Alright...
I stopped watching this thread for a bit, then notice it's gotten to 7 pages. So if I missed something someone said, it's because I just skimmed.
But some thoughts.
I don't believe that X-Ball is a closed circle. If it were, I wouldn't have 12 college teams going to cup to play on someone else's dime. I can guarantee you that NONE of them are on the inside of whatever circle you're talking about. They're not there because they know somebody, hell, there not even there because they play as well as other teams who could have played instead.
They're there because they bring value to the games. They bring it in their team names, they bring it in their personal backgrounds, they bring it in their demographic, they bring it in their sportsmanship.
I don't mean to act like I'm patting my back here or anything, but college paintball walks the walk, and has done so for years. All the problems everyone says the paintball needs to fix to be taken seriously we've already fixed. We have a league in the firm control of the players (so much so that I narrowly escaped not getting reelected a couple weeks ago
) set up as it's own non-profit corporation. We have some very nasty rules covering the behavior problems common in other circuits, and we ENFORCE them. Our reffing is done by people who don't play in the league. We're so used to not having any money but playing inexpensively anyway that it's really easy for us to pass up money that demands we take the league in the wrong direction. We bridge the recreational-tournament divide much better than any other tournament league out there - 70% of our members are actually rec players. Rec players like us.
Granted, no one really knows about any of this, as we've been under the radar for quite some time. That's probably not such a bad thing, because it's left us free to do the right thing without worrying about too much sponsor pressure (Props to AKA for being with us from the beginning and pushing the same ideals we do).
So while everyone else has been out focussed on winning and paintball market share and everything else which inhibits the change paintball needs to make, from day one we've been cultivating a product.
And make no mistake, when you're dealing with TV, you're really dealing with providing a product. I think X-Ball may be the format our product gets to TV with. If it is, the people who get to play are going to be the people who make the best product. That's not the people on the inside of a particular circle, and it's not even necessarily the best players. It's the group of people who are going to make advertisers pay the most to buy the commercials, make fans buy the most hats and tshirts, make sponsors shell out the most for endorsements. In the end, market forces will prevail.
So what does that mean for paintball? Hopefully more players, meaning more advertising dollars, and maybe another half cent drop in per-ball paint prices. Pros will probably play X-Ball, maybe each college will have one xball squad, and maybe there will be some amatuer level X-Ball leagues. Really, playing an X-Ball game isn't any different than playing a NPPL event expense wise, you just need to set your league up so you there's only 8 teams in the league and you play your games over the course of a year. Just have to get rid of paintball's silly notion that any group of players who can pay the entry fee should be able to play any tournament and start picking teams before the season starts.
For everyone else who can't make X-Ball work financially, centerflag will remain supreme - which is fine. X-Ball is essentially repeated centerflag, so it's not much of a hop from playing regular old centerflag in high school and college or in regional/national amatuer leagues to X-Ball. NPPL/PSP isn't going to go away, it'll just become the gateway to playing in the X-Ball pros; the pool the top new talent rises to the surface of where it is then plucked out for the next level. Think of it like moving from teeball to 9 inning baseball. The rules for a sport are rarely the same at all levels.
Not to mention the droves of players who are still going to go out to scenario games or play woodsball every weekend. That's the coolest thing about paintball - it's fun the first time you play. I've tried skateboarding, snow boarding, roller blading - and I never enjoyed any of them and quit before I was good enough to enjoy them. I was hooked on piantball from day one. So if kids see paintball on TV, and head out to their local field and just run around in the woods, they'll still have a good time, maybe they'll try tournaments later, and hopefully they'll watch us on TV again. Maybe they'll even shell out $10 to come see a tournament.
Anyway, point of the matter is X-Ball on TV isn't going to ruin paintball as it is, it's just going to add another level on top of everything we have now. Nothing wrong with the sport growing UP. It's really about time for a new, higher level anyway.
- Chris