The Myth of Injury Games

Had a thought that was worth posting on RSD. Figured I'd repost it here so I don't forget it in an hour.

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It seems that a lot of people from the "top 25" are complaining about the existence of injury games, meaningless games in which the outcome is essentially predetermined. The general location of these games is identified as sectionals, where a team like Wisconsin spends 4-5 games pasting teams who wouldn't win a single game if they played 100 times.

Cultimate's response has been to replace those games with a 34 game regular series which is used as a qualifier for a new national tournament, thus avoiding these so-called "injury games".

My real question though: how many injury games does Wisconsin (or a similar team really play) ?

Looking at Wisconsin's record, they played in Mardi Gras, Vegas, Stanford, Centex, Sectionals, Regionals, Nationals.

At every single one of those tournaments (excepting Sectionals), they were placed in some form of power pool or pre-selecting tournament (I'm assuming this was true of Mardi Gras as all 12 teams competing for 1st place came out of the top 3 pools). Barring one possible aberration game at each "regular season" tournament (Winona State at Mardi Gras - 7th at Regionals, Davidson at Vegas - 9th at Regionals, Whitman at SI - 7th at Regionals) and their first two games at Regionals (against teams who placed 11th and 13th), there line-up of games is already almost solely against the "top 25" (not as Conference1 would have it, but in a more general sense). Even at sectionals, Wisconsin played two decent teams (Marquette and Whitewater) who performed decently at Regionals.

My question then is if playing those 4-5 games (a number which could be minimized if a non-pool play format was adopted for sectionals) is really any impediment to those teams OR if it's any more of a danger than practicing with their own teammates. Considering the level of physicality that has become the standard among high level teams, this seems like a pretty legitimate question.

Also, Wisconsin played 43 games last season not including Nationals. Take away six "injury games" at Sectionals and two at Regionals and you have a 35 game regular season THAT THEY ALREADY PLAY.

If Wisconsin wants to come out in favor of Conference1, they shouldn't do it based off the idea of playing less "injury games", they should do it because they want free jerseys, no entry fees and a rumored travel budget.

*Wisconsin was used as the example because they are the reigning champions and they choose to attend a significant number of tournaments. A cursory glance shows Florida to have done something similar (although they attended Warm Up, a tournament which featured a less impressive roster than Mardi Gras and I imagine held some form of compensation for the team, chose not to attend Stanford), Carleton is in the same boat as Wisconsin, and Colorado's only blemish was Fool's Fest, a tournament which they have traditionally chosen to attend.

In Princeton...solidly Conference 2

Visiting the girlfriend during my break. Lots of shit going down in the ultimate world regarding Conference1. Will hold my thoughts on it for the moment (would definitely like more information and want to see how top teams like Wisconsin and Carleton fall), but my knee-jerk reaction is negative. More to come, less to follow.

Brand New Day

Going to start updating again, hopefully on a weekly schedule. I don't want this to be a workout blog, so I'll try and keep my posts centered on stuff people might actually care about.