Coincidentally, I was talking about this with a friend last week. I like your thought about the stall count difference, I hadn't considered that.
It seems like the talent level of each city's ultimate scene explains a lot of it. In the PUL, Atlanta/Nashville/Austin/Indy just can't keep up with NY/Philly/DC/Raleigh. Minnesota/Milwaukee/Portland (who has some access to Boston players) are somewhere in the middle and have accounted for a number of those closer games. It doesn't explain everything of course (e.g. doesn't explain why DC is so much better than Raleigh so far this year), but it explains a lot.
Out West, there's only 6 teams as you mention. Four of them are in some of the biggest ultimate hubs of the country -- Utah, Colorado, SF, Seattle. San Diego isn't what I'd traditionally think of as an ulti hub, but they've got a ton of college nationals teams in the SW region and San Diego women's has been competitive at club Nationals the last few years. I'm not sure how to explain Arizona's success (such as it is) in staying competitive. They've only sent a mixed team to club nationals recently...maybe they've just built a good culture with high levels of buy-in?
It's also only a one-off game. So you would think that might make games closer as long as each team possesses a certain level of high end talent even if it's only one or two players they can run most of the game with.
Coincidentally, I was talking about this with a friend last week. I like your thought about the stall count difference, I hadn't considered that.
It seems like the talent level of each city's ultimate scene explains a lot of it. In the PUL, Atlanta/Nashville/Austin/Indy just can't keep up with NY/Philly/DC/Raleigh. Minnesota/Milwaukee/Portland (who has some access to Boston players) are somewhere in the middle and have accounted for a number of those closer games. It doesn't explain everything of course (e.g. doesn't explain why DC is so much better than Raleigh so far this year), but it explains a lot.
Out West, there's only 6 teams as you mention. Four of them are in some of the biggest ultimate hubs of the country -- Utah, Colorado, SF, Seattle. San Diego isn't what I'd traditionally think of as an ulti hub, but they've got a ton of college nationals teams in the SW region and San Diego women's has been competitive at club Nationals the last few years. I'm not sure how to explain Arizona's success (such as it is) in staying competitive. They've only sent a mixed team to club nationals recently...maybe they've just built a good culture with high levels of buy-in?
It's also only a one-off game. So you would think that might make games closer as long as each team possesses a certain level of high end talent even if it's only one or two players they can run most of the game with.