ROTY

Aight. I wasn't gonna go here but what the heck. It's kinda fun--and definitely a good move on the part of PBA for sustaining off season interest while continuing to build on the foundation of paintball as sport. (If you haven't heard Matty & Todd talk about the candidates yet they offer up lots of good info beyond the stats in episode 4 of 'The Breakdown.' 4 of the 5 candidates also have interviews posted--leaving Axel out in the cold [at least for the moment.] ) EDIT ADDED: Axel interview now posted. As regulars know I'm not (yet) convinced by the stats being used--even though I'm all for having stats help make the game and players more accessible. So I found 'The Breakdown' particularly informative and, I confess, I was already leaning toward a particular player and only had my tentative choice confirmed. I'm not gonna try to make a case for my guy because all the candidates earned their nominations and all of them have positive cases that can be made on their behalf. The only thing that disturbs me at all about ROTY is that we didn't have it a couple of years ago. (I had a sure winner.) (Hey, gotta give my boys their props every now and again.) There is one thing I think ROTY is missing: the criteria for making the cut needs to be more clear cut. For example, there was a lot of talk about where the candidates fit in the player rankings, which is fine, but nothing about events played or minimum points played or other standards the potential candidates have to meet to get nominated in the first place. It seems like it was more of an internal PBA discussion--which if true is fine--for the first time--but ought to be more formally structured in the future. That's all I'm saying.
Anyway I won't keep y'all in suspense any longer. VFTD's vote goes to Nick Leival of Upton 187 Crew. Of course it's only one vote--unless you wanna take my word for it and jump on the bandwagon.

Bonus coverage: coming up on Monday will be the first VFTD Top Ten players of the PSP. Here's the thing; I've been fooling around with the "official" stats. I haven't created any new stats--if I had there wouldn't be any data for them anyway--but I have tweaked the existing numbers a bit in some cases. Well, after tweaking the data I calculated out "my" results and I will post that list Monday. (And may include a related The Monday Poll.) I don't claim it's a better list than the PBA's, just different--though some of the players are the same if not in the same slots. Anyway, just doing my part to raise the controversy index in the off season.