The Monday Poll

What else could we possibly vote on this week other than the prospects for the success or failure of the Huntington Beach NPPL/ESPN3 webcast? Unfortunately, we may not know the real results by next Monday but at least we'll know what you people expect to happen--and when the actual results are in rest assured I will remind you. [The voting will close at Noon on Friday.] It's been rumored that the magic number is 100K. 100,000 weekend viewers will keep ESPN's interest going. I don't know if that's true or not but, obviously, the more the better. I have yet to hear any confirmation regarding participation (exhibition or otherwise) in the Summer X-Games and I'm hoping it isn't contingent on the webcast numbers. (No, not because I think the numbers won't measure up. More along the lines of the more exposure competitive paintball gets the more fans and future players that exposure will hopefully draw.) Anyway, let's get to it. You know what to do. Pick the single option you think will be closest to the actual result. Vote soon as the cutoff is Noon on Friday. Keep your fingers crossed and tune in this weekend.

The live streaming broadcast of the Surf City Open via ESPN3 will be:

A huge success, exceeding everyone's expectations. A success as the final numbers don't reach ESPN's goals but are close. A moderate success even though totals are low but a stronger than expected international presence. A toss up as the total numbers fall well short but are consistent throughout the weekend. A failure because of an insufficient lead time to campaign for paintballers participation. A failure due to general apathy among all paintballers.

Monday Poll in Review Last week's poll question asked y'all to pick the four finalists in this week's upcoming NPPL Huntington Beach event. The results are unlikely to come as much of a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to 7-man competition but the interesting elements are in the details. Which I'll get to in a minute. First though I'd like to talk brackets. (Having just come off the two big weekends of March Madness it's kinda cool to be able to frame a paintball competition using bracketology.) The following are unofficial but should be correct as I've used the current rule book and last season's rankings. A= TBD, XSV, Vendetta & X-Factor. B=Impact, Legend, Mutiny & Uprising. C= Infamous, Avalanche, Arsenal & Thunder. D= Blast, Dynasty, Xplicit & Aftershock. (I removed Naughty Dogs from rankings--as a non-ownership team nobody was in a position to buy their spot--and added new teams alphabetically according to team name.) Two teams come out of each prelim bracket to be reseeded. B & C play Friday and A & D play Saturday. (I think.) The two remaining brackets after the prelim round will play Sunday morning to determine the semi-finalists at which point the 1 seed plays the 4 and 2 plays 3 with the winners advancing to the finals. Does that alter how you voted? Probably not.

The top four vote getters were Dynasty (87%), TBD (62%), Impact (50%) & Infamous (47%). A close fifth was Arsenal at 44%. The rest of the teams, in order of percentage of the vote received, are Blast (20%), X-Factor (14%), Vendetta (11%), Aftershock (8%), XSV (6%), Avalanche & Mutiny (5% each), Uprising (3%), Xplicit & Thunder (2% each), & Legend (1%). The numbers for a resurgent Dynasty are understandable but what about Blast, X-Factor & Vendetta? Is Blast low, and if so, why? They were top 4 last year and series winner the year before that. Are X-Factor fans remembering the team's past successes or are there just lots of Texas fans. (They made enough noise in Galveston.) Double digits for Vendetta? Clearly the voting sample isn't that large--we're talkin' paintball after all--but look at a team like Xplicit that has worked hard to build a fan base and only garner 2% of the vote. What percentage of voters are voting last year's results? Or the return of Ollie to Dynasty? Or for a favorite team? Or even some combination of all those possibilities.