PB Fantasy Governing Committee

[shartley]

[CaliMagFan]

F it.

[billmi]

If you want a committee to regulate, say, Divisions 1, 2 and 3 tournament paintball, you will need to find people who have no money to be made. People who don't have close ties to businesses and teams.

The problem with that is that there aren't people like that who a significant number of tournament players want to follow. In general, without money to be made or a personal interest people don't just step up to the plate and run things for very long. Case in point - the NPPL. It was formed as corporation owned by the member teams. It was created to solve the problems in tournament paintball due to "greedy promoters" who were "just in it for the money." Its foundation points were that it was player owned and run, was reffed by tournament level teams, and all events were BYOP. Promoters would bid to the league for the right to run an NPPL tournament, profits earned by the league were paid back to the teams as dividends. That lasted all of one season or so (Rabidchihauhau can fill in more details, he was very involved in the league during that time.) Gradually the teams did less and less work, wouldn't go to the annual meetings, and eventually the corporation was dissolved by the state of New York because the president didn't even take the time to fill out its tax return. More time went by with promoters using the league name, until someone took the reigns started a new corporation, and set up a deal with a new promoter where as owner of the league he could make a salary. The NPPL now is what it was created not to be - not owned by the teams, not reffed by the teams, and FPO. But that's not a bad thing, the NPPL is doing fantastically - it's in the hands of someone who stands to win or lose financially so there is a motivation to do well and keep making it better. Make a good tournament, and players will play - the idealistic stuff about ownership, control, etc., is just talk. It isn't what matters when it comes to laying down entry fees.

The same goes for groups like the IPPA - disbanded because they couldn't even muster enough votes from their members to hold a legally required election for their board of directors. Around the time of the IPPA (late 80s) there was an industry group that lobbied against anti-paintball laws - that didn't last long except for pro-bono work done by Don DeKeifer, and eventually that dried up. There have been numerous industry groups started and ended because companies will just look out for themselves - another prime example is all the companies that agreed to stop producing paintguns capable of firing more than 13 bps and of using anything but semi-auto mode. Those that made them didn't stop, and those that didn't make them now do. Why? Because their competitors were.

I just don't see paintball as a whole - players, industry, everyone, cohesively following anything but what is required by law, and even then there will be a percentage that runs outside the law with the ever present mentality of our culture that something is "only illegal if you get caught." ASTM has written some excellent standards, but honestly I can't think offhand of any paintball field or event that I've seen that fully complied with them.

[rabidchihauhau]

billmi,

Your brief history of NPPL is somewhat correct, but entirely off base. Allow me to explain:

The corporation was NEVER turned over to the teams. This was kept quiet. This allowed those who did own the corporation to manipulate the corporate structure the league took, manipulate elections, manipulate events, rules and everything else.

Promoters were NEVER allowed to bid for the right to host an event - the first generation of promoters prevented that from happening by manipulating the internal vote.

Dividends were paid one year to the teams and never again.

The collapse of the first iteration of the NPPL was not due to player apathy, but due DIRECTLY to the manipulation, political manuevering, lying and character assassination by a few individuals who WERE after monetary gain and political power.

To use the NPPL as an example of how a volunteer organizational model will not work is using a bad analogy, because the truth about what went on actually supports the case that allowing those who have a monetary interest to run things is the absolutely WORST way to go.

The NPPL was not supposed to be 'volunteer'. The plan was always to install a board, pay those people a reasonable salary and expenses, etc. The manipulators stopped that from happening.

When it came time to select a corporate structure, I and several others lobbied for a non-profit, modelled after NFL, MLB, etc. Others lobbied for a 'shareholders corporation' - and I quote - "just like some supermarkets".

When questioned about the validity of such a model, the chief lobbyist responded with 'I'm a lawyer and there's way too much paperwork involved with a non-profit'. When asked why we should not go the route of other sports, the answer was 'I'm a lawyer and this is the way you ought to do it'. When asked why we should be paying teams a dividend instead of pumping the money back into the organization, the answer was "Because it will motivate the teams to attend more events - I'm a lawyer, this is the way to go'. (When in fact it was the perfect strategy to get the voting members to think with their pocketbooks instead of their heads.)

