Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

General footbag-related topics that don't fit elsewhere go in here.
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Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by Muffinman » 31 Jul 2012 13:02

Discuss

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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by sen » 31 Jul 2012 13:12

It takes more athletic ability and skill than air rifle.

If ping pong is in...

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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by Muffinman » 31 Jul 2012 15:24

Yeah, I had table tennis in mind when I was making the post. I wouldn't discount it, and it's probably my second favourite sport(?), but footbag is definitely far more technically intricate and physically demanding. I think that's the thing with footbag. It's far more technical and physically demanding than many sports in the Olympics. Moreso than any team sports I think -- basketball, soccer, volleyball, etc. It's definitely up there with sports like gymnastics, figure skating, diving -- sports where you push your BODY. The drawback is that it's still so raw and unrefined -- there's focus on form, but it's not judged as severely in competition. Like, in gymnastics if you stumble a little on your landing it really impacts your score, from what I understand. In footbag, if you land a montage in a routine, I doubt the judges will care much what it looks like unless it's incredibly the. I guess another example is spinning -- I doubt footbag judges care if a spin is really pulled or if you're really spinning 360 degrees rather than 180.

Those are just thoughts off the top of my head. I haven't spent much time thinking about it, but someone in another thread mentioned something about footbag in the Olympics and it made me think. I'm interested to know to what degree was the success of Scott Davidson's (multiple?) formal(?) bids for footbag in the Olympics. And I wonder if someone like Jorden might have more success?

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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by xsisbest » 31 Jul 2012 15:59

It should most definitely be an Olympic sport. I tell everyone that it's called footbag but a better term is aerobic foot juggling.. How many people can juggle with their hands? How about their feet? Now do aerobics while juggling with your feet.. You gots footbag.. I constantly complain to the wife that I just don't have the energy levels today.. or I just can't build my stamina and go long runs.. I blame my age alot but the physical demands that footbag has can only compare to the likes of wrestling, swimming, or any other sport where it's individual and nonstop. The energy it takes just to do something like atmosmasher might not be recognizable to those that have been doing it for a few years but try and think back to when you were first starting.. That moves a bitch on the energy levels! And then string it together with move after move..
I think one of the main reasons it's NOT an Olympic sport is because of the lack of people that know squat about it. They don't have any judges that could critique it properly unless they got other footbaggers and God forbid they get some dirty hacky sack playing hippy to be a judge.. Or so the typical stereotype would make one think of said footbagger. As I said in another thread.. I would put the physical talent and conditioning of a pro footbagger against the stamina/conditioning of any other athlete including marathon runners and I almost guarantee they would outlast most. Or at very least compete step for step.
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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by Muffinman » 31 Jul 2012 20:25

I just saw takraw in a London Olympics ad on YouTube. I couldn't grab the URL though. I dunno how to do that with ads. It was the one that showed a bunch of handicapped people and sports that aren't in the Olympics, and was saying how it's not about lowering the bar for the everyman, but raising it for everyone. Thought that was kinda relevant -- the takraw bit.

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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by rjadamson » 31 Jul 2012 20:45

I personally think footbag has a ways to go before it's ready for a real Olympic bid.

