Competition Survey

[jay7]

Dear modified.

There is currently a trend that many people are discussing their views on competition, and many of which are different than the rules and methods which exist officially today. Due to the nature of facebook losing data over time, I thought there should be a more constructive method to capture our opinions. So this morning I decided to draft this up.

Public Survey



Summary of goal: Gather actual statistics from the community, regarding the status of our competition format and judging of today. Once statistics are gathered, analyse/summarize and present them to the community. Pending the results, it may make sense to use these actual, representative, democratic numbers, to change (or not change) the status quo. The data presented to the community will be anonymous.

There are two small exceptions within this form, which are semi-relevant to our competition/judging systems of today. They are two questions, asking if you would like to take part in a little experiment. If you supply your modified user name, I will PM you with an additional form (or two). The experiment is what I would temporarily call a "People's Choice" champion. The idea being, any and everyone can vote on the finals of routines and circle, and after collecting the votes over a certain time period, we can see what the masses thought, versus what the judges thought. I think it would be very interesting to see this difference. The first trial would be voting on this year's worlds routines/circle placings.

Presuming there is any demand for this, I would like to re-do this experiment after tournaments, where after the competition footage is available online, those who sign up can vote within a 24 hour period, and, then the "people's choice" could also be shown. Naturally this would be unofficial, but an anonymous representation of what the actual community thinks versus the judges would be interesting data.

Please, everyone feel free to take part, and let me know what you think.

Thanks.

[MetZelRio]

This is so so so so so needed. I'm so excited about this, sign me up right here, right now. I'm a tad busy at the moment, but I will give more feedback later. SO EXTREMELY stoked to see your presence again. My my my what a way to step back in the arena.

[Kylescook]

Really enjoyed this, thanks for the work you put in. I hope we're able to get a good amount of data.

[mac42]

Im sorry in advance. So i already took the survey and now have ideas and opinions. We all know that there is need for reform in freestyle. I do like what is trying to be accomplished.

I guess my first question is... Is a "Peoples Champion" going to over take a particular winner. ex. routines, will the peoples champ i guess be valued differently? Is it just to give the people that couldn't attend a voice. I fell like a Peoples Champion may only bring more grief to a system that already needs help. I'm no judge, and never been, but from my understanding there is a system and judges do what they can. Having a large group of opinions decide a peoples champion i feel discredits a players hard work and win. And just as easily discredits the judges, devalues their time. A peoples champion is going to have lots of variables. Which I am sure your aware. Is a peoples champ going to be crowned for each event? Is it over all? ( Should there be a over all champ. some one that competed in all events at the comp, that performed well in all events. And that could be done post comp by voters)

Admittedly I'm not very competitive. But I love this sport. I don't know the formulas. I barely pay attention to the add system. (cause its flawed) And it only my opinion that if there were discrepancies with judging. Getting a system that accurately values the difficulty, components and tricks is going to be more valuable for the sport as a whole.

Again im sorry.

end rant.

[Kylescook]

Good points Mac.

[santeri]

I completely agree with Mac. I value the discussion opener and think that a critical discussion about rules, judging, etc. is always welcome in order to keep up with the development of the game itself.

However, as Mac stated, I too feel that crowning an unofficial people's champion for the past competitions possibly discredits the winners as well as all the judges' work and is likely to cause unnecessary chagrin.

I think everyone is entitled to write on forums their view on the results, but I think an organized voting and announcing the results could lead to bad things. Rather keep the voting on technical level as in the poll.

I answered to the poll and wait eagerly for the results, but I will not participate in the online judging.
When are you planning to publish the results of the poll?

[C-Fan]

I completely agree with Mac. I value the discussion opener and think that a critical discussion about rules, judging, etc. is always welcome in order to keep up with the development of the game itself.

However, as Mac stated, I too feel that crowning an unofficial people's champion for the past competitions possibly discredits the winners as well as all the judges' work and is likely to cause unnecessary chagrin.

I think everyone is entitled to write on forums their view on the results, but I think an organized voting and announcing the results could lead to bad things.

Completely agree. Well said Santeri.

[Tjuggles]

Wow, that was quick!

Finished the survey. I think this is a good start. Thanks for taking the time to make this real. Looking forward to seeing how it progresses.

[MetZelRio]

I took the survey. I believe this is part of the revolution I've seen coming for some time, not just in competition but in footbag in general. I believe in what we can achieve. Change is coming.

