Nick,
It sounds like you're assuming that you can correctly identify every professional player, and thus can prevent pros from playing in the lower divisions. No offense but I think you're wrong about that.
Sure it's easy to spot them now - they're wearing their nice pro uniforms. What happens when they try to blend in or hide their identity so they can play? The NPPL had significant problems tracking NXL players when they first locked the pro ranks. The APPA rosters makes it a little easier to track the NXL players (still not 100%), but how do you prove someone is an NPPL pro? NPPL doesn't have online rosters. Do you know every player on every professional team, or are you just going to take someone's word that a player is a pro? Because if you start DQ'ing teams without some kind of proof, you're in for a bigger mess than just letting pros play in D1. Just the arguements alone are going to cause headaches ("he's a pro" "no, I'm not" "yes you are"...)
The second part of your argument is specious at best.
"Nothing is stopping that player from dropping to that level permanently - by making the team he is guesting for his permanent team - nobody would have a problem with that - and it happens all the time in every sport."
So if Ollie or Pete say "Bullets are our main team. We just guest with that Ironmen team", you'll have no problem with it? The way you describe it above just sounds like semantics to me - I can be a pro in one or two leagues as long as I say I'm a D1 player in Millenium?
As long as you have three seperate leagues with three seperate classification systems, you're going to have player crossover. If you allow it within set limitations (pros can only play D1, teams can only have 1 pro player, etc) you allow those who want to play to do so legally, while reducing the incentive to cheat.
Players want to play. It's their nature. Americans want to go to europe, and europeans want to go to the US. If you could play with no expenses or even get paid, you'd do it, rght? So the temptation is always going to be there. By managing that temptation in a legal direction, you avoid the temptation to cheat that a rigid, unenforcable rule creates.
It sounds like you're assuming that you can correctly identify every professional player, and thus can prevent pros from playing in the lower divisions. No offense but I think you're wrong about that.
Sure it's easy to spot them now - they're wearing their nice pro uniforms. What happens when they try to blend in or hide their identity so they can play? The NPPL had significant problems tracking NXL players when they first locked the pro ranks. The APPA rosters makes it a little easier to track the NXL players (still not 100%), but how do you prove someone is an NPPL pro? NPPL doesn't have online rosters. Do you know every player on every professional team, or are you just going to take someone's word that a player is a pro? Because if you start DQ'ing teams without some kind of proof, you're in for a bigger mess than just letting pros play in D1. Just the arguements alone are going to cause headaches ("he's a pro" "no, I'm not" "yes you are"...)
The second part of your argument is specious at best.
"Nothing is stopping that player from dropping to that level permanently - by making the team he is guesting for his permanent team - nobody would have a problem with that - and it happens all the time in every sport."
So if Ollie or Pete say "Bullets are our main team. We just guest with that Ironmen team", you'll have no problem with it? The way you describe it above just sounds like semantics to me - I can be a pro in one or two leagues as long as I say I'm a D1 player in Millenium?
As long as you have three seperate leagues with three seperate classification systems, you're going to have player crossover. If you allow it within set limitations (pros can only play D1, teams can only have 1 pro player, etc) you allow those who want to play to do so legally, while reducing the incentive to cheat.
Players want to play. It's their nature. Americans want to go to europe, and europeans want to go to the US. If you could play with no expenses or even get paid, you'd do it, rght? So the temptation is always going to be there. By managing that temptation in a legal direction, you avoid the temptation to cheat that a rigid, unenforcable rule creates.