Yes, curling is stupid and yes, footbag takes far more fine dexterity than something like basketball. Even though some sports don't look that impressive you have to consider how many people play it -- and therefore consider the level of competition created by that level of participation -- before judging it. I personally think many freestyle soccer elements looks utterly clumsy compared to footbag and roll my eyes because those players never look in control... but in reality it's simply harder to do tricks with a soccer ball. Trying to do the same tricks with an American football or a car muffler would look even more ridiculous and you can bet the top players in car muffler freestyle would look even less impressive despite putting in the thousands of hours of practice top footbag players do. Footbag also exists in sort of a grey area between performance art and physical sport. Other sports might lean more toward one or the other and look better or worse to the layman, but you bet that if ten thousand players all put over ten thousand hours of work into being better than each other at some crazy activity like sweeping ice or quickly pushing themselves through water that their skills will be quite refined. Because of this I think the "footbag takes more work than x" argument is invalid despite how much I'd love to see our sport more recognized for how challenging it is. We'd be better off looking at what Olympic events have in common and brainstorming ways to push footbag in such a direction. Neither of the two things that come to my mind first are new discussions here:
  • Size - Consider how many people play basketball in the world and how few are on top. That speaks for itself. Watching an NBA player perform an effortless layup might not look that impressive, but getting to the professional level in basketball requires an incredible investment of energy and time -- physical training and basketball practice is their life. They are the biggest fish from a pond of many fish. Team sports in particular don't really advertise how hard the individual players have to train or how well they have to perform to be in the top tiers of competition. Baseball is a great example of this. The top footbag players in the world are indeed very impressive, and some of them can apparently make a living playing footbag, but I can't imagine what the level of competition at a footbag world championship would look like if millions of kids were beginning to play in the early childhood stage, getting filtered via institutionalized amateur/school leagues growing up, and eventually having enormous monetary/social incentives to dedicate their life to their craft. If footbag had the numbers to require such an intense filtering system I imagine the top players would probably be shitting all over every milestone the current best players have ever achieved. Basically I am inclined to think the Olympics people would cite the small player base of footbag as a lack of dedicated people really pushing the physical limits of the sport.
  • Standardization - The current lack of accepted standardization in footbag is another problem. I think for footbag to really compare to something like ice skating or gymnastics we will also need a very focused movement toward standardizing proper form for tricks and we will need a respected system by which we standardize how hard tricks are. Right now I get the sense people in the global footbag community are fairly indifferent toward the rather antiquated ADD system, but we still rely on it to judge players' general skill levels ("guiltless" and so on). If people don't think Job's Notation cuts it anymore we'll need a new way to seamlessly put footbag concepts on paper. I think it's great what some of the more involved players in our community have done by re-branding concepts and changing some tricks names to sound more legitimate, but if players are still on the fence about our own nomenclature I doubt the bureaucrats in an Olympic committee will be impressed. Dimwalk is simply easier than atom smasher, and things like this will absolutely have to be recognized and accommodated for in a good system. To have any shot at Olympic recognition we will, as Erik suggested, probably have to be to the point where we're agonizing over whether players are actually setting the bag straight up to do a full spin in their spinning moves or not. I think this level of standardization may also have some creative restrictions. I am completely optimistic someone smarter than myself could create a new system that would accurately measure someone's running score as they do a shuffle run in their routine... but suddenly stopping to do a tacky (sorry if my personal opinion is seeping in here) two-bag juggling section will be much harder to justify. A real push toward standardization may require making some tough decisions about many trick nicknames. Although I don't think the standardization of equipment would be a huge problem initially I do think it would be necessary to maintain what constitutes a legal shoe or bag.
I do wonder if footbag would better fit into an X Games lineup than in the Olympics. I feel the organization of footbag is very similar to that of skateboarding -- if nothing else both have tricks with weird names that mystify bystanders. I bet Jorden would be a great representative for footbag, but based on the attitude of players outside North America I wonder if footbag is viewed as a more legitimate sport elsewhere, and also wonder if that would allow them a little bit more social inertia in getting the ball rolling. I am not a footbag historian, but I can't think of really anyone on this side of the water who has made a living for themselves without "cheapening" (I hope that does not come off as offensive) footbag into a busking act of some sort or otherwise going out of their way to make it accessible to an unenlightened audience.
Last edited by rjadamson on 03 Aug 2012 07:42, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by sen » 01 Aug 2012 13:29

Which events does everyone feel should be in the Olympics if Footbag where to get there?

I would vote for:

Synchronized Big 3
Individual Big 3
2 Minute Routine
30 second shred
Circle
and appropriate Net events (I'm not up on what they would be but I'm guess simply singles and doubles? Does mixed really happen in the Olympics?)

Doubles routines just doesn't do it for me on a whole. It just seems weird for four legs to be sharing one bag. The portions of doubles routines that are synchronized look great though. Take a page out of diving's book and I think this could be a great event. I think the rest of the events are self explanatory. Do you think that's too many? Would you want to see Request? Big 1?

