Friday, January 14, 2011

Hall of Fame

This will be short.

1. Congratulations to all the inductees, but especially to old teammate Jeremy Seeger. Seeger was phenomenal in so many ways. He was the best I saw at reading the disc, was a great disc-catcher, had superb throwing form, and was versatile enough to play anywhere on the field, in addition to the normal great qualities you'd expect in a Hall of Famer.

2. Dobyns should be in the Hall already. The few teammates of mine that have offered an opinion to me agree. I understand why there is debate and agree that negative spirit/sportsmanship/cheating/whatever could be enough to push someone below the qualifying line, but my opinion is that his impact was so great that any reasonable evaluation of his negatives would be outweighed.

3 comments:

Phil Price said...

Wait a minute, Dobyns didn't make it this year either? Boy. Either there is something wrong with the judges, or they think they know something the rest of us don't. Based on what I think I know, he should easily be in.

No need to go over this again, it's been beaten to death on Dobyns' blog.

#28 said...

I don't know Ken Dobyns and am much too young to have felt his influence, so let me ask: What _was_ his impact? He's certainly got a legacy, if that's what you mean. The NYNY titles speak for themselves and by all accounts, KD was the heart of NYNY's success. Is that impact, though? Isn't a player like Mike Gerics more impactful, by bringing about things like UOA, or similarly Michelle Ng and her work on Without Limits?

I guess what I'm asking is how did KD have an impact, rather than just incredible success (which is not to be discounted in HoF discussions, of course)?

parinella said...

I mostly meant it as on-field success plus how much other teams had to plan their defenses around him. The team's success with their four-person play led to that strategy becoming the standard way to start the offense (when I started playing, on the line we simply called handlers, middles and deeps).

The impact of those others would be for candidates in the Contributor category. To date, Contributors have been founders or others without whom the UPA/USAU might not exist, but there is certainly room for organizers, coaches, or other innovators. In due time, of course. Let's wait and see what the long-term impact of these or other programs are.