Stanford Qualifier aka B Team Nationals?

Running around on the B team circuit for the past 4 years has usually afforded me, and I assume most other B teamers, the luxury of spending less money on the season as well as a more flexible schedule. I say this coming from a program with an elite level A team that competes at the premiere tournaments and plans to attend Nationals every year, wherever it may be. The trade off is that the quality of play isn't as high and long term goals are far and few between.

That may change this year with Cultimate's packaging of the big three: Trouble, Centex, and Stanford into what we now know as The National College Ultimate Series (NCUS). Now that there is a recognized designation of the top tournaments in the country (as if most players didn't already consider these the best), everyone is clamoring to play in them, maybe not so much to earn points towards the "regular season" crown but to say that they compete at the top level by attending these tournaments. This in turn can bring in eager young recruits from high school who've been competing at ultimate and want to attend schools where they can play with the best.

Now Centex is invite only, so you have to be established or have everyone know that you're team is having one of those years. 24 teams are selected every year which includes on average, about 75% of the teams attending Nationals that year. The schedule is grueling, spread out over two days, with the championship game being the 8th for both teams.

Trouble in Vegas on the other hand offsets the mean average of tournament attendance by lengths and bounds, and because it is still technically an open tournament where anyone can attend (anyone still can attend, but not at the risk of rejecting the bids of elite teams) the tournament spreads the gamut of talent from the cream of the cream down to sub mediocre local college teams. The barrier is that, the tournament is a tiered system, so lower teams have a chance for upward mobility but the reality is that the seedings are a good measurement of where most will end up finishing. The tournament is still a great experience even for the less talented teams and offers everyone a chance to play someone else outside of their region.

This leaves the Stanford Invite, one of the longest traditionally elite tournaments on the college circuit. My knowledge of ultimate only goes a few years and my information beyond that is spotty at best, which makes writing about Centex (started in 2004) and Trouble (2006) easier. This tournament has been going on since at least the early 90's and possibly the 80's, and has catered the dominant play of the northwest and the old western regions. Typically this tournament has been modeled after Nationals the most, consisting of 16 teams and occasionally 20 teams with the majority in the Nationals picture. The thing about Stanford is that while the name says Invite, this means that while the organizers round up all of the west coast powerhouses, elite teams from the rest of the country are encouraged to submit bids to create geographical diversity.

The biggest key to this tournament for the less talented teams is the Stanford Qualifier. The Stanford Invite every year takes the winner from this 16 or 20 team tournament into their elite field. Consisting of west coast B teams and "mid major" teams like UCLA, Whitman, Chico, etc. the tournament is a great event for these up and comers to get some quality experience with a great prize.

So now that I've rambled through trying to convey the idea of an exclusive Centex, a wide open Trouble, and an upper middle-class Stanford Invite, where am I going with this? Well like I said, all kinds of teams are interested in playing in the newly formed NCUS and beyond Trouble, which is the easiest to obtain a bid, its hard to break into the elite ranks... except for Stanford because of the qualifier tournament. I've been monitoring the progress of submitted bids since the bid window opened this morning and I'm blown away by some of the teams who want to play in this tournament. The biggest change is the interest in far away B teams, usually considered among the best in the nation. I think Stanford B has the formality of not having to submit a bid, so along with them Cal B, Oregon B, and Texas B have all submitted bids. Now I know the TD's won't make this a B team tournament but if all of those teams get bids as well as maybe some other top teams like UBC B, UCSB B, or Colorado B, this could be as close to a B team national tournament as anyone is going to see.