A history lesson about the D (divisional) List- part 3

Now, after the sport has created a foot-hold we have continued to evolve, slowly making the changes necessary to become what skateboarding and other extremes sports have been: mainstream. We almost reached the mainstream holy grail a few years ago, or at least got a look at what the Holy Grail could be. Again, television. In 2006 with the Smart Parts Paintball World Championships on ESPN, and then in 2007 and 2008 with "Behind The Paint" on FSN covering the pro NPPL players.

Then as it was starting to look so good, and we were in the lime light, the bubble of Pacific Paintball burst; the death of the NPPL, PB2X, the XSPL. The Liquidation of the NPPL left the PSP as the only league during the off-season. The PSP and NPPL were actually set to meet on unification of the two leagues. The PSP would have been handling the program inside the netting and the NPPL would have been handling everything outside the netting. But with the bankruptcy that meeting never happened. The PSP set out for new rule changes, lowering the BPS cap from 13.3, which changed in 2008 and now made it 12.5 BPS for Pro and Semi-Pro divisions and 10.5 BPS from everyone else. For a few weeks it looked like the PSP would be the only national tournament league. Then the USPL, a 7 man and lower divisional 5 man league came about, a player's league, for the players by the players: the Pro players. One of the most important changes was the PSP's support of regional leagues and regional events. Which caused the beginning of a new division for regional events, D5. Now most regional events consist of D2, D3, D4 and D5 5-man, or as it is called now Race2 to 2. The CFOA stands as one of the only regional leagues that holds X-ball events.Or Race2 4 or Race2 5. And now a Universal Classifation Program, lead by APPA and Chris Raehl, that is supposed to keep a D3 player a D3 player no matter where they are in the world and what tournament they play. As discussed in many VFTD (View From The Deadbox) Posts http://viewfromthedeadbox.blogspot.com/ there was a system for players to move up, but no way to maintain a ranking, basically being forced up the rankings. Then to end up getting blown away as a D2 player, when they're really an average D3 player. Resulting in being "forced out" of the tournament scene.

The change that PSP made and what cause it has on the player on the D-List is another post to come.