Bill Nye is widely known for his television show “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” his advocacy for science education, and his books about science for children and adults. Less well-known is Nye’s lifelong passion for the sports of Ultimate (also known as Ultimate Frisbee) and Disc Golf (or Frisbee golf).

As a child, Nye threw an early Wham-O disc, the “Pluto Platter Flying Saucer,” with his brother, and played “frisbee football” growing up in Washington DC. In 1973, during his first year at Cornell University, he joined the school’s newly founded Ultimate frisbee team, the Cornell Buds. When Nye graduated in 1977 and moved to Seattle, he continued playing by co-founding the city’s first men’s Ultimate team, the Olympic Windjammers, and serving as team captain. Bill Nye is an investor in the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL), now the Ultimate Frisbee Association, a professional Ultimate league in North America founded in 2012. As of 2024, Nye continues to promote and participate in Ultimate Frisbee and Disc Golf as both a fan and a player.

As the team captain and devotee of the sport, Nye looked for ways to use the Seattle Olympic Windjammers to promote the team and the sport of Ultimate. In this letter to Don Anderson of the Seattle Seahawks Public Relations, Nye offers the Olympic Windjammers Ultimate team to perform at Seahawks games, having successfully done the same for Seattle Sounders games. Nye notes the similarities to football--"A completed pass from a player on the main field to a player in the end zone scores a goal"--as well as the differences--"it is played with a flying disc rather than an oblate spheroid."

Caption information source: "Bill Nye, the Frisbee Guy" by Joe Wilensky, retrieved from Cornell University website at https://alumni.cornell.edu/cornellians/nye-frisbee/
Caption information source: "12 Things You Didn’t Know About Bill Nye, The Ultimate Guy" by Tiina Booth, retrieved from Ultiworld website at https://ultiworld.com/2014/08/26/12-things-didnt-know-bill-nye-ultimate-guy/