Is It Fair That A Quarterback Set The Record For Paper Airplane Tossing?

We'd seen the video of the world-record paper airplane toss — 226 feet, 10 inches.

What we didn't realize until reading this story in today's Wall Street Journal is that there's a controversy brewing among "paper-plane enthusiasts" over whether it was right for designer John Collins to have Joe Ayoob, a former University of California-Berkeley quarterback, do the record-breaking throwing back in February.

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Joe Ayoob (in red shirt) winding up for the record-breaking throw. Plane designer John Collins is behind him.

ThePaperAirplaneGuy

Joe Ayoob (in red shirt) winding up for the record-breaking throw. Plane designer John Collins is behind him.

ThePaperAirplaneGuy

"I reckon [Collins] should train up and do it himself," Dylan Parker, a paper-plane throwing competitor, told the Journal.

Former record holder Stephen Kreiger is also questioning whether it was right to bring in a designated thrower. "Competitive paper airplane flying had always been, in my mind, what can one person do with one piece of paper," he said to the newspaper. About using a ringer, Kreiger said: "I don't really think that's the spirit of the competition."

Ayoob doesn't buy such arguments. "We broke a world record," he said to the Journal. "If people want to try and hate on that, then that's all good."

This has us wondering:

By the way, there wouldn't seem to be any way Ayoob or any other ringer could toss the largest paper airplane ever built into the sky. After all, as the Los Angeles Times reported in March, it weighs 800 pounds.