General

[sdawg]

I spent all of Sunday watching paintball at the NPPL Kansas City, and I watched the entire finals. I'll try to give the point of view from the bleachers.

When the Ironmen took the field, I felt like something was fishy. As I was trying to figure out which Ironmen player had made an amazing play against Image in the semi-final, I noticed that there was more than one player with "Cuba" on the back of his jersey. Seemed odd. Someone explained to me that the referees have it in for Lang and are looking to penalize him.

Then final match-up starts. Impact wins game one convincingly.

In game two, both teams make all their bunkers, and being in almost mirror positions, proceed to sit in their bunkers and shoot their lanes. It's clear right away that this game is going to be a draw. However, in the last fifteen seconds of the game, the Ironmen start running up the field. Chaos ensues as the players start shoot each other, referees are pulling arm bands, but eventually time expires. Both teams leave the field. Some agglets in front of me explain that you have to hang the flag to win a game in the finals. I can't remember of the announcers even reported the official outcome of the second game, however.

So, the crowd is fired up for the third match... but the teams are not making their way onto the field. Instead, Josh Davey (start of Impact) is seen casually joking with one of the referees. Meanwhile, the announcers struggling to fill time by giving away t-shirts, making up inane trivia contests, cleaning the bunkers.

After about 30 minutes go by, it is pretty clear that there is a problem. Oliver Lang comes out onto the field with a scowl on his face, and starts complaining to the referees. He then runs over to the audience and gets them chant to "Play the third game."

Eventually, without explanation, the two teams come out again and start the third game. Immediately, the teams get to their bunkers and start the same defensive strategy as before. However, this time the back-right Impact player gets shot out. As he's walking to the sidelines, the closest referee dramatically points at him, makes the one-for-one signal, and wildly runs around the field, pulling two more Impact players. This turn of events dumbfounds Impact and the audience, who have no idea what just happened. Taking advantage of the confusion, the Ironmen run down the field and shoot out the remaining Impact players, complete with photo-finish bunker move on some poor Canadian.

So, now the crowd is going wild because we are going to see a series of 1v1 to decide the championship. How lucky we are, right? One of the most exciting outcomes a fan could hope for in a professional paintball tournament.

Except... nothing happens. The organizers delay for another 30 minutes with inane trivia contests ("How many players on a 7-man team" might have been one of the questions), sending some buffoon with a propeller beanie to dance around on the field, cleaning bunkers. At one point, the organizers scolded the audience, who was starting to get restless ("We've worked really hard to put this event on for you, so please be respectful"). We waited for another 30+ minutes, and it was now almost 7:30, 2 hours after the posted start time of the final game of the tournament.

Finally, both teams come out onto the field... but... they're hugging??? And they have self-congratulatory expressions on their faces?!? It was clear to me at this point that there was not going to be a tie-breaker. The nice young woman with all the tatoos who had been our announcer and had promised us "more exciting paintball action, just moments away" had been mistaken.

As I (and everyone else) made this realization, the NPPL President Shawn Walker, flanked by Superstars Oliver Lang and Josh Davey, came out in front of the crowd, mic in hand. Walker announced that Lang would explain the situation. I couldn't help noticing the ****-eating grin on Walker's face, a grin that would be right at home at a used-car lot.

Oliver, his voice dripping with a well-practiced tone that I can only describe as one belonging to a kid using the lame "dog at my homework excuse" for the twelfth time, began his explanation: "It's been a long weekend, and we're all really tired..."

At this point, everyone booed, and half the audience began to get up out of their seats while the other half started throwing trash at the field netting. As I was rising from seat, stiff after two hours of waiting for a champion to be decided, I heard Lang explain that the two teams would sharing the championship.

As you may already suspect, much poor grammar on the Nation followed later that evening, some of it from Lang himself, who apparently doesn't know how to correctly spell words like "for" and "too". Yikes.

ANALYSIS:

As a referee myself (albeit in another combat sport), I would place a lot of the blame on the referees in the final match.

- There was never an official announcement of the outcomes of the three games. In fact, the referees never explained what their decisions were to the audience, so the confusing ends of the second and third games are left to rumor. In the NFL (for example), the referees explain penalties clearly after play has stopped. The NPPL could require the same of their referees and clear up some confusion.

- If a competitor believes the refs have it in for him, that issue needs to be resolved.

- In the third game, it seemed like a referee was applying penalties to Impact to purposefully effect the outcome of the game (and punish Impact). If the audience gets this impression, the referee was not doing his job.

- The NPPL obviously broke its own rules with this outcome, which kinda delegitimizes their rulebook if they can pick and choose when to apply it. The final outcome, in which the competitors negotiated and outcome that suited themselves rather than the agreed-upon rules, is not setting a good example for the next generation of competitors and removes authority from the referees.

The NPPL's priority is apparently to entertain the players and not the audience:

- The Ironmen weren't wearing jerseys with their names on them. How am I supposed to watch my favorite superstars if I don't know which ones they are on the field? It's bad enough that they have masks on.

