I did not say there was a conspiracy. I said 2 things:
1) It looks bad when the league treats teams differently based on who their sponsor is. It's not a big deal - I doubt most people other than me would notice and many would argue (as you have) that the increased sponsorship justifies it. I think that's not an adequate justification and a dangerous slippery slope to be on, but that's my opinoin.
2) You engage in hypocracy where teams you sponsor, and the league you are affiliated with, are concerned. Specifically, if a team plays well in one league but not as well in another league, that team must be BETTER if they are winning in your league, and that teams that play better in the other league is immaterial as not convenient to your argument. Same logical argument, ignored when it doesn't work for you. As another example, you're quick to jump on XSV for being the dirtiest team in paintball when Rage uses exactly the same tactics. You then go on to say that I'm just using their rep from years prior, but I'm not. If I was going on that I'd say they were using physical violence. I am saying that Rage is not any better than XSV or 10 other Pro teams when it comes to taking every advantage they can get away with.
Now, I want to be clear that I don't think you're engaging in an intentional or unnatural level of hypocracy with regard to your teams/league. Everybody's got bias and it's natural to favor what you're familiar with and what's close to you. I'm not calling you names over it, but I'm not going to avoid calling you out on it either when it taints your arguments.
The only reason we're even talking about rage here is you're putting opinions on me that I don't even have, then making bad arguments to show those opinions are wrong. I said the best teams in the world play the NXL. Maybe I should have been more specific, but I didn't mean that the 16 teams in the NXL were the best 16 teams on the planet. And when you took issue with this, I made a comparison to NPPL to clarify - the bottom teams in NXL arn't the best in the world anymore than the bottom teams in NPPL are. There is clearly a gap between the top and bottom and some overlap and teams missing when you go back and forth.
You then went on to argue that since teams that play well in NXL don't play as well in NPPL and some NPPL teams don't play NXL that NPPL teams are better. This is just plain a logically bad argument - teams play in NPPL that play poorly in NXL. And teams not playing NXL doesn't mean anything - it's just as likely they'd do poorly in NXL as it is that they would do well.
"I do have to admit, however, to lacking some information"
This is uncharacteristicly honest for you.
It was uncharacteristically generous of me. The information I am lacking is whether the NXL teams that do not do as well in NPPL are even playing with the same players, or playing with their best players. The missing information would either going to confirm what we've been assuming or negate your entire argument, so the only argument being injured by the rosters not being available is mine. I think it's silly of you to take my generosity and throw it against me considering who is responsible for that information not being available and why that information is not available, and I'm going to let it go at that.
I am trying very hard to tread the fine line between providing relevant counter points to your arguments without engaging in mindlessly bashing things. There are much more convenient and sore spots to hit if we're going to engage in an all-out slander war, which you seem to be gearing up for in earnest when you bring out such informative arguments as 'he's a cocksucker'. I am going to decline the bait. Although you are probably not going to believe it, I respect the efforts and accomplishments of (at least most) of the people involved in 'your league'. I think YOU are even one of those people - despite the fact that we vocally and ferociously disagree on many items, there is no doubt that NPPL does some things better than anybody else in the industry and I'm pretty sure you're at least indirectly responsible for some or even many of those items.
I do think it is premature to consider Rage as great a team as you do, and I do think they are a team much better suited to 7-man than XBall, just as there are teams much better suited to XBall than 7-man. Two more events and we should know whether Rage is the Next Big Thing or is just another one of the teams that occasionally breaks into finals. I'd be happy to make a friendly wager as to which turns out to be the case.
I am aggressive. I am brutally honest, frequently unrefined, and very occasionally
mistaken. But don't expect me to roll over and play dead just because you throw a few names or threats at me. And if I am pissing you off, don't take my hard-nose pigheadedness about one issue (or even 10 issues) as a personal attack on everything you might like. It's not.
Baca... short response is sports are sports. Paintball doesn't exist in a vacuum where everything gets turned on it's head; principles that apply to advancing teams in football tournaments apply just as well to advancing teams in paintball tournaments. Tournaments are designed to accurately determine a winner, and to decreasing degrees of accuracy rank everyone else as you go down. We call 2nd place the team that loses the championship match, but it's entirely possible that the 3rd place team was better and just didn't get to prove it due to tournament structure, and it only gets worse from there.
If you are saying that the format change means there is less accuracy when ranking the 'middle of the pack' teams, you are right - but there wasn't much accuracy with the old way either, and the difference is minimal. Accurately ranking teams in the middle of the pack isn't an objective of the tournament, however; if it were, you wouldn't toss half the teams out after prelims, you'd make them play each other more.
Re: 'pretending' to be a pro team - I am not sure if you are arguing that the structure change is bad because players don't get as much play time. If you're not, then nevermind. If you are, my point is that the definition of 'professional' sports is 'sports for money', and if you are evaluating a tournament strucute based on how much you get to play vs. economically getting the prize money, you are not acting like a PROFESSIONAL sports team and, ergo, just pretending.
