World Ranking System

[Senor Grommet]

Why does freestyle footbag not have a world ranking system in place?

I think there are many arguments FOR having a world ranking, some of which I'll list below:
-increases player motivation to improve
-aids in seeding players at tournaments
-would encourage more players to compete; only through competing at events could ranking points be earned
-would help distinguish IFPA sanctioned events from those not sanctioned because world ranking points could only be earned at sanctioned events
-could increase attendance at sanctioned events
-would increase likelihood of events applying for IFPA sanctioning
-would add legitimacy to a player's claim of being "good" at his/her sport in eyes of media and potential sponsors

What do you think?

[Jeremy]

To answer your first question - I think the reason is that nobody has ever volunteered to work one out, and then stuck at it long enough to see it come to fruition. It's definitely a good idea. Fairly difficult to work out the details though - especially to negate biases towards places that have more regular competitions - ie. Europe, while still maintaining accuracy.

[Tsiangkun]

This is probably completely false, but I imagine it is because the IFC hasn't gotten around to writing up how such a system would work, thus there is no methods or framework the IFPA can sanction for such purposes. I suppose somebody could propose something, like the xdex concept was proposed, and eventually it could become a real part of the game.

The idea is great, but I don't see how it could possibly be implemented in a way that can be recognized by the IFPA. The players will have to develop something on their own, realistically, and then the official part of footbag can sign off on it once it become popular.

Jeremy has a good point too, perhaps a solution is to limit the number of events which count towards the ranking, so that people can travel to them if they are serious players.

Maybe the Like Water crowd will put together a proposal.

[Sporatical_Distractions]

would ranking points be based on how many tourneys you go to?

such as someone who attends every event under the sun having more ranking points than someone who only attends one or two a year?

[Asmus]

This is being discussed on LikeWater.

Michal Biarda is (or was) working on a proposal.

I think this is a really good idea mainly because of two things:
- Ranking at tournaments will be easier and make more sense.
- It would give intermediate competition a legit reason for existing:
Those who are not yet ready to win or loose points - can play in a league where there is no points at risk.
People doesn't have to wait till they get good enough to win points to try the competition formats.
(points to the ranking system)

[Jeremy]

No matter what you concluded, it would have no impact on whether there is an overall champion or not. Only the IFPA or the IFC could make such a decision. If you decided there should be an overall champion you'd then have to write a submission and convince either the WOC, BoD or IFC-Freestyle of your case (or possibly the tournament/freestyle director at each world championships. Rather excessively bureaucratic in my opinion.

What I wrote about overall champion, but just as applicable here. If you want Like Water to actually gain credibility by putting out anything useful, you really should think about the procedures necessary to make the ideas a reality otherwise you're probably directing your efforts in the wrong direction.

There have actually been a series of discussions on this issue in the IFC (or possibly the board of directors - I don't recall), and some vague ideas floated that were "tested" by seeing how results matched up with where the people would have been seeded (obviously I didn't expect the results to be exactly as ranked). Although the project has died a bit - there's already a lot of work done, and a number of ideas thought about and rejected. If you go down the path of the rejected ideas, or don't take into account what's already been discussed, you're probably wasting your time. This is another idea where the best approach would be to start by going to the IFC or the board of directors and saying; "what do you think about this idea, what's been done, what needs to be done?" Otherwise it's going to be another topic like the overall champion where putting out the results of your discussion doesn't effect anything.

[Senor Grommet]

There is already a fairly good world ranking system being employed in the net world, which has full IFPA/IFC backing. It has been around for a while now.

It takes into account a player's top 4 tourney finishes each year, plus results from the past 3 Worlds', with disproportionately more weight being given to the most recent Worlds.

[crazylegs32]

It sounds like a good Idea to me. It may encourage people to enter in events.
Waaay back in the day there were 4 major us regional events. East coast, midwests, westerns, and some other one? IF you won one in either open or intermediate you got free entry to worlds. That was a nice system to encourage better players to make it to worlds also.
Edit-Jeremy said "would encourage more players to compete; only through competing at events could ranking points be earned" Thats a great point, we need more people to compete. And if you do good in one event thats great incentive to make it to more.