Days of My Life: Whose NPPL am I sucking on?

[raehl]

I don't think it's run like an athletic event, but everyone else seems to, so given that, saying moms and kids won't like paintball because of the toilets or food is ridiculous, because they're exactly the facilities such people would expect, are used to, and accept elsewhere.

Real problems are properly trained, supervised and paid officials, trying to have open-participation sporting events, being unable to separate the playing of paintball from the commerce of paintball, lack of local area promotion, hostile separation of tournament and recreational players, lack of general industry marketing, etc. These are problems that plague the industry as a whole, not just PSP. From the ground up, paintball is done mostly wrong. We need to get into junior high and high schools and get kids playing early. We need to reach parents so they know playing paintball is OK. We need to make sure the average person knows what paintball is, even if they never play, so they think it's odd when their city council tries to ban sporting goods equipment.

People thinking that the primary use of a paintball gun is vandalism is what's preventing us from being a sport, not where and when Pete gets to pee at World Cup. The answer to how we make this sport grow and be accepted is not in the type and configuration of toilets at a tournament, even if the tournament ego would like to pretend that's true.


And Pete, sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming "I can't hear you! I can't hear you!" over and over again doesn't make the other guy's point go away.


- Chris

 

[Robbo]

Originally posted by raehl
And Pete, sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming "I can't hear you! I can't hear you!" over and over again doesn't make the other guy's point go away.
- Chris

Chris, it ain't my style to play ostrich, it also ain't my style to keep bothering with people like you, many other people (intelligent people) take issue with what you say, perhaps that should give you a clue as to what's going on !!!
I don't need your point to go away, I would rather it stand for posterity for all to see, that way I ain't gotta bother telling everybody !!!
Robbo

 

[raehl]

Originally posted by Wadidiz
Chris, I'll take a writing course if you will. Never quite learned Shakespeare's way: brevity is the soul of wit.

But overflowing Pete's buffer is just so much more fun.

Seriously though, you can't have teams ref, period. If giving points for (or even requiring) team reffing is your solution to the cost problem, your whole system is fundamentally broken, and no amount of supervision or accountability is going to overcome it.


- Chris

 

[Wadidiz]

Originally posted by raehl
But overflowing Pete's buffer is just so much more fun.

Seriously though, you can't have teams ref, period. If giving points for (or even requiring) team reffing is your solution to the cost problem, your whole system is fundamentally broken, and no amount of supervision or accountability is going to overcome it.


- Chris

Honestly speaking I do admire what I've read about "your" league and the possibilities it holds for the future. Colleges and universities in America could put together funding for paid refs if it ever caught on big enough. I say again, it would only work in America, so your not talking about anything very international here.

But you are miserably wrong about "you can't have teams ref, period". It used to work for NPPL, for the most part (when the players were more in control). WTF do you think Millennium has been doing for 3 years? Sometimes there are bad calls but it really works. Am I right or wrong, dear audience, those who have been to Mill events? (I know that Tony Big-Sky didn't like some of the reffing at Joy last summer.) Have you ever been to a Millennium event? An important element is the fact that their rules require 8 (count 'em) for 7-player games. Sure helps.

Can you suggest a model for the teams that can't afford X-Ball that is in the slightest way realistic? No, I didn't think so. All PRO refs next season would be prohibitively expensive unless I'm sadly mistaken. And you still after all the interchange haven't pointed out why my theories won't work that would only cost a marginal amount more.

So broken record stands off broken record.

Steve

 

[Buddha 3]

Originally posted by raehl
I don't think it's run like an athletic event, but everyone else seems to, so given that, saying moms and kids won't like paintball because of the toilets or food is ridiculous, because they're exactly the facilities such people would expect, are used to, and accept elsewhere.

I doubt the moms and kids and whatnots that showed up though they were going to an athletic event. They were going to a paintball event, and they knew it. That meant that they went over with all the prejudice that's already around for our sport. This means that people like that are very likely to focus on the negative, so when everything ain't spic and span, that's bad with a capital BAD. Don't forget, the vast majority of people that said that they were not too offended by the toilets are male. Would they have said the same if they had to pee sitting down?
And if you don't think that it's a regular athletic event (something we seem to agree upon), don't you think that the standards SHOULD be higher?

Originally posted by raehl
Real problems are properly trained, supervised and paid officials, trying to have open-participation sporting events, being unable to separate the playing of paintball from the commerce of paintball, lack of local area promotion, hostile separation of tournament and recreational players, lack of general industry marketing, etc. These are problems that plague the industry as a whole, not just PSP. From the ground up, paintball is done mostly wrong. We need to get into junior high and high schools and get kids playing early. We need to reach parents so they know playing paintball is OK. We need to make sure the average person knows what paintball is, even if they never play, so they think it's odd when their city council tries to ban sporting goods equipment.

