NPPL Bankruptcy

"Pacific Paintball and its subsidiaries will be filing proceedings under the United States Bankruptcy Code to effect a liquidation of their respective assets and business operations. The affairs and assets of Pacific Paintball LLC, NPPL LLC, XPSL LLC, PB2X LLC, Xtreme Paintball Fields LLC and Camp Pendleton Paintball LLC will be administered by a court appointed trustee in bankruptcy. The bankruptcy court will provide you with written instructions regarding how and where to file any claims in this matter.

Despite doing all we could do, we were unable to make the business a viable concern. Further, in this severe economic climate, we were unable to secure new funding. It is a truly regrettable outcome, though one which is unfortunately occurring more and more frequently in this environment. We thank all those who have supported us"

Earlier this week this press release was sent out signaling the end of an era in paintball. there have been a lot of mixed emotions from the playing community.
most of the NPPL teams I have talked to are in a daze and doing there best to figure out what they are going to be doing this season.
some of the people on the paintball forums are saying that this is a good thing because it should unify tournament paintball, having only one major league in the US, but I am not that optimistic. I do not think that the PSP will be able to keep it together with the HUGE influx of players that may be coming there way and the first few deciding events may become a logistical nightmare.
if all of the teams playing in the NPPL hopped over to PSP events, it would just about double the size of the league.
the PSP already runs for 4 days with the players that they have, so the events would most likely be a week long. and for the most part the players are not in a position the be able to take 5-6 weeks off of work or school per year.

plus there are people like me who do not have faith in the way the PSP is setting its rules.

I do not think that ramping has a place in tournament paintball.
the ASTM standards set forth by the paintball manufacturers are put in place for a reason, to keep the companies safe from lawsuits as long as they build markers withing the ASTM guidelines
and in those guidelines it states 1 trigger pull, one ball, pump or semi auto action only.
on top of that I spent a LONG time learning my gear and how to make it shoot
it is a skill that is lost to ramping, now every twelve year kid can pull the trigger three times and hold down a lane.

the PSP fans will say that the ramping rule was put in place to curb cheating, and in a sense it does, if you change the rules to allow cheating, I guess it is no longer cheating, but all that would have had to be done is to talk to the board manufacturers and make them add a mini usb connector to the boards so they could be flashed when the player steps on the field insuring that they are locked in semi and capped at X bps (the board manufacturers re designed them to be PSP compliant so they could have just as easily made them semi only compliant)
and if they refused put them on a list of non complient boards an not allow them at the events. hit them in the wallet they will fall in line

Yes you still have the issue of trigger bounce , but you have that issue with the first three shots in PSP mode .Distribute HARD penalties and fines for players caught willfully cheating. Do you really think that it would be worth say a two event suspension for that player with no substitution (so the team has team play a man down) or a $500.00 from every rostered member of a team or an automatic forfit from the event to have a cheating marker on the field? make it not worth their effort and they will fall in line.

next on my list of gripes is sideline coaching, again I spent a lot of time on field awareness and it is lost to 12 year old who can have people on the sidelines tell him whats happening, where the opponents are, how many are left, how much time is left and when to move.
it is just a stupid rule written for lazy people who are unwilling to do the work to become better in their sport.

that said, the PSP has a lot of god going for it too
the xball format aside from the rules listed above is VERY cool. and I wouldn't mind at all playing it.... just with stock class pump guns and no coaches :)
think about that... the highest level of player playing with the lowest technology
games not being decided by the largest wall of paint, or a monkey on the sideline running his mouth, but by the best team.... if it was a perfect world