New Year's Resolutions, A Rebrand, Some Tough Questions
We need to improve our opinion of ourselves
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Las Vegas Bighorns Next UFA Expansion, Is All Press Good Press?
Editor’s note: The Las Vegas Bighorns have since confirmed via email that the Twitter account in question is not theirs and this piece has been edited to correct to account for that at 4:25 p.m. EST 12/31/24.
The UFA recently announced its newest expansion franchise after Dallas folded: The Las Vegas Bighorns. Alex Rubin of Ultiworld more eloquently expressed my thoughts of vague confusion on the location and decision to expand in Las Vegas than I could in this piece, saying,
To ultimate fans, this move may come as a surprise. Las Vegas did not send any club teams to the USA Ultimate series in 2024, and the city has only a small local disc organization. In 2023, Las Vegas Nuke competed in SoCal men’s sectionals but did not advance past that stage. There are no nearby marquee college programs to draw from.
To UFA fans, this move may also come as a surprise. The league had been publicly seeking investors to launch teams in Kansas City and St. Louis, not Las Vegas.
However, I’m not here to pick on the UFA’s decision-making in this piece. No, this is about what someone impersonating the Bighorns tweeted from a fake team account a few days ago, a direct link to this casino.org Vital Vegas article about the arrival of ultimate in Las Vegas. Give it a read. It isn’t long and worth a read, so you can fully understand where I’m coming from here. Here it is on the Bighorns’ feed:
In case you didn’t read the article, here’s how it opens:
Oy, with the sports, already. That said, go sports!
The Ultimate Frisbee Association (UFA) is bringing a new pro team to Las Vegas, the Vegas Bighorns.
Yes, there’s “pro” frisbee league [sic]. We’re using quotation marks because we assume these players are paid about as much as the guy giving out breath mints and paper towels in casino restrooms. All due respect.
That’s the first five sentences of an article a pro ultimate team1 seemingly tweeted about their inception and arrival in a city. It is seemingly the only non-ultimate press they’ve got so far, but it’s not good and doesn’t get better. This writer doesn’t seem to think much of ultimate or sports. And he makes it very clear, which is fine. Honestly, it is. I can’t keep the snark out of my writing about ultimate and I love ultimate. I love it more than anything else in the world. I don’t think writers should have to be positive about things they don’t feel positive about. They should write largely however they wish (I know, shocking to hear from a writer).
My annoyance and frustration, in this case, are primarily directed at whoever decided to impersonate the Bighorns and tweet this out, pretending to be them. This is not writing that will encourage people to watch the UFA or the Bighorns. It does not get people excited about the sport. It keeps the sport itself as the punchline, and it’s frustrating someone decided to do this as a joke instead of promoting the team earnestly.
The idea of how “legitimate” the ultimate sport should be is one of the most prominent cultural tensions in the community. Forces within and outside ultimate are pulling it towards the path of something like pickleball, or even the major American sports, and a spot in the Olympics, among other things. At the same time, there are forces and instincts in the community that are pulling it back to its roots as something exclusively countercultural, as it was several decades ago.
I tend to advocate for and hope we will eventually see significantly more legitimacy, people, and money in the sport (other than wanting it in the Olympics). However, in pursuing those goals, getting too caught up in wanting to appear or be legitimate is much more harmful than positive.
Take this Bighorns example. The article in question was posted on the Vital Vegas section of casino.org, a Las Vegas news and entertainment site. Their Twitter account has over 200,000 followers, far more reach than anyone in ultimate (other than Marques Brownlee, obviously). So, in theory, it's a great idea to get press from this site and blast it out into the world.
In practice, it feels like we, as a community, are chasing validation too much to the point that we will see what is ultimately a pretty mean-spirited and dismissive article about ourselves or our community and put it out on our socials. And we’ll do that because getting someone to notice us means we must have arrived as a team, league, or even sport. In reality, this way of thinking is backward. If we want real legitimacy, we must make it ourselves and trust that outside validation will come eventually. We need to hold our product and ourselves to a higher standard.
Ultimate has been at the butt of a lot of jokes for a very long time. I’m not saying we should lose our sense of humor. It’s incredibly important that we keep the sense of humor about our often-silly sport. But I am saying we need to stop letting other people who are not interested in ultimate give us an inferiority complex. And we shouldn’t make their jobs easier by broadcasting jokes at our expense to the broader public. I want this community to project pride in itself and each other. You do not bring people in by saying, ‘Look at this lame and stupid thing I spend so much time doing.’ You do it by gassing it up, and if people on the outside elect to make your passion for something look silly, that’s fine. Just own it. Don’t cave and endorse something negative because the “cool kids” want to laugh at the sport in the name of trying to make the sport more legitimate. That accomplishes less than nothing for growth. It’s actively harmful. And everyone who plays this sport and dedicates their time to growing it deserves better.
New Year’s Resolutions for The Breakside
It’s New Year’s Eve! I’ve been thinking a lot about my goals for The Breakside for 2025 as I’ve been planning some currently secret and exciting projects coming soon and I wanted to share them all with you. Hopefully, you get as excited for this year of ultimate and ultimate journalism as I am. So here are my New Year’s resolutions broken down into what I think are controllable goals, partially controllable goals, and goals that are out of my control.
Controllable
Continue to pour in as much time, energy, and love into my writing and this outlet
Put significantly more time and energy into expanding The Breakside’s presence on different social platforms and experiment with different forms of content (short-form video, audio, etc.)
Work on some long-form projects/series
Continue to push the media scene in ultimate forward!
Semi-controllable
Attend D1, D3, and Club Nationals for live coverage
Interview USAU CEO Kevin Erlenbach (check the TikTok for updates on this coming soon)
Increase engagement from readership (that’s you!)
Non-controllable
1,000 real2 subscribers
About The Breakside
This newsletter aims to tackle the gap in present coverage of ultimate as a sport. Commentary, analysis, and community are some of the guiding ideals behind the Breakside.
If you enjoyed my writing, please consider leaving a like or comment, subscribing, or sharing it with a friend. There is now a paid subscription option to support the journalism I do. Please consider helping out in that way too if you are willing and able.
About the Author
My name is Noam Gumerman (he/him). I am from Chapel Hill, NC, and studied Journalism and American Studies at Brandeis University. I am a journalist by trade and have been playing ultimate for over half my life. I love nothing more than combining those two interests. Contact me for discussions, feedback, story suggestions, and more on Twitter (@noamgum/@breaksideulti now too!) or email (noamgumerman@gmail.com).
Again, this is now confirmed to be someone impersonating the team
I only stipulate real because I’ve had a bunch of bot emails sign up for some reason but apparently Substack is working on it