People thinking that the primary use of a paintball gun is vandalism is what's preventing us from being a sport, not where and when Pete gets to pee at World Cup. The answer to how we make this sport grow and be accepted is not in the type and configuration of toilets at a tournament, even if the tournament ego would like to pretend that's true.
- Chris [/B]

I agree that there are other problems (some of them bigger than the ones concerning the facilities) that are hindering paintball's growth, but that does not mean that these problems can be ignored. It seems like you're almost saying: "we have a bad reffing situation, why complain about the facilities?" I say: "we have a bad reffing situation, AND a facilities problem."
Yes, the kids doing a driveby with a marker is bad, but that will always happen as long as *******s and paintball markers exist, in the same way that baseball bats will be misused by likeminded individuals. If you want to counter this bad publicity, the way to go would be to host top notch events, which provide safe, fun, and wholesome entertainment for the whole family.
Frankly, the big movers and shakers in the world of big money (i.e. outside sponsors like Coke and Pepsi) don't give a rat's ass about reffing or the "great divide" between rec and tournament. All they care about is whether it appeals to the masses. And if we want to appeal to the masses, we better make sure the masses are fed, have a place to watch the games from, and can satisfy their basic needs in a proper way.

 

[Baca Loco]

An interlude of sanity intrudes . . .

Originally posted by raehl
1--I don't think it's run like an athletic event, but everyone else seems to, so given that, saying moms and kids won't like paintball because of the toilets or food is ridiculous, because they're exactly the facilities such people would expect, are used to, and accept elsewhere.

2--Real problems are properly trained, supervised and paid officials,
3--trying to have open-participation sporting events,
4--being unable to separate the playing of paintball from the commerce of paintball,
5--lack of local area promotion,
6--hostile separation of tournament and recreational players,
7--lack of general industry marketing, etc.
8--These are problems that plague the industry as a whole, not just PSP. From the ground up, paintball is done mostly wrong.
9--We need to get into junior high and high schools and get kids playing early. We need to reach parents so they know playing paintball is OK.
10--We need to make sure the average person knows what paintball is, even if they never play, so they think it's odd when their city council tries to ban sporting goods equipment.

11--People thinking that the primary use of a paintball gun is vandalism is what's preventing us from being a sport, not where and when Pete gets to pee at World Cup. The answer to how we make this sport grow and be accepted is not in the type and configuration of toilets at a tournament, even if the tournament ego would like to pretend that's true.

- Chris

Occasionally, Chris gets things right despite his other annoying shortcomings. The chore is sifting thru the rest of it.
1--There remains however a significant difference between a sufficient number of clean port-o-johns and an insufficient number of disgusting ones.
2--yes
3--yes and no. To my mind it ain't quite "sport" if the participants pick and choose where they play.
4--yes
5--yes, but with the qualifier that it isn't a universal problem but clearly a problem at the highest level of tourney play.
6--naw. The only real animosity that exists is between some tourney and some Big Game types.
7--yes, but it's changing
8--yes, but . . . it is what it is. We only have the exisitng circumstances to work with and the whole thing isn't gonna be scrapped anytime soon so the process must be evolutionary and not revolutionary. (And aren't you the one routinely justifying everything the PSP does?)
9-- forget schools but parents are another thing.
10--positive media attention. (and if you're going to argue that plugging pball into the established order and that's why schools matter it's a decent argument but not the only path.) Faster and thus better is establishing a profile as a sport at the elite level of pball so that all pball receives the benefit of that image.
That is part of the promise of X-Ball and why so many are disappointed with the current leadership. The ball is in their court, by default, and they have so far mostly chosen not to lead.
11--the negative isn't preventing anything but it's building a larger resistance to overcome as it is most often, again by default, the public face of pball along with the junior militia elements.

Pulled back in one more time.

 

[raehl]

I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on the reffing Steve. The idea of the referees playing in the same league they're reffing is downright laughable pretty much anywhere other than paintball. We're talking the TOP LEVEL NATIONAL CIRCUIT here, not park district softball (even that usually has a non-player umpire).

The most immediate problem with reffing for events like world cup is the only people good enough (and available) to ref them are already playing. Adults who have the maturity and experience to ref national paintball events and are not playing the events are not going to take time off of work for $100 a day.


X Ball is no more expensive than 10-man.


We agree that it's not an athletic event, but I think making it an athletic event would be the higher standard, and you seem to believe the reverese.

