My favourite frisbee quotes both come from the same man, Stancil Johnson.
According to Wikipedia, Stancil Johnson is a psychiatrist and frisbee enthusiast, a member of the International Frisbee Hall of Fame and the Disc Golf Hall of Fame, and in 1975, he wrote Frisbee: Practitioner’s Manual and Definitive Treatise.
I own 2 copies of that book and it’s amazing how detailed the book is and how not much has changed in the 30+ years since he wrote it.
The first quote I just love because, unlike a ball, a frisbee doesn’t have a predictable flight path. Since it behaves like a wing and can glide and float depending on the wind and can fly with a curved flight path depending on which hyzer you have on the disc, a ball really would dream it was a frisbee.
When a ball dreams, it dreams it’s a frisbee.
The second quote is great because it’s less about the object itself and all about the connection between us and the frisbee. From all the time I’ve spent throwing, I can honestly say that there is no better feeling than watching a frisbee fly into the air. It’s truly incredible everything you can do with it. To know that I can throw the frisbee 2 football fields or I can throw it up into the air and have it come back to me and it all depends on a few variables, that will never cease to amaze me.
Frisbee joins Man’s greatest tool, his hand, with his greatest dream, to fly.
As an honourable mention, I provide you with this dialogue from an episode of Family Guy (The King is Dead, Season: 2 Episode: 7):
Peter: Mr. Weed said whoever comes up with the best idea for the big Christmas toy gets a huge bonus!
Chris: Why don’t you invent the Frisbee, dad? That’s an awesome toy!
Meg: The Frisbee’s already been invented.
Chris: Then how come I’ve never heard of it?
Indeed I see this wherever I go – there are still a lot of people who either haven’t heard of frisbee or haven’t seen or played it before.
Why is that?
I think it comes down to marketing. Sports like football, hockey and basketball are well known because there are millions of dollars being spent on advertising, there are pro leagues and thousands of pro athletes. Frisbee doesn’t have that to our benefit and instead we grow it still at a grassroots level. I had the pleasure of interviewing John Kirkland in Fort Collins at the 2011 WFDF World Overall Flying Disc Championships and he made the point that because of the way our society works, if you put money into something, it will work.
We’ve seen that with pro sports and so why, although frisbee is inherently different on the most basic level (comparing the frisbee to a football or baseball), is it still not as big as the other sports? We just need the right people driving the growth of the sport but I think that is happening in the US with USA Ultimate and Tom Crawford. I think the approach they’re taking is good by getting kids to start playing when they start in school so by the time they hit high school, they will want to play frisbee (ultimate, disc golf, ddc, etc). Ultimate is becoming huge at the college level as well which will help grow the sport in the next 5-10 years.
From my own experience playing all sports, none of them compare to frisbee.
Not even close.
And it’s because of the frisbee that it’s different.
Flat out truth! http://bit.ly/aKdTXJ
do we need frisbee to be a commercial sport like basketball, soccer, baseball? If money is involved, certain aspects of the game will disappear. Like if the difference of winning a game and losing a game means a bonus of 10.000 dollar, a pro could consider to make a bad call in his team’s advantage… I think SOTG is the first thing that would suffer from it. We might say that ultimate players are all about integrity-> watch it fade when money comes in.
@ErwinVanLooy I’ve already seen SOTG suffer when the game is on the line so I don’t think adding money into the equation will make that any different.I think at the core, having officials who are impartial is something that needs to happen at the high levels. Line calls CANNOT be left to the players on the field. It’s either in or out – that should NOT be a judgement call. Players making foul calls on each other is all about judgement. If I consider something a foul and someone else doesn’t, then they contest. If I make a bad call and is clearly cheating, my team should step in and make me detract that call (that is SOTG).