Madcow Gets Mad After Oakland Skips Last Game Of Tourney

We got this email in our inbox after the weekend from Madcow’s Nate Botti. It is posted below, lightly edited.

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Madcow is attempting to get the word out about something that happened over the weekend while in Pittsburgh for a one-day round robin tournament.

Sadly it was one of the worst displays of spirit or sportsmanship that I personally have seen in my years playing Ultimate. Madcow, along with a few other teams, traveled to Pittsburgh on Saturday for a round robin. To preface this, it was a tournament put together and hosted by Oakland Ultimate to get every team a few extra sanctioned games in case any team thought they might be close to not getting their ten sanctioned games in. The schedule was set for pool play that would lead into a championship game between the two teams with the best record.

Well, after beating Zebra Mussels, losing to Oakland, and beating Dire Wolf, Madcow walked all of their stuff back over to the field where Oakland was playing. We were sitting in the shade as Oakland finished their game when three of their players came over to tell us that they were going to forfeit the last game of the day. Their reasoning: they were tired and didn’t have enough players. We counted at least 21 players fully cleated up and playing at the end of their previous game. Not to mention, it was THEIR tournament, and they had played three games (two of which were against significantly lesser opponents) and it was ONE DAY. It’s not like they were worried about saving legs for Sunday.

Madcow drove 4 hours from Columbus, not to mention the number of out of town players we have (Indianapolis, Louisville, Toledo, Cleveland, Cincinnati) that drove additional distances to get to Columbus before driving to Pittsburgh. We were invited to come to this in good faith that we were guaranteed four sanctioned games, two of which would be against a Nationals caliber team. EVEN if you’re tired and don’t have the legs for a last game, you would think they’d have the courtesy to give it a whirl. Run around a bit, even if they get killed, they at least held up their end of the bargain, because AFTER ALL they were the ones that invited everyone there. [Ed. note: Madcow did get credited for a forfeit win.]

My goal in writing this is not to be angry or hold a grudge, but to attempt to save other people time and money before ever trusting that this group of individuals would ever hold themselves to the same standards that most of the Ultimate community would.

It’s just a real bummer to see that this new ranking system has inspired these guys to find a whole new way of choosing winning over Spirit of the Game.

Oh, and they were so tired that they stayed up all night tweeting the scores of their whole team’s flip cup games, while we were sitting in our cars driving back to Columbus…. *(Not that I have any problems with flip cup)

UPDATE (8/23): Oakland responds to Skyd.