The Monday Poll in Review

Last week's The Monday Poll offered eight options for ways to improve the PSP ranging from restoring the Masters division to having an annual Cali event and y'all voted for your top preference. But before I announce the top results I want to begin with the least popular choices. For all the hand-wringing going on over at PBN only 3% thought bringing the Masters back to WC was the best choice. Twice as many (6%) favored the alternative of bringing Masters back in the Race To 2 format. This is interesting (to me) on a two counts; the lack of votes considering its advocates are very vocal and the fact that those who care about the Masters enough to make it their vote strongly prefer changing the format. (Now I confess I included the Race To 2 option because VFTD has made this suggestion on more than one occasion--and also recently--because I think it would engender greater participation and be much easier for the league to schedule.) Vying with the Masters in apathy generated were the two 10-man related options; offer a 10-man division at every PSP event (4%) or offer 10-man in Open and Amateur brackets (4%). VFTD favors providing a 10-man opportunity at Chicago and WC only to maintain interest given that the phenomenon is mostly a nostalgia and novelty option. But if it should gain greater support (and be played on a "real" competition layout) the potential disparity between player (and team) skill levels will result in some ugly paintball.
Interestingly next up (6%) was the option of returning to a six event seasonal schedule. Given that everyone who voted is serious about paintball and the fact that it's easier to vote for more paintball than to actually pay for more paintball the marginal support. It seems that there isn't any support, even at the wishful thinking level, for expanding the season. Finally we enter the realm of double digit support as we reach the third most popular option in last week's poll; include a Cali event every year received 11% of the votes. It's impossible to know for sure but at a guess I'd say the second most popular option (22%) hold a PSP event at HB probably siphoned off a decent percent of votes that would have otherwise gone with the generic Cali event choice. Between the two of them they totaled 33% of all votes. (HB is problematic as a PSP venue because of the limited number of fields that can be set up. HB can't deliver more teams than an alternative site but comes with more 'baggage' [beach clean up and overtime pay to off duty police working security] than a typical venue. The beach is cool but I doubt it will ever happen, with or without an NPPL.
Dominating the poll with 39% of the votes was the option for changing the means by which Challengers move up to Champions. Specifically by having to challenge and defeat one of the bottom two Champions in order to replace them in the Champions bracket. I like the idea of the two pro brackets being flexible enough to move teams up or down during the season but all we've seen from the current system is mostly the same teams yoyo-ing back and forth.
Will the PSP take note? Will anything change in the off season? Time will tell.

As an aside I'd appreciate hearing from you in comments if you use Chrome. Last week's poll functioned normally for me in Explorer and Firefox but was seriously mangled in Chrome and I don't know if it was because I posted the poll or if there is a general disconnect. So please let me know if the poll seemed to be working correctly for you if you are a Chrome user. Thanks.