The one and only attempt at an open bid system was stopped butt-cold by 'Im a lawyer' and cronies - the guy made an excellent presentation, stayed well within our requested budget and was ridiculed and hounded to death by the selection committee (mentored by I'm-a-lawyer) to the point where he said following the meeting "Im not going to work with those people and am no longer interested'.

Billmi - did you want me to spout off? You sure as heck pushed the right button.

In one respect you're right; most of the founding team reps wanted nothing to do with meetings and all of the blah blah blah, but that was actually a small part of it all, and I hasten to point out, the reason things were structured the way they were; creating apathy on the part of voters is a great way to guarantee non-participation at critical vote times - those no longer interested don't show and you get to push through your own program: I copied that same strategy when it came time for the re-call Steve as Secretary vote; I managed to convince most of those in favor of recalling me that I was going to lose anyway and they never bothered to attend the meeting. My 'win' resulted in a certain magazine pulling its sponsorship from NPPL and my being banned from a certain year-end event. Why was I being recalled? Because I had proof in hand that the organization was not owned by the organization.

My final straw was when they bamboozled Bob Long (then president) into signing a league-promoters contract that took all power and control away from the league; Bob was told that 'everyone had voted in favor of it' (a lie) when in fact a special committee was drafting a counter-offer to the promoters at the same time that Bob was signing.

I had a three year plan on the table when the org was founded that was accepted in principal - year one, get our internal act together, year two, market it to the paintball industry, year three, take it to the outside world.

Because of IAL and other greedy gusses, that three year plan has taken 12 years to be realized - and IAL and crowd tried to steal it back when it finally managed to get some legs.

I think that we'll have to wait until certain people are no longer walking this earth to be able to leave that bs behind and move on as a real industry and a real sport.

[billmi]

Rabidchihauhau can fill in more details, he was very involved in the league during that time.

How rarely do I find it apropos to quote myself. :-)

Point well illustrated that commercial interests have a history of being the only interests that survive for long in organized groups when it comes to paintball. Groups actually founded in "good of the sport" frameworks either don't last, or become converted to polarized commercial interests.

[shartley]

I just don't see paintball as a whole - players, industry, everyone, cohesively following anything but what is required by law, and even then there will be a percentage that runs outside the law with the ever present mentality of our culture that something is "only illegal if you get caught." ASTM has written some excellent standards, but honestly I can't think offhand of any paintball field or event that I've seen that fully complied with them.

How rarely do I find it apropos to quote myself. :-)

Point well illustrated that commercial interests have a history of being the only interests that survive for long in organized groups when it comes to paintball. Groups actually founded in "good of the sport" frameworks either don't last, or become converted to polarized commercial interests.

[rabidchihauhau]

I for one believed what was discussed at the original meeting for NPPL, so far as altruism for the betterment of the sport and the concept that 'once the pie is big enough, there will be plenty to go around'; instead, I ended up having to battle for $650 in phone bills (all calls having been pre-approved by the organization) because I took everyone at their word. I took what small monetary contribution I could make and all of the sweat equity I had at my disposal, worked freely and openly with anyone who wanted to ride the same train and, instead of being able to reap ANY kind of reward, was left holding the bag and was villified, castigated and character-assassinated for my efforts.

All because, rather than waiting for the pie factory to be completed and for thousands of pies to be rolling off the assembly line, some people started eating the prototypes; they just couldn't wait.

What they couldn't wait for was the ability to gain influence and power and a handle over the money (more influence and power) - which move had two major effects: the first was, they ended up with the money and a league (supposedly beneficial for them) the second being that they are no longer involved with NPPL, which is now their primary and, in my opinion, superior competitor.

I suppose that if you look at it that way, they sowed the seeds of their own (eventual) destruction because they were just too greedy to wait.

[PBX Ronin 23]

Rogue, et al.

AO is to paintball what the salons of Versailles was to 18th century France. It's where guys like BillMi, Rabidchuhuahua, Manike, AGD and others who we would consider as the paintball inteligensia hang-out. I hope that it remains that way for as long as it possibly can.