From the sport’s beginning in the late 1960s, Ultimate has struggled to be taken seriously. Ultimate can’t seem to shake the perception (fair or not) that it’s a game people ought to play in Birkenstocks rather than cleats. In reality, Ultimate is one of the fastest growing competitive sports in the United States.[1] As it grows in popularity, its perceived legitimacy grows too. Adding refs would ostensibly make the on-field “product” more uniform, among other things, leading to more perceived legitimacy and, in this feedback loop, further growth. The problem is that refs (along with coaches, to a certain degree) would remove “the responsibility for fair play” from the player, undercutting the importance of Spirit. In other words, the sport’s continued march toward seriousness would undermine its defining principles.