.@jeffsnader hmmm, I ranked Ultimate in the Top 15 of Sports Difficulty w a total = 60. [RE: sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/spo…]For all the ways to describe Ultimate (soccer-esque, basketball-ish, tennis-like, quasi-football, with a flying disc), this ESPN "Ultimate Degree of Difficulty Grid" helped me break down the Ultimate sport. Again, Ultimate is *NOT* on the ESPN list.
— Sludge Ultimate (@sludgebrown) August 23, 2012
After that tweet, I thought about how to conduct a similar evaluation of Ultimate as a sport. I have lots of ideas, so my first step was to see if my concept was even feasible. I contacted Ultiworld after meeting him in the fall, and Charlie validated my idea. I also asked UltiCards & they excitedly responded with a blog post about it.
ESPN's approach was they identified 10 categories, or skills, that go into athleticism, and then asked their 8 panelists to assign a number from 1 to 10 to the demands each sport makes of each of those 10 skills. The Top-10 ESPN Sports are: (1) Boxing, (2) Ice Hockey, (3) Football, (4) Basketball, (5) Wrestling, (6) Martial Arts, (7) Tennis, (8) Gymnastics, (9) Baseball/Softball, (10) Soccer.
I then developed a survey to capture the 10 areas for sport evaluation, plus some demographic data. The survey launched with the help of a lovely coder who allowed many 'just-1-more-edit' updates.
Finally in March 2013, I surveyed a range of Subject Matter Experts (SME) within the Ultimate field (i.e., trainers, teams, players, pro leagues, instructors, media, etc.) asking their objective opinion. Immediately after asking the SMEs, you may have noticed some comments [Skyd, Ultimate Rob, ultimateproblems] about this very query -- Where would/should Ultimate rank in the ESPN Sports list?
Since then, interestingly, USA Ultimate announced their deal with ESPN. Now that the SMEs have had their say, the survey
Look for the survey to be opened
Giving credit due where credit is deserved...thanks again to Jeff Snader for influencing this effort.
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