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TIME VS POINTS
The second issue of the UPA Newsletter, which appeared in June of 1980, dealt with the hot topic of whether games should be played to time or points. By this time, the Dark Star club team of Eugene, Oregon, was already experimenting with games played to a fixed number of points, instead of two 24-minute stopped-time halves. In the program for its Great Northwest Ultimate Classic in June 1980, Dark Star cited four advantages to points over time: “1) No timekeeper, no disputes; 2) Stalling to protect a lead no longer carries strategic value; 3) No chance to run up a point spread in the event of equal win-loss records; and 4) Reduces extraneous restriction of time. Less pressure, more fun.”
Sholom (Eric) Simon, on the other hand, argued in favor of time. He maintained that playing to points was unfair because one team’s game might last 45 minutes where another’s could take two hours. To this day, he hopes for a return to timed games.
In numerous articles at the time, Simon wrote: “The only thing more exciting than a one-point game is a one-point game with time running out. Time management adds a lot of excitement to a game, and tons more strategy. You might switch to a zone solely to eat up the clock, or switch to a man when the clock is running out. And clearly, your strategy, both on offense and defense, has to change when time is running out, whether ahead or behind.”
Simon also maintained that games to points favored offensive teams over defensive ones.
“The offensive teams get their games over with quickly,” he said years after the newsletter came out. “Defensive games can drag out. I thought that alone made it patently unfair.” He pointed to the opening game of the 1982 Nationals. Flying Circus, playing a game to points, lost a four-hour epic in a defensive-oriented game. Exhausted mentally and physically, the Circus lost the rest of their games.
When the 8th Edition rules came out in 1982, an option to play games to points or time was first included. That was the first set of rules printed by the UPA, instead of the IFA. The 8th Edition also formally lengthened the field from 60 to 70 yards, introduced the “marker” term and reset the stall from 15 seconds to 12.[1]
When the game officially changed from time to points, it had far-reaching implications. Andy Borinstein noted that his University of Pennsylvania team, and many other teams as well, changed their strategy of which side to choose if they won the flip at the beginning of the game.
“We figured that by choosing the downwind side, if you held serve, like in tennis, you’d win the match by a point by always scoring downwind, in case you didn’t score upwind,” he said. “We never chose to play ‘D’ or receive, we took the downwind side.
“We won a number of games this way over the course of my career by making that decision. This didn’t seem to matter in timed games due to the fact that there was no cap on scoring. But once a finite number was in place, it changed our whole orientation.”
[1] Irv Kalb introduced the term after he came across several books on soccer that used the term "marker" to describe the player defending the player with the ball.
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