Ultimate Frisbee Gets High. Marks! Gets High Marks!
Ultimate Frisbee always gets a lot of flak. "It's a sport for stoners" and "It's a sport for sissies"; most of the time, it's derided as not much of a sport at all. Well, you know what? We've played a game or three of Ultimate, and let us tell you -- these guys are athletes. And their pot is unreal.
Which is why we're delighted by a new study out of the University of Washington that says competitive Frisbee is a better predictor of academic success than grades or even SAT scores. The top seven schools, nationally? Stanford, Brown, Harvard, Tufts, Dartmouth, Yale and Princeton. Falsetto: Hollll-la!
It feels good to find another sport we dominate, after crew and squash. Even the two dozen "correlation vs. causation" emails we're about to receive can't take that away.
(Credits: Inside Higher Ed; Dartmouth Ultimate. Sorry, Big Green! We were looking through your site for a good pic, and the best happened to be of this lion-maned Brown kid absolutely destroying one "Hoffman." Take solace in your huger quads.)
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September 8th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
ok
September 8th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Does Deadspin Commenting have a transitive property? Is this thread gonna go insane now too?
September 8th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
The reason why smart people play Ultimate is because they all learn it at smart kid camp… aka CTY…
September 8th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
the “top seven schools” at ultimate by what indicator? national champions the last few years have been state schools like florida and wisconsin. the blurb on the study doesn’t seem to do a whole lot to correlate actual competition in tournaments, or even number of student players (if so, carleton college with probably 75% of the campus playing has to be in this “top seven”)
September 8th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
All the guys on the ultimate team at my college were the unwashed genious types with marginal social skills…so there could be some merit to this hypothesis. Of course, it was Santa Cruz…so that at least explains the lack of hygiene…and the dank.
September 8th, 2006 at 9:31 pm
Fact:
Ultimate players are generally democrats, geniuses, and lazy people.
September 9th, 2006 at 2:05 am
I’d have a hard time arguing ultimate players aren’t athletes. There’s a definite undercurrent of pot heads, but they’re really the minority. I played for a top liberal arts college that was also a top ultimate school. Our competition was generally not only from the better schools, but also seemed to be smarter, etc, than the general population. My team now has a pretty high percentage of PhD’s, MD’s, and degrees in general from top-flight academic schools, far more than a random sampling of the general population, and certainly more than anyone in the Dawg Pound or who would believe Pat Robertson leg press stories.
September 9th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
i read that ultimate frisbee was invented by yale. disprove this in a coming essay on the history of ultimate frisbee?
September 10th, 2006 at 8:57 pm
the “top seven schools” at ultimate by what indicator? national champions the last few years have been state schools like florida and wisconsin.
I don’t know, but the study did say that they were only looking at private universities. I don’t know much about colleges/universities in the US, but they seemed to be saying: “Public schools are so much bigger that of course they’re going to beat the private universities. So, let’s ignore them and see what makes one uni better than another. Hey, it’s ultimate!”
September 11th, 2006 at 12:29 am
Ive been playing ultimate for about 4 years… rocked both the college and club circuits and I have meant very few frisbee players who arent obviously pretty bright. State School or Ivy the ultimate scene seems to be populated by people with at minimum “a good head on their shoulders.” In a sport that requires as much athleticism as ultimate that is saying a lot.
September 11th, 2006 at 12:33 am
Ps- “meant” where did that come from. I meant “met.”
Cut me some slack. I’m and Engineer.
September 12th, 2006 at 11:15 pm
franz, is that you?
May 26th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
EXACTLY! i looove playing ultimate and am on a hardcore team. Let me tell you, ultimate involves LOTS of energy, endurance, and skill. Thanks again for publishing this article!
September 6th, 2007 at 1:55 am
u guys stink ha ha
September 6th, 2007 at 1:55 am
u guys stink ha ha
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:55 pm
i think you guys are good. so just keep it up.
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:56 pm
i think you guys are good. so just keep it up.
December 6th, 2007 at 11:35 am
I play ultimate frisbee. the people I play with are lawyers, chefs, and other jobs that you cant be lazy at.
December 6th, 2007 at 11:37 am
I play ultimate frisbee. the people I play with are lawyers, chefs, and other jobs that you cant be lazy at.
January 5th, 2008 at 2:00 am
Ultimate was invented in New Jersey at Columbia HS in the 70s (read the book entitled Ultimate the First Four Decades). Of the teams mention in the article only Brown and Stanford are consistantly good, the others more or less are ok or blow flat out. Florida, UCSB, Wisconson, Carleton, Texas, UNC, NC State, Georgia, Colorado, U. of Michigan… those are good schools. I am an environmental scientist, and I got 2 degrees in 4.5 years. We’re not all lazy; some definately are, but come on they exist in all walks of life.
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Haha, I like that they called it a stoner sport. Obviously stated by people who just watch and aren’t there running on the field! There’s a reason why it’s called ultimate and not just frisbee. And a sport for sissies? I’m assuming because we actually follow SOTG? As well, I have played against many people who work in prominent positions as well as the “slacker”-ish types who don’t go to school and work in low-paying jobs. This sport has no indication of what type of people will play.
March 12th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
thats funny, cause at least 3 people on my team are on acedemic probatoin right now. and only about half of us are stoners
February 17th, 2009 at 2:34 am
I play in a club which has two teams, both teams are made up entirely of engineers!