Big Team VS Small Team

Florida seems to be constantly growing teams, more than most states, but there are a few places that are growing, and mainly keeping on pace. Southern California, Northern California, the Carolinas, Omaha, Central Texas and New York seem to have the most progression of players and teams.

This is the common Florida team structure, whether for CFPS, (the now dwindling) SPCS, and other other tournaments.

Most local, divisional paintball teams normally consist of about 5-9 players. This would qualify you as a "small team". This team usually plays for fun, or to build experience and usually plays whatever tournament fits their schedules. They sometimes practice when they're all off work, or have free time. Rarely do they have scheduled or set practices. Some teams of this size that have field or factory support, but that is rare.

Then you have larger teams, these teams consist of between 10-30 players. These teams are usually based out of a home field and might have one or two sponsors. They normally receive support from the field by reduced field fees, reduced paint, or reduced merchandise. The sponsors normally supply the teams with slightly above dealer pricing, or dealer pricing. These teams usually play a tournament series, not just single events. They might attend one national event over a year. This event might be a PSP event or USPL event that is within driving distance for them.

The largest of all is the "super-team". These teams are more like an organization. There is normally an owner, a head coach, and sometimes lesser coaches. They normally consist of 30-70+ players. It's normally like a farm of feeder team. The lower division team supports the higher divison team by building players. These teams usually have a field sponsorship much like the "large team" sponsorship, and usually have multiple sponsors. Granted these are not "free stuff" or "full factory support" sponsorships, they normally give the teams everything they need without breaking the bank. These teams might have a gun sponsorship, gear sponsorship, or playing apparel sponsorship. These teams usually play all the local or regional events they can find, and might play multiple PSP or USPL events, or sometimes play the whole series. The “super teams” are geared for progressing players up quickly through the ranks, playing local, progressing to regional, then national, from D5 to D2 in a short amout of time. Those players who can’t keep up with the grueling pace are weeded out.

Larger teams can make things much easier, or in some cases much more difficult. Players on large teams need to be just that, players. The coach or team owner needs to be able to make decisions for the team with minimal input from players. Normally upstart “large” or “super-teams” usually have issues. New sponsors can cause some problems.

With smaller teams if one person cancels last minute, the team is put in a really bad situation trying to find someone to fill in. With a larger team, given the same situation, they’ll easily fill the spot due to the size of the roster. Smaller teams do have an advantage; the players have normally been playing with each other for a while and can gel better with each other than with a larger team, where you may play with different people every week.

"Large" or "super-teams" usually end up on the podiums. One reason is, they have squads to practice with, in their own team. They can also have a better feel for layouts. If you have your whole team, (let's say 30 people and each person) is playing a different specific position, that means you'll have 6 different perceptions on how to play that layout, for that specific spot. These teams also give the player a better chance to move up in the rankings. You can easily shine playing on a D4 team, and if you want to move up, you'll have the players necessary.

Each kind of team, whether it be a "super-team" such as Firece-Damage, or Total Karnage has their own advantages and downfalls compared to large teams such as Fatality, or Tampa United; besides playing on the national level versus the local.

NPPL 2009.... Er... USPL 2009

The USPL released the "new" rulebook for 2009. It looks very similar to that of the NPPL in 2008, with minor changes. ProPaintball.com has the low-down HERE. Personally, I never paid too much attention to NPPL, it really didn't seem like the NPPL was all that important. It seemed much like a West coast league. And compared to X-ball, isn't really all that exciting. In my opinion, 7-man should have a ROF cap. The old NPPL didn't see many big, exciting moves like we do in X-ball because every player was just sitting behind a bunker holding a lane down. The USPL could have semi-auto, with a ROF cap of 18 bps. That will keep your semi-auto fan boys happy, because they can keep they're triggers as bouncy and illegal as usual. That will hopefully keep your unlimited bps fan boys happy because it's a high ROF. Even though hitting 18 bps with a legal trigger is unheard of.

The USPL seems to be resurrecting the old NPPL, which seems like a good idea seeing that the NPPL was doing well with events. As long as the USPL can run the events correctly and run this season as the NPPL would have, it'll be considered a successful year.

I guess we'll see how it goes, Huntington Beach is only a few weeks away.