- The NPPL was flailing to keep the audience entertained during delays. Anyone who's been to a pro sporting event knows that there's always something to fill the gap in inevitable delays. The mother behind me remarked that this was the most "boring ***" thing she'd seen in her life.

If this is the best that the NPPL can do when they have the FSN cameras rolling, they might as well take the game back into the woods. In fact, I think that is the crux of the problem. The older players who lead the pro teams started in the woods, away from the public eye. They're still playing the game as if they were out on some remote field, playing for their own amusement. Pro paintball has to be about entertaining the audience and is only going to move forward when the players who started in the woods have all retired, and the backwoods-dealing ways of the sport have (hopefully) faded.

If the NFL, NBA, or MLB had put on this kind of fiasco for their marquee event of a championship series, there would have been cars overturned and ablaze in downtown Kansas City. I am looking forward to FSN's footage of angry kids futilely throwing trash at their beloved paintball superstars. Somehow, I suspect that part of the evening will be conveniently edited down to a 30 second (or less) happy ending.

[killmaster]

sdawg, thanks for this, it is the first clear spectator opinion I have seen yet, this clears up alot of what happened out there, at least for me.

[ChaplainBane]

Originally Posted by sdawg

If this is the best that the NPPL can do when they have the FSN cameras rolling, they might as well take the game back into the woods. In fact, I think that is the crux of the problem. The older players who lead the pro teams started in the woods, away from the public eye. They're still playing the game as if they were out on some remote field, playing for their own amusement. Pro paintball has to be about entertaining the audience and is only going to move forward when the players who started in the woods have all retired, and the backwoods-dealing ways of the sport have (hopefully) faded.

This is the only part I have a problem with. Pro Paintball is a COMPETITIVE Sport. The players are there to compete, not to entertain. If you want entertainment over competition Go to a Wrestling Match. AS for the sport moving forward when all of the Woodsballers have retired, you might want to show more respect for Woodsball, since if it wasn't for those backwoods dealing ways, there wouldn't be a sport. Paintball started in the woods, long before there were semis and electros and Airball fields. I think this particular incident had nothing to do with woodsball and more to do with the fact that the NPPL can't stick to their own Rulebook. Not here to flame, it just seemed like this was the only real point that came across as biased, in an otherwise unbiased rendering of the facts.

[dempsey626]

Can this really be a surprise that either the NPPL or the PSP choose what rules to enforce and which ones not to? It's been going on for years....I'm sure Steve Davidson has a complete list somewhere!!

What I think stinks here is that two teams agreed to determine the tournament outcome and prize purse. How is this any different than the Fusion- Team Xtreme debacle of a couple years back. "Throw the game and we will split the $$$".

Sounds the same to me. Now we just have to wait and see if the NPPL takes action against "fixing" the outcome of the event. The more things change the more the are the same.....

I also have to take exception to the "The older players who lead the pro teams started in the woods, away from the public eye." statement. At least back then we put all our cheaters on the non-spectator side of the field, NOT out in front of the cameras for all to see and emulate !!

Dan

[incynr8]

NEWS FLASH, NPPL goes to extremes to prevent future ties:



there can be only one.

[sdawg]

My point about "coming out of the woods" was not meant as a flame on woodsballers. I'm just making a point that a lot of pro ballers talk about how they have brought paintball out of the woods, which is a kind of literal history of tournament paintball, but also a metaphor for how paintball is reaching mainstream acceptance.

All professional sports are amusement (i.e., to entertain the people watching). That doesn't mean that professional sports are not competitive... people watch exactly for the fun of seeing high-level competition. My point is, if you're going to bill a sport as professional and want it to be on TV and on par with other sports, you need to package it as an entertaining way for a family to spend 2-3 hours of a Sunday night. This past Sunday, some families came out to watch pro paintball and what they'll remember of the championship match is less than 15 minutes of paintball and almost two hours of waiting for something to happen without explanation from any officials.

As for myself, I would like those two hours of my life back.

[Painthappy]

Thanks for the report.

CB

[Tracker]

hehe agglets.... anyways coming from alot of what ive seen, and played over the years (including in shawn walkers old series XPSL) there has laways been ALOT of picking and choosing when is comes to things, ive seen bad calls and ive seen worse calls, and ive been privy to a few myself (pulled for a broken ball INSIDE one of my pods i mean how hard is that to check honestly?) but getting back to my point, it seems like picking and choosing is all that goes on anymore, if you wanted honesty, i think that died right around the time the NPPL was formed

Tracker

[Painthappy]

Here's an interesting quote from another forum:

"
HA...the only way Ironmen won their pre-lim game against Dynasty is because Ollie sat back behind the carwash and looked up and the JumboTron and called out every Dynasty players positions. He didnt move the entire game!!! Just sat back and stared up at it. That in my book is cheating!!

After that game, they turned of the side screens because of it. For those of you that were there you know exactly what I mean. Even a few times during the game it showed Ollie staring up at himself on the screen!!
"

Interesting indeed.....

[incynr8]

maybe paintball IS a spectator sport!