Edit to add: I think knowing what events we want to be there can help focus on what needs to happen to get it there.

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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by Eskimo Joe » 02 Aug 2012 06:31

Footbag will need 50 countries that play, all with a national system, of which, 35 have to have women that compete. This is not going to happen anytime soon. Canada doesnt have a "Nationals". This is the most important part in all this. We need the IFPA to have representatives in at least 50 countries with 50 seperate "Nationals", judged by IFPA trained and recognized judges. There needs to be a huge shift in support for the IFPA. Every Jam, every tourney needs to be iFPA sanctioned. It seems that net if way further ahead of freestyle, and I would see Net making the olympisc before freestyle. There are so many organizzed events of net vs freestyle.

Also, the standardization of rules needs to happen. There has to be one set of move names. Is Jobs good? I think it has a ton of potential and is really close to being what we need to roll out to all 50 National events. It is deffinately something that can be put in judges rule book material along with the rules listed on .org
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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by cd » 02 Aug 2012 08:33

Eskimo Joe wrote:There needs to be a huge shift in support for the IFPA. Every Jam, every tourney needs to be iFPA sanctioned.
This is a shift that can take place right now. But like Joe said, expanding into other countries, and getting more women into the sport are going to be much harder.


But I don't think there is much hope for footbag in the Olympics. My understanding is that it's pretty full already, and much larger and well-known sports get denied all the time, like baseball, cricket, and squash did for 2016. But of course increasing the reach and legitimacy of footbag is a worthy goal in itself.
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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by F[uns]tylin' Eclectic » 02 Aug 2012 09:27

Sure getting girls into footbag will be difficult... But if we TRY, we can do it. For a girl to get into the sport, they have to be a little different-minded than most girls... There are those types of girls everywhere, we just have to put ourselves out there and find them... PHYSICALLY. I have one idea that will help us get females to start trying footbag. I also believe we can get a few serious players in every state. I have a nice lump of ideas up my sleeve to do these things in the future. A few things have to come together before we can do it, but we can definitely do it.

Maybe once we have players in every part of the world, we can picture being in the olympics a little more easily.
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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by sen » 02 Aug 2012 09:36

Olympics being full is a new concept to me. I guess it'd be nice if events that aren't really athletics focused could move on to allow athletic events in. I'm thinking about sports like shooting and sailing. Don't get me wrong, I know they do involve some muscle and body training, but as a whole they aren't exactly as reliant on athletic ability as Footbag or Volleyball. I mean, if an 8 month pregnant woman can compete in it it's clearly not that demanding on the body...

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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by Dio » 02 Aug 2012 17:07

It's nice to think about having Footbag in the Olympics because of the commentators. They discuss each athlete's ability, style, past performances etc. until you begin to root for them based on their history. I guess I just imagine that everyone who plays Footbag would make for great athlete-specific commentary. Footbag commentary on the whole could be very interesting - for players at least!

But yeah the sport's got a ways to go yet. Sports like diving are difficult to judge in themselves but Footbag could be even more difficult. The instant replays would be important too!

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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by Fade2black » 03 Aug 2012 07:06

I tend to compare footbag as an Olympic sport to the floor exercise of gymnastics...

Style and artistic beauty mixed with power surges of raw force during the tumbling sections.

Footbag may not be close yet, but if gymnastic judges can judge floor routines based on several criteria, so can footbag.

I agree however that the sport as a whole needs to develop globally, genderly, and skillfully(as it has) to where dropless and 1 drop routines are more the rule and less the exception.

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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by Muffinman » 03 Aug 2012 14:18

Parkourists must be in a similar position as us -- not a ton of athletes around the world. Although I guess they have an advantage in that I assume the tricks they do are similar to tricks that are already in gymnastics events?

