Thursday, December 04, 2008
College programs, hold off on those spring break plans just a sec.
Apparently what you know as Centex is about to experience a fissure. Cultimate will be running a Mentex tourney at the usual fields, around the usual weekend.
BUT. There will be no women's division. Not that weekend at least. The University of Texas women's team is picking up the standard the following weekend and running a women's only Centext at the Whitaker IM fields. I've talked to a few people down there, trying to pin down why the schism happened, but I've gotten a few conflicting answers. I'm going to talk to a few more people and figure out exactly what's happening.
But this is mad-bogus. Is this further fallout from C1? Will this affect joint men's/women's programs who like to hang out during spring break, or the travel plans of teams in general? Will this lessen the draw towards either Centex, and thereby possibly destabilize Centex as the premiere preseason event for the college series? And if so, what tournament might step up in Cultimate's stumble? Who's going to gain?
Weird times, man. It seems like since C1 was announced, ain't shit the same.
7 comments:
From what I heard the women were tired of getting the short end of the deal with Centex. They figured they could fill out the tournament with 24 teams and make money without giving a cent to Cultimate.
I think this is one of the pitfalls of partnering with college teams to run tournaments. Eventually they figure out they can do the same thing without paying someone to do it for them. It just takes a little bit of work.
Byron
Running a basic tournament is not that hard. If you are a college team and really don't want to deal with the logistics of a tournament but have access to fields and just want help go find your Event Managment classes. Post a short-term job for a grand and then have that person work with you for 5 hours a week for a few months.
The person you "hire" gets to list it on their resume and make some money. I bet somebody on the team would even run the touranment if you paid them a grand.
Do the math on what you are losing out in terms of fundraising, there really isn't that much work to running basic college tournaments.
That being said anything over 20 is not that basic but it is more an issue of getting fields, having a good format (see UPA manual) and then being organized the day of.
Death to cultimate! Remember the alamo!
I would guess that it's less a fall out over C1 and more a fallout of Cultimate's poor treatment of the women for the last couple of years.
The Texas women are the only one's that know the answer for sure though.
From what i hear, this may be a part of a larger trend...word from the Stanford women is that they're thinking of running a separate Stanford 'Femvite', if you will...
http://sites.google.com/site/psychosultimatefrisbee/tournaments/pres-day
I don't know any of the facts involved here, just a few of the players. What follows is my own observations over the last couple of years, not hard fact.
First, I think the Texas women have felt for some time that the Centex profit-sharing arrangement was inequitable. There are two sides to this coin and both probably have some legitimacy; the men's division has been larger and the Texas men traditionally provided more of the event staff. That may have changed with the growth of the women's program to include a stable b-team.
Second, the top teams in the women's division feel marginalized by Skip, and some believe he has resorted to deception and pressure to get women's teams on board for his tournaments.
From my perspective, the biggest service that Skip provides the Texas men is the ability to consistently get the top teams in town. While Skip is great at running tournaments, the Texas program has also had a run of very effective organizers in their club leadership. From a pure logistics standpoint, there isn't any magic to running the tournament. But as long as the top teams continue to travel to Centex, I think the men are happy to pay Skip. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
So really, the only part of the machine that the Texas women needed to replace was Skip's team-attracting ability, which, as mentioned before, was waning in the women's division anyway. Enter Michelle Ng, who was probably the most well-connected college player in the country last year, and friends with a notable percentage of top captains. I doubt she is working for the tournament in an official way, but it seems likely her networking efforts last year had a lot to do with the Texas women's ability to bring in the best teams. She might be a good person to ask. Or Holly Greunke, I gather they know each other.
On a related note, my word verification is "so peon." Hi Byron!
Post a Comment