Recently I had the privilege of attending the U.S. Open. No, not the tennis tournament, but a tournament checkpoint of the USA Ultimate season. Ultimate...FRISBEE, that is... (Well, we prefer disc.) I say "we" now, when I used to say "they." That is a story reserved for a later time. . .

Here’s what happened: I met the ESPN reporter who has been covering our developing American Ultimate Disc League and following its games. (My team is one of the Original 8 founding teams.) Evan Lepler, a fine-tuned broadcast machine, boasted one of the biggest smiles AND posed one of the most challenging questions I have had to face: "How is your season going in Detroit, well, aside from the losses...?" Punch to the gut, fall to the canvas. Yet, like every prize fighter who ever earned serious hardware, I had to assess the damage, get back up, hands up, and deliver my hard-hitting response: "Great, thank you for asking! We are having a winning season, just not on the field." My statement was a gut reaction, but after it left my lips, I knew I couldn’t be more correct.

Stop the press...how can you win OFF of the field in sports?

You see, over the last 20+ years of being an award-winning entrepreneur and sales artist, I learned a very valuable lesson that I would like to share: The world is divided by, based on, and ranked by two primary concepts: production and consumption. Neither is inherently good or bad, rather they depend on the context.

For instance, my sports team, the Detroit Mechanix (DMX), is producing fewer points than the other teams we have been playing, resulting of course in losses and low standings. Because this is not the goal of sports, you might see this as a negative. Yet the team has produced a quality business environment worthy of an all-state Economic Achievement Award by CORP! Magazine, the first of our organizations to garner this distinction.

How did we achieve this?

DMX consistently reaches out to the community, partnering with groups like Habitat for Humanity, the Humane Society, homeless shelters, and veterans groups. Since 2010, we have serviced countless schools, youth groups, camps, and clinics. We broadcast games with quality production values viewable for free on the internet to inspire future athletes and spread visibility of the sport. Our first year was spent on the turf of the Silverdome, which stands as the only professional venue for a full season in our sport. With the first dance team, mascot, women referees, and even the first woman general manager, we provide equal opportunity within the Ultimate community. This wasn’t just our vision, it was our course of action.

What’s more, we have an international reach: bringing in and housing athletes from as far away as Austria, Denmark, Japan, and Colombia. We have created a healthy digital awareness through 20,000+ social media followers, and have stimulated economic growth via merchandise sales, primarily produced in the U.S.

Through DMX, I have had the privilege of developing business partners and have provided opportunities for dozens of interns and volunteers to express their passion for the sport locally and with robust enthusiasm.

Yet I am even more proud of the training techniques we have put in place to ensure the safety of our athletes. The result: Not a single DMX player has seen the inside of a hospital as a result of competition during the team’s five years of existence. Further, we are not shy about sharing our best practices to keep Ultimate players healthy on and off of the field, regardless of what city banner they represent.

In short, my sports team that is 0-12 as this article is written is anything but a loser. The impact that each gentleman athlete makes on the field is simply not the metric we use for win/loss.

Simply put, production is at an all-time high for our sport, and thus we are winning OFF the field, just not on it... yet.

Ultimate is gaining momentum in so many ways, and soon we hope to be on the plate for the Olympic Games. In the U.S. alone, a core group of about 1.5 million people play our sport, yet in some areas (like Michigan) it remains relatively unknown. We are working to change this, in a BIG way.

Now I know that a few out there might read this and say, "That's great, Brent, yet your team still sucks." To those people I say: A long time ago an obscure sport was introduced, and a team from Detroit was treated the same way, had similar results in competition, and was told that they were never going anywhere. It took them 10 years to win their first championship. That team is now arguably one of the largest and most identifiable sports teams and brand in history. We have adopted this story of your Detroit Red Wings; we are not done on the field yet... we just need time and your support to come to full potential.

In the meantime, we are planting the seeds and building the "machine" from the ground up, the right way. So how about it Michigan... are you strong enough to join us, GEAR UP and take the ultimate challenge?