be totally accurate, he would receive a $500K bonus for 30 starts. Apparently, Pedro is pretty savvy when it comes to money, so he hired this PT to get him through the year. Their contract was also incentive based and, I believe, he would not be compensated unless Pedro got over 25 starts. This PT basically worked only for Pedro for the year. He would give treatments before and after Pedro warmed up. He would be working on Pedro's shoulder while Pedro was going through the business of his day. In the end, Pedro got his 30 starts and wrote a check to this PT for $165K.

The large contracts that pro athletes receive is pretty much in our face on a daily basis, but, speaking for myself, I have pretty much no clue about the details of the incentives that the athletes have as part of their contracts. I wouldn't call the above story "eye opening", but it did make me think about the impact of money, specifically incentives, would have upon Ultimate.

If one looks at the incentives for performance we have in Ultimate today, I think we can confidentially say that they wouldn't be enough reason to get out of bed for even the sponsored "amateur" Olympic athlete, let alone the pro athlete. Let's look at one pinnacle of our sport: winning the UPA's. The reward: your team name goes on the trophy and in the UPA Hall of Champs website. I think I can argue that Ultimate players are pretty ignorant of their history. How many folks can name the teams that won Nats in 1988? I can't. So the reward for winning Nationals is that no one will remember that you did. Perhaps an incentive with some actual meat on it is winning Nats in a WUC qualifying year. I do think that representing one's country is an honor, but in the context of monetary incentives, it still isn't on the radar. You get the cool gear, but you pay for everything else.

Of course, any sort of competition can get our juices flowing, but I am going to argue, for the purposes of this post, that, when comparing the financial incentives of current pro contracts with the incentives of today's Ultimate, there is very little reason to cheat, take steroids, or off someone because they get called to receive the pull more than you do.

So, I started to think about the potential impact of money on our sport. Let's imagine professional Ultimate with incentive-based contracts. Supposing, for example, that, like other sports, that every player on the UPA champ team received a monetary reward for winning Nationals. Or that a player would earn extra money for scoring x number of goals during the season. Or that a defensive specialist would get a bonus for a certain number of blocks at Nationals. How confident are we that the tenets of SOTG can withstand the pressures of performance-based financial rewards? If your answer is "not confident", it seems to me that we are talking about refs making binding calls. No more calling your own fouls and, at the minimum, getting a do-over. Another possible answer is "Not Confident, but SOTG (and self-officiating) is a necessary component of Ultimate". In this case, I think what is really being said is that Ultimate MUST remain a true amateur sport.

This post is, obviously, highly speculative, but it is not a doom and gloom scenario. It is simply offering my opinion that injecting money into Ultimate could offer a big challenge to the viability of self-officiating. However, if one agrees that adhering to self-officiating is a necessary component of Ultimate and that this adherence leads us down a path of permanent amateur status, does this not, to some small degree, inform our approach today?

I guess one could consider this post to be commentary on our ability to be honest. I do think I am a bit cynical in this regard, but there is at least one example of competitors doing the right thing in the face of huge financial reward and it is golf. I just finished reading John Feinstein's "Lessons of Q School" and it documents golfers navigating the rigors of qualifying for the PGA tour. At stake is literally the ability to play pro golf for the next year and hundreds of thousands of dollars. There was an example of a player letting the ball bounce while putting it back on the his spot for a putt. After he sank the putt, he was not convinced that he had replaced the ball to the correct spot before the putt. He reported this to the official at the end of the round and was disqualified. So this is an impressive act and maybe even testimony that self-officiating can withstand the pressures of potential financial reward, but I am skeptical, obviously.

I understand that the concerns of this post feel far way and that there are more pressing concerns like developing youth Ultimate. I agree with this, but are we not laying down the foundation for our Youth players? Are we being fully responsible to our youth players by avoiding thinking about whether the sport will remain an amateur experience for them? Or whether they will need to learn how to play at the highest level with refs? This be premature, but, it seems to me, at least worthy of a bit of thought and discussion.