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.

A history lesson about the D (divisional) List- part 2

Television. (This is a subject for a later post in greater detail)
World Cup (in the woods playing 10 man) was on ESPN. Yeah, ESPN, cable television to the masses. It was in Kissimmee, Florida, the first Paintball World, no more than 10 minutes from where the current World Cup takes place. Television changed everything. Arguably it was the reason we came out of the woods. We had a taste of the pie in the sky and we wanted more.

Then in the last 9 years, it seems to be the greatest leap we, as a sport, have made in the marathon to a mainstream sport. Paintball was unregulated, and the 2000's brought on paintball associations, and the e dawn of the tournament series. Back then. there was 1 league, and 2 divisions in paintball. Pro and amateur. In your area there were few teams, and if you were lucky you got to practice, or get slaughtered by, a pro team as practice. And slowly, camouflage turned to bright motorcross style jerseys. Woods turned first to dirt mounds, (little known fact) then to Hyperball tubes (the black, plastic, corrugated construction tubing) and then finally to the Angel Airball fields (yup Angel, WDP, now Angel Paintball Sports). The first electronic paintball markers were invented, and the big manufactures got their fame during this time. The E-blade for the Autococker (where Eclipse got their start), the Angel markers, RT Automags, Peuno-Ventures (the company that originally made the shoebox Shocker Sport), Smart Parts, ADG, Spyder, Tippmann, Bob Long and the Intimidator, the Diablo Matrix (soon to be the Dye Matrix) were the big companies. And there was no rate of fire cap, there were no referees (you checked yourself). Then the big leagues started.

Then the split. The NPPL and PSP become two different leagues. This was the beginning of the D-List. This was the beginning of classifications, where you didn't have to play pros at every tournament. This was the very beginning of X-ball. The cutting of team sizes, from 10 to 5 in PSP and the change from 10 to 7 for NPPL. The rate of fire evolved from however fast you could pump your gun, to however fast you could pull the trigger, to however fast your gun could cycle and how fast your hopper could feed, and then finally to a universal PSP ball per second cap of 15. The NPPL was always uncapped semi-automatic. (I rarely call shooting unlimited semi-automatic a skill, because now it is no longer a "skill" but a combination of trigger-bounce and mis-named "skill"). New technology was the catalyst for the new changes, as well as moving away from the woods, away from realistic, to branding the sport differently. No longer war-games, now actual sport, branding as a sport, not a hobby.

The First-

Welcome to the blog- "Life on the paintball D-List"
The purpose of the blog is to bring to light all the happenings of the so called "grass-roots" levels of the tournament paintball scene. (And maybe some scenario-rec ball- big game stuff along the way)

What is the D-List?-

This is the divisional level of paintball, the "grass-roots" as it's been labeled. These are the players who pay $40-80 for a case of paint, the players who work or go to school from Monday to Friday, then show up on a Saturday or Sunday to try and battle it out for Glory and Pride, with little or NO sponsorship (and if your very, very lucky, a prize or even less often money) And if your so lucky enough to get money it's not nearly how much you put in to get to this point, but money non-the less. Life on the D-list is dreams. Dreams of fame and glory that might be a little inflated right now, but the hope that in the future you can move off the D-List and to the upper-echelons of paintball- The "Pros". The hope that in the future you could actually play paintball as a "profession" and actually make enough money to do a little better than get by.

Why is the D-List important?-

This is roughly 86% or more of the paintball tournament community. These are the players that fund the upper levels of tournament paintball. This is the player with the 0ne-year-old gun and the duct-tape holding the battery door on the hopper closed. The players with little or no sponsors, and little or no money. The players who's parents help pay for equipment and entry or paint for events or practices. This is the beginning, these are the new pro-players, the new-school. These players are the future of paintball.

-Welcome to life on the D-List