Thursday, July 31, 2008

Where in the world are the D1 players?

Thought it might be interesting to do an informal check of D1 ranked players currently in D2--after all, that's what happens to former D2 players who get bumped up, right? If they end up teamless they just get picked up to play D2 and obviously it's the best of those players the D2 peeps want, right?
Of the teams currently registered (21) for the NEO 10 of them have D1 ranked players on their rosters. Less than half. And 5 of those only have one D1 ranked player instead of the allowed 2. I also took a look at those players' experience as far as APPA is concerned. 9 of the 15 players have been rostered in 3 or fewer D1 or higher events. (Please note I said rostered. Being rostered doesn't necessarily equate to playing any paintball. For example there is a D1 ranked player currently on a D2 roster who appeared on at least 7 D1 rosters and played fewer cumulative points over those seven events than the average player plays in a single event. Is that really a D1 player?)
Of those 9 players 3 have never been APPA rostered on a D1 or higher team. One was rostered once. Three players were rostered twice and for one of those guys it was once in 06 and once in 07. (Is that really a D1 level player? Really?) And finally the last two appeared on 3 rosters. One of those guys is 37 years old.
60% of the D1 players playing D2 have either zero or damn little actual D1 level experience. And as NEO is the fourth event of the season--always the weakest in terms of participation--that means at the D2 level there is a higher percentage of dedicated teams playing the NEO than at any other event of the year. Kinda makes a mockery of the notion that D1 players are finding a home in D2 and explodes as myth any notion that the best teamless D1 players have anywhere to go except to some other hobby, game or sport.
While not conclusive this data sure looks like it goes at least part of the to validating my analysis of the current structure.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like it when you ask questions I know the answers to. You might not like the answer though. You wanted to know where all the D1 player are. So I checked.

Promoted last season were:

Vicious (now in D1)
TX Justice League (D1)
Denver Altitude (disbanding anyway)
GRIDLOCK (no more sponsorship)
CDR (D1)
The Caste (D1/NXL)
Naughty Leps (disband)
Drama (disband, some players now on Dynasty).

So to answer your question, 4 of the 8 teams ended up in (and are still playing) D1. Of the remaining 5, about half played PSP this year - some in Pro, some in D1, and some in D2.

25% attrition is actually pretty low by paintball standards.

So where are all the D1 players? Mostly, exactly where they should be: D1!

Baca Loco said...

You'll have to help on the math here, Chris. And, btw, I'm presently unable to access either teams or rosters for any PSP events at the moment.
Anyway, 8 teams promoted from D2 to D1 and half of them disband. That used to be 50% when I went to school.
Your response, while not being in any way responsive to the actual post (which was a refutation of a claim you made previously btw), also fails to take into account the accumulation of D1 ranked players this system has created. The numbers of D1 players with no place to play isn't a one time phenomenon. 50% attrition is stacking them up like cordwood.

Baca Loco said...

It's better than I imagined. Let's see. The Caste turns out to be last year's version of Dark Legion, the Russians farm club. Not your run-of-the-mill D2 team and even so only 3 players from the D2 squad have played for the D1 team and none of them have played all of them by virtue of the expedient the Russians use the team to develop players. And the two Caste players who have played this season in the NXL haven't been rostered for each event either. Hardly representative of the typical PSP team regardless.
And neither of the kids Dynasty picked up to play NXL were regular Drama players in '07 though each appeared on the Drama roster at least once.
And Denver Altitude has played in the NPPL this season.
Putting make-up on a mutt can't make a purebred. :)

Anonymous said...

50% of teams advanced. Of the remaining 50%, half are still playing on different teams and half are out, leaving 25% that are out.

I didn't pay much attention to previous seasons because there are other teams still in D1 and some have moved to the NXL, and the number of players who play national-level paintball three years in a row is small no matter which division you're looking at.