Admirable sentiment from Storm Freerun:
"With a lot of attention on the English capital this Summer for the Olympics there are a few athletes from London that get overlooked."
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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by Jeremy » 03 Aug 2012 19:52

Eskimo Joe wrote:Footbag will need 50 countries that play, all with a national system, of which, 35 have to have women that compete. This is not going to happen anytime soon. Canada doesnt have a "Nationals". This is the most important part in all this. We need the IFPA to have representatives in at least 50 countries with 50 seperate "Nationals", judged by IFPA trained and recognized judges. There needs to be a huge shift in support for the IFPA. Every Jam, every tourney needs to be iFPA sanctioned. It seems that net if way further ahead of freestyle, and I would see Net making the olympisc before freestyle. There are so many organizzed events of net vs freestyle.

Also, the standardization of rules needs to happen. There has to be one set of move names. Is Jobs good? I think it has a ton of potential and is really close to being what we need to roll out to all 50 National events. It is deffinately something that can be put in judges rule book material along with the rules listed on .org
I agree completely with your first paragraph, and for a long time was very motivated to try to make that happen, but found the task too difficult.

On your second paragraph though, I think there are standard rules, being the IFPA rules (although some refinement would be useful). What there really needs to be is a well organised team of active people, preferably highly experienced past competitors, who could run the IFC in a manner that ensured that all IFPA competitions followed the same rules (without exception, except on unavoidable technical issues), and could make judgements on issues arising that aren't covered within the scope of the written rule. For that to happen, people who have made the finals at worlds on numerous occasions and have had a long involvement with the sport at an international level really need to put their hand up and make a commitment to be able to spend a few hours a week, every week if necessary, doing that. As happy and willing as other people (such as myself) would be to do that, that's a far from ideal situation.

On move names and Jobs though, that's necessary. Neither of those are part of any of the judging systems used at worlds. While standardisation would be generally helpful for the sport (at least in my opinion), it's not necessary for getting footbag into the Olympics.

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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by boyle » 06 Aug 2012 18:16

I think that footbag is a long way off being an Olympic sport - in terms of running out of space for sports, they are generally dropping a couple of sports and adding some new ones in at each games. Golf and Rugby Sevens will be the new sports for Brazil. I'm not sure what went in or out for these games (maybe nothing). I know that softball and maybe baseball were dropped from the program.

The first thing to do is to have footbag players everywhere. Large parts of the world are really untapped markets. Before thinking about the Olympics, we should be looking at smaller multisport games, and growing the sport in general. I don't really think footbag is quite ready for the Olympics, and it probably never will be.

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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by Jeremy » 06 Aug 2012 22:41

One of the goals of the IFPA is to have footbag recognised as a sport by the IOC, which is a necessary first step to getting to the Olympics, but I think also a good goal regardless of whether it ever becomes an olympic sport.

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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by boyle » 07 Aug 2012 12:08

Definitely - there are plenty of sports recognised by the IOC that will never be in the Olympics. This is also a condition in a lot of sports to get funding from the national government.

How can people help to push that goal along?

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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by xsisbest » 10 Aug 2012 23:45

money talks....
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Re: Why Footbag should be in the Olympics

Post by g00d33 » 11 Aug 2012 17:54

As awesome as it would be, I just don't see it happening anywhere in the near future. Routines are supposed to be the main thing of the sport, but they're the least regulated in a sense. Our routines are simply just not technical enough. I don't mean difficulty of tricks, but our judging system isn't what it needs to be. It's not nearly strict enough if you want to compare it to a gymnastics floor routine.

On that Facebook conversation that got over like 80 comments, one of the things discussed was how boring it is that every routine has two bag juggling and mini toe stalls. While I agree that it's a bit boring to see that every time, I think it's absolutely necessary. Different areas of gymnastics all require certain soil requirements be satisfied, and I think we would need to go something along that route to even get routines remotely ready. Form will have to be something heavily addressed if the time were to come as well. Every routine will need to be similar to some degree just because that's what the world is used to and expects to see.

I think stuff like sick 3 and shred 30 are much easier to have for something like this. Circle might be easier to do than routines, but I think it's still iffier than routines.

Don't get me wrong, I would love for footbag to hit the Olympics, but our system, unfortunately, is just so flawed.
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