Frisbee, Scholastics and BYU
According to a recent New York Times article there is a strong correlation and perhaps even causation between a college’s ultimate frisbee team and their academics. Yes, I know all of you who were scoffing at football and academics being mentioned in the same breath. But ultimate frisbee?
I tried to find the graduation rate for BYU. The best I could find was a very large PDF about BYU’s accreditation. It claimed that of 1999 freshmen nearly 80% graduated. Yet, looking for information on BYU’s frisbee intermurals all I could find was this page. And it suggests there is at best only an informal frisbee team.
Is the key to improving BYU’s academics better frisbee correlation with the administration?
I would definitely agree that there needs to be more frisbee at BYU. There is a pretty formal team at BYU. Well, as formal as frisbee can be. The BYU frisbee team is recognized by the UPA which governs pretty much all of Ultimate Frisbee around the world. There is also a thriving city league that many BYU players participate in called Orem Ultimate.
This is all on top of intramurals. In fact, I would say that most ultimate players consider intramurals not real ultimate because of the crazy rules BYU intramurals makes up. Although, if you look at the top teams from the top divisions of intramural ultimate frisbee at BYU then you’ll see the past winners were people who played in Orem Ultimate. I know I played and won it all.
As far as graduation rate, I would say that it is higher. Every one of my friends that played ultimate have gone on to graduate. In fact, at the BYU ultimate frisbee reunion team they were all graduates.
Comment by BYU Sports — November 11, 2006 @ 10:04 am
A friend sent me a link about this study some time ago. Since I love frisbee Ultimate, I of course loved the article.
I was actually disappointed with the BYU re-design of the grounds between the library and JKHB, etc. since it disrupted flat grass fields that were quite excellent for frisbee tossing.
Comment by danithew — November 11, 2006 @ 10:09 am
“Ultimate” is fun, but why did they have to call it “ultimate?” It would be hard to think of a more absurd and embarrassing name for what is otherwise a very nice game.
Comment by ed johnson — November 11, 2006 @ 10:13 am
Kind of like “ultimate fighting championship” — kind of hard to find a more absurd and embarrassing name for what is otherwise kind of a dumb sport.
Comment by queuno — November 11, 2006 @ 10:30 am
Maybe. I saw the word “correlation” in your post and I got the dry heaves. Seems appropriate, though. Yeah, I’d say they ought to up the ultimate frisby in order to bolster academics. Why not.
Comment by David J — November 11, 2006 @ 11:01 am
Ultimate frisbee, in my experience, generally is a good thing. Those from our BYU intramural team have all graduated (or are really almost there by now). And about a quarter of the team have gone on to or are planning on advanced degrees.
I believe that my first child (boy or girl) would have been named Fourier if we hadn’t had ultimate around (the frisbee got the name instead). Yes, it is a very good thing.
Comment by Jenny W. — November 12, 2006 @ 12:00 am
BYU (why oh why does everything always have to involve BYU?) is ranked 89th.
My favorite Ultimate story from college was when Fred Savage showed up to play on the B team and quit after two weeks because he didn’t have the cash for cleats.
Comment by a random John — November 13, 2006 @ 11:19 am
Ultimate frisbee, if I understand it correctly, is a game for people who lacked interest in sports as children and youth, wish to become better developed adults, but find it too late to pick up basketball, soccer, baseball, or other real sports where all the other players have years of experience. It seems plausible that such people are generally better at academics. So promoting frisbee at a college could attract such people to the school or help them to thrive better once they are there. I doubt it would make the present students more studious, though.
Comment by John Mansfield — November 14, 2006 @ 2:40 pm
John Mansfield,
I would counter and say that because Ultimate is generally a club sport and gets very little support from the university in terms of coaching or funding that intelligent, well motivated students are more likely to be able to manage and coach themselves as a team. Imagine if a major college football program suddenly had no coaches and no funding, and the athletes were left to fend for themselves. Most programs would collapse in scandal in a matter of days.
I don’t think that you need to denigrate the sport in order to find reasons why it might correlate with academic success.
Comment by a random John — November 14, 2006 @ 6:17 pm