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Posted 11/7/2008

UPA STATEMENT REGARDING SANCTIONS AGAINST DOUBLEWIDE FOR THE USE OF AN UNROSTERED PLAYER IN THE 2009 CLUB SERIES

On Monday, Oct. 20, 2008 it came to the attention of UPA Series administration that the Open Division team Doublewide had participated in the 2008 UPA Championship Series (sectionals and regionals) with a player who was not on their Series roster.

The following sections of the Club Series Guidelines deal specifically with this situation:
General Team Info
3a - Rosters must be finalized, via the online rostering system, by the Tuesday prior to a team's sectional tournament.
7 - Rosters are closed once the Roster Deadline has passed, and no players can be added to a roster for the remainder of the Series.
8 - Failure to abide by any of the above rules may result in ramifications outlined in the "Violations and Sanctions" section of these guidelines.
General Player Info
1 -  All teams must submit their roster through the online rostering system by the deadlines outlined below. UPA membership dues and individual waivers must also be submitted prior to participation in Sectionals.

The Competition Committee (National Division Directors and Championship Series staff) discussed the case in depth throughout the week and came to the following decision:

"The team will be permitted to continue competing in the 2008 Series. However, the un-rostered player (Neal Riley) and the team captain/organizer (Mike Natenberg), responsible for submitting the team's roster, will not be permitted to play at the UPA Club Championships."

The team appealed this decision to the UPA Board of Directors, as is permitted under the association’s bylaws. The Board reviewed the case, the appeal, and the decision, and voted to modify the administration’s decision. The board kept in place the suspension of Neal Riley from the 2008 Club Championships but modified Mike Natenberg’s suspension to the first day of competition.  Per the bylaws, the Board’s decision on the appeal is final.

Further details about the UPA's decision(s) and the rationale for them are outlined below.

The UPA works very hard to ensure that we put on a fair and legitimized competition structure. Part of that entails making rules and sticking to those rules. Although in any individual case we may very much want to bend the rules, this would have an adverse effect on the quality of the competitive series overall.

Each year, players are not able to play in the Club Series because they are not added to a roster prior to the registration deadline. This deadline is published in February and is widely promoted through announcements on the UPA website, direct emails to players and captains, and through UPA coordinators. It would be unfair and inconsistent for the UPA to knowingly allow a player who was not on a roster to participate in the Series, given that many other players are not able to be added to rosters after the registration deadline. Certainly the player in question (Neal Riley), despite having played at sectionals and regionals in violation of the rostering rules, deserves no different treatment than the other players who were in his same situation but realized their error early and were not allowed to play. This is not meant to be a "punishment" to the unrostered player (although it is understandably felt as such), it is simply the outcome of abiding by our competition rules in order to ensure for fair and unbiased competition. For these reasons, the board upholds the decision of the Competition Committee to disqualify the unrostered player.

The Series Guidelines clearly permit the disqualification of the team as a potential penalty for teams that violate Series rules. In fact, teams have been disqualified for roster violations in the past. However, in this particular case it was established that the violation (playing with an un-rostered player) was the result of an administrative mistake on the part of the team, not a purposeful attempt to deceive. In light of this information, the Competition Committee decided against disqualifying the team.

However, in addition to not permitting the un-rostered player to participate further in the Series, an additional penalty was deemed necessary for the team. Otherwise, an incentive would exist for teams to compete with un-rostered players until they got caught, knowing that at worst they would lose only that player. Incentives and disincentives must exist so that teams take care to follow registration procedures so that the Series can be organized fairly and consistently.

The Competition Committee determined that a lesser penalty would be applied to the team through sanctioning of its team organizer, who was not only the person directly responsible for the mistake, but who had actively acknowledged that he had read and understood the Club Series Guidelines. Individuals who create a roster for the Club Series are required to check a box, prior to creating their roster, to confirm they have read and understand the Series Guidelines. While all players are also responsible for knowing and following the guidelines, in this case, particular responsibility can be placed on the team organizer en lieu of the team as a whole. For these reasons, the board upholds the decision of the Competition Committee to sanction the team organizer.

Competition-based penalties (e.g. forfeiture of certain games or inability to advance in the tournament) have been deemed inappropriate because of their adverse effect on the fairness and integrity of the competition. Administrative-based penalties (e.g. fines) have been deemed inappropriate because of the potential for teams to buy their way around rules, and because such an approach creates an unequal burden or advantage to players/teams based on their financial status. The alternative "penalties" suggested by the team captain (e.g. volunteering to be sectional/regionals coordinators, etc) were not deemed to be sufficient deterents for future infractions.

Althought the Competition Committee had determined that the team captain should be disqualified for the entire Club Championships, in line with precedent from a very similar case that occurred last year with Ambush, the board has decided to reduce this penalty to a one day disqualification for the first day of the Club Championships. The board felt that a full tournament disqualification was indeed too severe a penalty for an honest mistake, and that a one day disqualification was a severe enough penalty to act as a disincentive for future cases. The board will be discussing this issue in much greater detail at the upcoming UPA board meeting in order to ensure that the UPA administration has greater guidance from the board on how to address situations like these in the future. The board takes full responsibility on having failed to give that guidance to the administration after last year's ruling (which we upheld, thereby giving implicit endorsement of the ruling to the Competition Committee), and apologizes both to the administration and to our membership for that failing.

One of the main concerns of the board in this case was that a precedent had been set last year for a nearly identical case in the women's division, and that reducing the sanction in this case would give the appearance of a double standard being applied to the open and women's divisions. However, after soliciting and receiving feedback from most of the captains of the women's division (including the captains of Ambush) encouraging us to reduce the penalty, the board came to the decision that it was more important to rule according to what we believed would give us the right outcome, than to rule based solely on the need for parity and upholding precedent. Last year the board had much less time to rule on the Ambush decision, since we did not receive the appeal until just before the start of the tournament, and therefore felt that we did not have the time to deliberate fully and solicit appropriate feedback from our constituents. Therefore we were reluctant to modify a decision made by a body that had spent a significant amount of time deliberating before reaching a decision. This year we have had more time and therefore feel that we understand the ramifications better and are better equipped to modify the competition committee's ruling.

Although the UPA takes many steps to try to inform players of the rules and regulations, in the end the responsibility to know and abide by those rules rests with the players themselves. The UPA is continually striving to improve our system though, and is open to feedback on ways to ensure that this does not happen again in the future. This specific issue will also be discussed in much greater detail at the upcoming UPA board meeting in order to address some of the problems of disparity between enforcement for top and lower level teams.

The board is sorry that this situation occurred, particularly in light of the time, effort, and excitement we know goes into playing in the Series. Although we truly sympathize with how disappointing this must be to all involved, we believe it is necessary for there to be repercussions when the rules are not followed. Otherwise, the rules become merely suggestions. We hope that this experience will help the players understand the need for the rules that are in place and the need to follow those rules carefully. We also hope that the decision of the committee will serve to further strengthen the legitimacy of the UPA Championship Series as the world's premier competitive Ultimate competition.

UPA Board of Directors