[Jorden]

Interesting post, Jay.

Our sport suffers from a lack of long-term planning and insight. It's more and more apparent each passing year.

The trouble is in the 80s and 90s a bunch of jocks wearing funky-colored shorts and backwards hats impromptu planned the destiny and trajectory of freestyle competition. The hysteria of constant innovation, a functional approach (if it ain't broke don't fix it) I think prevented people from being able to reflect and think critically on things like judging, scoring and the ADDS system.

Now that footbag is in a state of creative and enthusiastic stagnation (let's face it, folks) we have the time to "inspect the house", so to speak. Using this metaphor, what we find is cracks in the wall covered over with bubble gum, dust and cobwebs everywhere, broken windows and a sagging roof held up by duct tape. Basically a place of severe neglect. The owners don't care too much though, because it's still works as a place to eat and sleep. The house has a good base, and with a decent renovation the value could skyrocket.

What we need is a governing body that doesn't just sanction events, decide where Worlds will be every year and maintain a little hall of fame. We need a body that has members with Olympic experience and/or experience in similar freestyle sports. There would have to be full-time paid managerial positions and annual player membership fees. That's a first step in becoming a legitimate sport with proper international recognition.

I think a governing body with the proper management and resources could render the current status quo, the IFPA, obsolete. This parallel organization could be the answer.

Those that know me well are aware of my thought on competition. I've said them ad nauseam.
Studying game design (and now being a coach of kids) has helped me spot some glaring problems in our competition structure:

1. Our sport doesn't encourage full participation in all events.
Despite this being a desirable trait, it's true. What sport doesn't want their players to be versatile and well rounded? Because there is (was?) so much value given to Routines, top players with doubts on their success in other events for whatever reason could sit them out with no fear of community backlash or repercussions. Look at Honza a few years ago avoiding Circle at Worlds, etc.

SOLUTION: Bring back prize money. Apparently Copenhagen did this year. Kudos to them.
There are many ways to do this - sponsorship, pre-sell Finals night tickets, membership fees and ditching the player packs, etc.
There must be prize money only for OVERALL RESULTS, at Worlds or otherwise. In the survey I chose Routines, Circle and Shred 30 as the heavily weighted events.
It could be as follows:

Circle (possible 10 points toward overall score for 1st place)
Routines (8 points)
Shred 30 (5 points)
Request (3 points)
Big 1/3 (1 point each)

For an overall champion there would need to be appropriate weighting of events. To me circle is weighted the most because it's improvised, has indirect interaction, demonstrates the most breadth and depth of skills the most, has the most risk and has the longest running time of all the events (at 20 mins or so). Circle is the closest thing to perfection our sport has.

The others I've weighed to reflect how much involvement is required to participate, amount of pre-planning needed, how much luck is involved, running times and the ability to hide weaknesses and still achieve a good result.

Summary: Encourage versatility and full participation by weighing events relative to their required involvement and have good prize money, but only for the overall results (say, top 5).

[Jorden]

2. Our sport still uses the ADD system, a system for scoring tricks that is largely impertinent.
We want to encourage players to take risks. Tricks should be valued for the amount of training required to achieve them, the complexity (difficult to reproduce on command), required effort, the variety of skills demonstrated, riskiness and uniqueness. The ADDs system covers some, but not all, of these traits. It's an example of a merely functional, yet outdated approach to freestyle.

Anyone who thinks ADDs truly represent difficulty, look at these quick examples:

- is an outside kick (0 ADDs) as easy to perfect as a clipper stall (2 ADDs)?
- how do you write sitting down in Jobs notation?
- is paradox mirage equal in difficulty to bubbabeater? To grifter? etc.etc.

The trouble is ADDs simply cannot incorporate new out of the box ideas. When those ideas become mainstream, the whole system collapses. The truth is not all ADD categories are equal difficulty by themselves. Not even close! An unusual ADD is leaps and bounds harder to achieve than a cross-body ADD. For a body ADD, a duck is WAY safer and easier to combo and play out of than a body roll. A butterfly DEX is NOT equal to a reverse swirl DEX, etc.

SOLUTION: take a nod from similar sports and use trick categories. Category A would be all the safest most common tricks (kicks - toe, in, knee. stalls - toe, in, clipper). Then B, C, D, E with E being high-risk, high innovation and/or high complexity. There could also be subcategories like A1, A2, etc. A new idea could be easily incorporated by placing it in the appropriate letter box. No more need to add up the individual elements.

