The Monday Poll

This week's poll is a straightforward pick the top four finishers for the NPPL's Huntington Beach event, the Surf City Open. You may pick more than one team but please limit the total number of teams you pick to 4. (Last time y'all did a reasonable job of following directions so here we go again. Fingers crossed.) [For all of VFTD's Eurobuds I'm intentionally skipping the first MS event given that matches begin on Friday and would make for a short poll week--and most of the North American audience couldn't care less. Yes, it's horribly unfair but there it is. Besides, I should have done an MS CPL poll last week if I was going to do one at all. And I didn't. Maybe for Germany.] So remember, pick four and you could be this week's giant grand prize winner. Keeping in mind there is no causal relationship between participating in this week's Monday Poll and any specific or generic grand prize.
Oh, and you know, you might want to consider how the brackets are gonna shake down--standard snake seeding--before you make your picks so that your chosen outcome is at least possible given the modified format. Wait, what am I thinking? That involves work, again. I apologize and take it back. Just get out there and vote. Or you could be the next target after Libya. Just saying.

Monday Poll in Review
Last week's question wanted to know what you lot thought of the PSP deciding to do videos of the pro event without mentioning the fact before hand. I was (mildly) concerned my list of "answers" skewed toward the cynical and so I invited alternatives to be posted up in the comments. As usual, that was too much like work and required thinking so it was, of course, out of the question. Personally I'm inclined to think all the optional "answers" had some merit and Patrick "MWAG" Sporher specifically referenced the option of undercutting the whiners who wanted their free videos faster as the reason for not making a formal announcement in advance. (And since the whiner scenario played out before when the effort was made to turn webcast matches into downloadable videos it's no great surprise it was a consideration this time around.) Even so, it was scant months--if not weeks--ago the PSP was fearful of its continued existence and then they go and make the decision to spend money on a reduced cost variant of the old webcast. It's at least curious. The top vote getter at 38% was YouTube views are the next best thing to live webcast viewers. I am inclined to think that reflects a generally positive opinion about putting out the videos rather than the more sophisticated if incremental approach to building a demonstrable audience for the product. 2 of the remaining 4 options relate to competing with the NPPL's ESPN3 webcast of HB and a combined total of 26% votes opted for one or the other. The final 2 choices both related to the league trying to avoid some initial negative responses--making the videos available too slowly and/or not as good as the old webcast--and that combined vote totaled 34%. Overall, given the options to choose from, I think the voting reflected favorably on the PSP and the videos.