Friday, January 23, 2009

Major League Paintball Held Hostage, Day 22

Event dates have been reported for the '09 USPL season over at Junior Brown's Sacpaintball.com site.
1 - Surf City Open, Huntington Beach, CA - April 3 – 5
2 - Washington DC - May 15 – 17
3 - West Coast - June 12 – 14, 2009
4 - Boston - July 31 – August 2
5 - West Coast - August 28 – 30, 2009
6 - West Coast - October 2 – 4, 2009
The locations for the two Eastern Conf. events were well chosen given they are the only two areas east of the Mississippi where 7-man may still have a pulse as far as I know. Any chance that the spirit of the NPPL will live on and we can hold the Boston event in the parking lot of a high school football stadium? Since we're economizing and all. (Sorry. Couldn't resist.) It looks like an HB finale is probably off the calendar--which is almost certainly an acknowledgement of reality. So where to have the last event?

Rumor has it that Bart Y. (Impact) offered to pay entries for teams other than his own--which is a very generous offer indeed. If true it's hard to fault a willingness to put your money on the line to keep pro teams in the game and support the new league, except ...
How is that gonna work? Pro team payments are essentially franchise fees so if Bart is paying for teams other than his own is he receiving "extra" franchises or are these teams "buying in" without having to pay what everyone else is paying? I imagine the easy answer is they will pay Bart back at some point. Not my problem but no matter how it shakes out it creates a situation from the get go where not everyone is equal no matter how you try to spin it. At least it's a well traveled road in paintball. Of course that may be better than not having a team or two if it comes down to that.

Have the Bushwackers really signed on as a PSP pro team? Were they able to because Bart covered their USPL fees? Did they strike a separate deal with the PSP? And does this mean there are other pro team announcements to come? (Hard to run a division of 13, though it could also mean the loss of a different team, I suppose, like ... Aftershock?) Don't know, just speculating.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bushwackers were one of the first PAID pro teams in the psp. First 12 that pay are in. The bet is one of them is going to fail (on one level or another). Lucky 13 right?

Baca Loco said...

They's a wee bit more going on. For starters the spot availability was limited early on so until somebody else didn't pay the Wackers didn't have the option--unless something changed.
Either way I'm happy to have Ron and the kids come on down.