[Add Block]

SOLUTION: take a nod from similar sports and use trick categories. Category A would be all the safest most common tricks (kicks - toe, in, knee. stalls - toe, in, clipper). Then B, C, D, E with E being high-risk, high innovation and/or high complexity. There could also be subcategories like A1, A2, etc. A new idea could be easily incorporated by placing it in the appropriate letter box. No more need to add up the individual elements.

This is the best solution I could come up with as well. Unfortunately, the beauty of ADD system is that you can take any trick and work out by yourself how many ADDs it has (in a perfect world).
So this alternative could only work if the categories are so well defined that we can do the same.

[Jorden]

I'll post some more when I get around to it.

[Asmus]

Can somebody shed some historic light on why the overall champion was dropped in the first place?

[C-Fan]

glaring problems in our competition structure:

1. Our sport doesn't encourage full participation in all events.
Despite this being a desirable trait, it's true.

Why are we assuming this a desirable trait? I wouldn't automatically assume this. If a competitor's goal is to showcase their artistic ability and control, what benefit comes from making them do Shred30? Or if somebody is a crazy circle shredder, why is it desirable to make them do mixed doubles routines and golf? What is this proving exactly?

In the past, overall champion included participation in net and freestyle. Do we want a return to this? Before anybody is quick to reply "net and freestyle are different," are they more fundamentally different than say, shred30 and golf? Routines and sick 1? Etc., etc.

What sport doesn't want their players to be versatile and well rounded? .

At the Olympics, sprinters don't compete in the marathon or vice versa. Same with many swimming events, many gymnastic events, etc. Speed skaters and figure skaters don't compete in each other's events. All these sports are broken up into specialties. Did anybody criticize Apollo Ohno as not being "versatile and well rounded" because he didn't do a figure skating program?

SOLUTION: Bring back prize money..

Prize money wouldn't motivate me to compete in events I'm not interested in. I'm sure there are players who would be motivated by prize money, but there are many who wouldn't. At US Open this year I donated my prize money, because I didn't want a reminder that I had lost routines. I would have rather won gold and gotten no money, than finish in second with a good cash prize.

[Wiktor]

Hey,

i do respect your care about competition, but the problems are elsewhere.

1. In every freestyle sport is a subjective judging, and footbag still have very advanced and detailed trick and competition system.
Let's not get deeper here.
2. Overal champion MUST include all footbag sports like NET, GOLF, and Kicks (used to be consecutives, now 2/4square).
The difference between Big1 and Sher30 in terms of technical skill is very small on big pictutre.
3. As Santeri wrote - not respecting our only official format would lead us to skip competition even more.
4. Community-based award is visable as BAP nominations.
5. We do specialise, so Ken has a point here. Just play what you like and do best.
6. Prize money is a problem, not because we don't want it. We don't have a manpower!
Instead of this thread, simply get a small crew of friends and on behalf of IFPA do a campaign to get Prize Money for upcoming Worlds. Easy?
7. I will not do the surgey, as i see no point. Sorry.

Much respect.

Wiktor

[Jorden]

Excellent points, Ken.

In terms of overall champion, I think the discrepancy here is not of a fundamental difference but one of scope. The sport of FREESTYLE footbag is already so narrow in scope (in terms of differences in freestyle events and skill sets required), that if nothing encourages full participation in all freestyle events some might even die out or become irrelevant.

For example, if a player plans a whirlwind at the end of their routine, is it really that big a jump to train montage for Big 1? If spontaneous diverse links are desirable in the variety round of Circle, is that a big jump to try and do written ones in Request?

What I was implying was an overall champion within the umbrella of the freestyle category.
If you look again at the events I listed for this you'll notice I stay within this umbrella.
Otherwise things get too watered down. When there is very little overlap of the people in each community, and when the equipment changes is where I would draw the line. Especially when the objectives completely change! Kicking horizontally to get a bag to land in a specified area is nothing like using any means necessary to keep a bag up creatively. I do think Golf, due to its greater similarity to Net could be a low-weight event that works towards an overall champ in Net.

You could argue a lot of Net players were competitive freestylers (and a few current ones as well) but most don't take both seriously at the same time. Not anymore, at least. That's due to to specialization. I think most would agree we're past the point of no return in this regard.