As for Coke and Pepsi, they *DO* care about things like the tournament/rec player divide. Rec players are 90% of the players. That's who people like Pepsi and Coke want to sell their product to. If 90% of the industry doesn't give a rats ass about the event, the event is worth 90% less to the corporate sponsor.


Hosting top-notch events is going to counter bad publicity? The people who accept the bad publicity are never going to get anywhere near an event to begin with. How is more toilets at World Cup supposed to help me prevent Baltimore from banning paintball markers?


What matters is how many people know what paintball really is, and how many of those people care about the sport. That's what prevents us from being outlawed, that's what gives us value to corporate sponsors, that's what prevents field owners from being victims of the zoning board.


- Chris

 

[raehl]

An interlude of sanity intrudes . . .

Originally posted by Baca Loco

3--yes and no. To my mind it ain't quite "sport" if the participants pick and choose where they play.

I phrased this poorly originally, I meant to say that trying to let participants pick and choose IS the problem - we shouldn't do it.

6--naw. The only real animosity that exists is between some tourney and some Big Game types.

I should have included lack of connection in general. Most rec players don't care about NPPL/PSP ball if they even know about it in the first place. That's untapped marketing potential.


Another point to be made is that there are more people who don't play NPPL/PSP events because they don't want to deal with the poor behavior displayed and tolerated from other players than there are who don't play because of toilets. Part of this goes back to reffing, but part of it is also just a culture of tolerance. Its not just people who have been to events and didn't like it, but also people who have heard from other people that people at NPPL/PSP events are all cheating *******s, true or otherwise.


Of course, if you're part of that culture, you're going to just bitch about the toilets and food choices.



- Chris

 

[Buddha 3]

Originally posted by raehl


1)As for Coke and Pepsi, they *DO* care about things like the tournament/rec player divide. Rec players are 90% of the players. That's who people like Pepsi and Coke want to sell their product to. If 90% of the industry doesn't give a rats ass about the event, the event is worth 90% less to the corporate sponsor.


2)Hosting top-notch events is going to counter bad publicity? The people who accept the bad publicity are never going to get anywhere near an event to begin with. How is more toilets at World Cup supposed to help me prevent Baltimore from banning paintball markers?



- Chris

1) Companies like that want their products advertised in places where it will get the most exposure (which at the moment ain't apintball, I give you that). I seriously doubt that the full 100% of that 90% rec crowd has no interest in reading paintball magazines. These magazines have tournament coverage. That's where and how they get their names in the mags. When was the last time you saw some interesting and worthwhile banners displayed in some backwards wooded area? It ain't the rec things that get the ads moneys...Face it, love it or hate it, but tournament ball is the kind that gets the most exposure, and by default will attract the advertising money. The only reason paintball isn't attracting that much outside money is because we're still small. Does Oakley support the rec scene? Does Vans make shoes for the same scene? Nope...
2) Well duh...thank you for stating that which is so obvious, it pains me.
What I meant is that if events are top notch, and all is catered for, the people that have attended (as viewing public) will be very much less likely be influenced by the bad publicity. Is that any easier to understand?

 

[raehl]

Wrong, and wrong.

Your assumptions are bad.

1) Tournament ball is *NOT* the kind that gets the most exposure, there's your first mistake. World Cup or SPPLAT Shatnerball? Shatnerball hands down. More participants, *MUCH* wider exposure. Hell, at this point, I think there are more college paintball articles in paintball publications each month than there are NPPL/PSP ones, and definitely more in the non-paintball media.


Even if not, don't you think magazine subscriptions, especially of tournament-centered magazines, would go up if more paintball players cared about tournaments, translating to more potential advertiser exposure? Recreational paintball players are low-hanging fruit to add to the advertising appeal that we simply can't ignore. Not reaching 90% of our most reachable audience is a big problem.


Also, while you're right that paintball doesn't have as big of a reach as many other things, it has a VERY large reach on a per-dollar basis. Despite our per-dollar attractiveness, we still get barely any outside dollars, and that should tell you something.

2) Well duh...thank you for stating that which is so obvious, it pains me.
What I meant is that if events are top notch, and all is catered for, the people that have attended (as viewing public) will be very much less likely be influenced by the bad publicity. Is that any easier to understand?

No, it makes no sense whatsoever. Your model assumes that people who don't know about paintball and respond to bad publicity are going to go to a paintball event, top-notch or otherwise, and you're wrong. They don't even know that events exist because they believe paintball markers are for war games and shooting mailboxes. No number of toilets or food items is going to do anything about that. If you want to educate people, you have to go to them, not expect them to come to you.


- Chris