Oh, he (and I) read your post as saying that com_maxfps couldn't go above 180, not that it can't be set to anything other than 180. That's even dumber.
I was about to call him an idiot too since if you're going to go above 125 you want 200 or 266 or 333, so far as choosing numbers that aid trickjumping, which is fairly important in high-level play. 180 is a crappy number for that, among the more important problem that it'll be terrible for people with poor systems.