You wouldn't demand Tiger Woods be able to balance a golf club on his forehead in order to be a well rounded golfer. Or every player on an NFL football team to be a great distance punter. Or Kurt Browning to have an awesome slapshot. If body types are specialized, then the umbrella is whatever is optimal for that body type. That's why sprinters need not be marathoners. In circus, you wouldn't have contortionists train trampoline. Those are opposing body types - flexible vs. rigid. Speed skating and figure skating use a different pair of skates and outfit, have different body types, have polarizing objectives and are a different community.

What I'm saying is if someone wants to officially declare themselves the best freestyle footbagger of that year, then they should have proved themselves in as many ways possible, rather than exploiting loopholes and actually doing the BARE MINIMUM possible to make that claim. That behavior doesn't benefit the other players, the organizers or the audience.

For prize money, I think it's impressive the sport has survived a while without it. It shows that the players' hearts are in the right place. The issue here is that of demographics. The typical ages are still teens and early to mid 20s. These folks are possibly still in school paying tuition, need to pay rent, food, transport, etc. Most of them do not have their career job yet, which would allow for financial stability and the ability to make sacrifices, like training a lot and attending competitions. Ken, if you're in a position to attend events without financial worry, that's awesome. Unfortunately that's not the reality for a large portion of the players. One of the reasons I think footbag has exploded in Europe (obviously the rise of Youtube, the affordability are big ones) is that the countries on average are very close together making travel costs low.

Prize money would simply offset those who are not in their career jobs yet, have significant debts and expenses and wouldn't mind a bit of incentive and compensation for the time and effort put in to something that doesn't have the mass recognition of other freestyle sports.
I do think fundraising for this is a good idea, but also efficiency on the part of organizers as was stated above.

[C-Fan]

if nothing encourages full participation in all freestyle events some might even die out or become irrelevant.

If an event dies out because people don't participate in it, is that necessarily a bad thing? Whether we're talking evolution or the market, an idea/event/product that is weak should go away, while strong ones should remain.

As for relevancy...is any footbag event "relevant?"

Speed skating and figure skating use a different pair of skates and outfit, have different body types, have polarizing objectives and are a different community.

I really don't understand the body types argument at all. Net players and freestyle players have very similar body types...so do footbaggers and soccer players, footbaggers and any sport teenage boys do. What does body type have to do in terms of arguing that two sports are fundamentally different?

The community aspect also doesn't seem germane to competition. Shaun White is famous for choosing not to be part of the snowboard and skate communities, but he does just fine in comp. As for polarizing objectives, are the differences between speed and figure skating substantially different than the differences between Shred30 and routines?

Ken, if you're in a position to attend events without financial worry, that's awesome.

That wasn't really my point. Even when I was young and it was a struggle to get to tournaments, prize money never motivated me in competition. It was always about the glory of winning. I'm just saying that prize money doesn't motivate everybody to compete.

You wouldn't demand Tiger Woods be able to balance a golf club on his forehead in order to be a well rounded golfer

Bad example. If I had to pick ANY golfer to do that, I'd bet money on Tiger:


I feel like this whole thread is going a bunch of different directions at once. Is this a discussion about how we judge events? Or a discussion about reintroducing/creating an overall category? Or a discussion on the very nature of footbag, and what events "count" for an overall champion?

[AdAstra]

Would it be possible to just keep all the events as distinct entities and then have an additional event; a pentathlon of sorts for those that want to be crowned best in the world?

[Asmus]

Just to clear something up:

We considered prize money at Worlds but finally decided against it. We even considered only giving prize money only to Doubles Freestyle since we had a sponsor who for unknown reasons really were into that event.

Let me do some math that shows why I think that was a wise decision.

If we take every official event (except the masters net competition, intermediate competitions, golf and women’s sick trick since there was only two competitors), there are 16 events that should get prize money. This means 16 first places, second places and third places. 12 times the prize money is shared between two players because of doubles. So, if nobody got first through third in more than one event 60 players would get prize money. However only 34 players ended in the top three in any of the events. Let’s say number one(s) get 100 euros, number two(s) get 60 euros and number three(s) get 30 euros. That would add up to 3040 euros. That is a lot of money.

Where could we find that money? It is pretty much exactly the same same as it cost to give every (170+) players a free meal every day. Or it will would have been the same as raising the registration fee for over (170+) attendees with 50%.
So we decided to benefit 170+ players instead of 34.