Pros will play ONLY Pros
I agree that Pro's should perhaps not be playing the novice teams on the grounds of complete whitewash and the fact that at present it is on occasion that a pro team will get to play two Novice teams and most Pros only play one, thus giving one of the Pro teams a large points advantage in the prelims. However I believe that Ams and pro's should mix at the current rate i.e. Pros meet one/two am teams in the prelims, this gives the am teams a chance to prove themselves against the pros and perhaps give them an insight into what standard of play is expected of them at the next level giving them a bench mark to work towards. Not only that, it gives other people a chance to see if a particular Am team is kicking the pros butts thus people being able to recognize sandbaggers more openly.
I do think that Pro's just Playing Pros would harm the attendance of a tournament as a lot of teams go to the big events to test themselves at all levels of play. I think we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves if we think that the big events could cope with less teams and still survive, you say (someone did) that paintball is growing fast enough for this, I don’t think so, yes paintball is growing rapidly but lets not get ahead of ourselves the Millennium and the NPPL are the bench marks of paintball at the minute and to actively make these tournaments less attractive to the majority of teams would be suicide (not sure on the NPPL but the Millennium tournies normally have a massive majority of Novice teams compared to any other class. not only that, the trade shows and sponsors rely on the Am & Novice teams to buy their merchandise, most of the pros are sponsored and therefore don’t buy anything, the revenue from a tourny comes from the Ams & Novices.
- Pro teams will be forced to judge if the want to play the Series
It sounds good in theory but if you force someone to do a job then the results could be pretty bad marshalling. I think the best thing here is to push the PRO ref thing forward although I do appreciate this is some way off, with the reffing I think the tournament organizers should not only pay the Ultimate judge but have paid head refs on each field and it is there responsibility to control the level of marshalling on that field. Perhaps even spending a couple of hours with there allocated refs giving them pointers as to what is actually required, (again I see some floors).
- 5 rather than 4 results will count towards the Series title
I think this has to stay as your best four scores from five on the grounds that even some of the best teams cant afford to play all the events and this gives a fair way of all teams of what ever financial position to compete for the prizes.
-All prize money will go to the Pros and the Series title will again be worth some dough
Don’t agree with this, again the Am teams are normally pushing a tight budget to enter 4/5 of the events and for some teams the prize money is all that allows then to compete in as many events as they do…again you could be restricting the amount of teams who enter.
- Forced promotion of the best Amateurs
In an ideal world, I’d agree that perhaps the top 2 am teams are promoted to Pro but there are so many factors as to why teams don’t step up. i.e. Cash, The loss of players, sponsorship contracts, etc etc… Tricky one!!!
