Sunday, September 23, 2007

Doin' Whatever a Spider-Pig Can Do

I had to put in a quick note on the genius of a Mixed Nats team having the name ‘Spiderpig’.

Spiderpig, if you missed it, is a gag from the recent Simpson’s movie.

One of the things that’s always make Ultimate more fun for me has been the fluidity of teams and clubs. Other sports have this view of 'eternity' with regards their team names. Once you're the UQ Shaggy Dogs, you're the UQ Shaggy Dogs forever and so forth. (I'm leaving aside the professional end of sport, where names are tied into marketing and all).

Ultimate hasn't ever swung that way, although some people are trying, perhaps in an attempt to emulate traditional sports (I'm thinking Chilly, Wildcard and Fakulti here).

Fortunately*, Mixed Nats remains a bit of an old school event where team names largely exist for a season or maybe two and then die off.

But the coolest thing, and the reason I mention Spiderpig? Its very very cool when Ultimate frisbee team** names when reflect the pop culture of the time. Remember Canberra's 'Unrepresentative Swill'? Genius. Sydney's 'Powdered Toastmen'. Ultrastar Wars / The Empire Strikes Backhand / Return of the Redeye. I'm sure there are many more (hello comments) but its early in the morning for me.

* I'll leave the goodness or illness of the distinctiveness of Mixed Nats as a topic for another day, although the 'fortunately' rather than 'unfortunately' should leave my views out there.

** And tournaments - I always loved SA's "Footprint of God" tournament name.

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