Prepare For the Downward Slide...

There are a lot of people over the years in paintball that have said that the sport (if you can even call it a sport) is on the decline for whatever reason: constant air is going to ruin it, semi-autos are the devil, cheater boards, anti-paintball gun laws, liability insurance going up, and the internet as a whole putting the final nail in the coffin. I think I have a slightly different take on the subject.

I think nowadays in paintball the only part of the industry I can even be remotely optimistic about is the rec baller that plays in his backyard or out at his parents cabin with his friends. Those guys are playing for fun. They come in and get their CO2 fills and some white box paint and are happy. This is quite a contrast from the tournament players.

I highly recommend not taking a nap at any tournament events - that shade underneath the tree might look inviting, but you'll probably wake up with a tourney baller sticking a pair of vise grips in your mouth trying to rip out your gold fillings. Maybe that is a little overblown, but I won't be surprised at all when I see the police report hit the newswire.

Lets continue painting with a broad brush here. Tournament players have some really great habits regardless of age. Not all of them, but enough of them to overshadow all the rest. Let's go through them one at a time.

Bonus Balling

Not sure what else to say on this except that drilling three into the back of the head of a guy walking away with his gun raised, on purpose, after they have seen the ref pull him - well, that's some bonus ballin for ya right there. Putting six into a guy because you've got your gun set on Ultra Leet Pbnation Ramp Mode is bad enough, but after the guy is walking away? Please. (Please Note: This incident wasn't from some wannabe - it's from a guy that is on a team that might appear on television someday if this industry can get its head of its ass.)

Abuse of the Refs

It seems like this is almost mandatory nowadays. I don't know if I'll ever read a post or hear a comment about reffing being fair or objective. But the great thing is, tourney players let those refs know when they have a disagreement - all the way from yelling and screaming to plugging a ref across the field with two balls to the crotch because the guy didn't like the quality of his paint checking. Wow.

Rampant and Unapologetic Cheating

It just boggles my mind that tourneyballers need a ref when they are scrimmaging against their own squad. You'd think the half-dozen people in their 'posse' they haul onto the field could handle running the damn games, especially when they've bro-dealed their way into a comped entry for the day. But I've finally figured it out - they don't need a ref to setup and run games, they need a ref to practice their cheating in front of. Their wipes and slides and hip checks and protesting and distracting - all of it needs to be finely honed for the next tournament, and the guys in their squad already know all their tricks. I wonder if it ever occurred to them that if they called themselves out (whether it broke or not for chrissakes!) they might actually become better players? I guess they don't need to figure out how to play better when cheating better is going to pay off more.

The Dynamic Duo

Hey everybody, I'd like you to meet two of your favorite tournament players: Drunky McShitface and his brother, Snorty McCokefuck! Where's the party at, man? Wow we got so faded last night! Lets go hotbox the coaches car again in the parking lot with some of that dank! Maybe if we take one of our fifteen empty paint boxes (which we certainly didn't pay money for!) we can hide our empty beer bottles in it and nobody will be the wiser!

The Bro Deal

Hats off to a team that can find someone stupid enough to sponsor them - for the amount of money that a sponsor can pour into a team they could hire some temps to set fire to dollar bills all day. It would be about as effective, and maybe even better, because at least the burning dollar bills aren't going to knock up somebody's underage daughter while on tour. Teams getting paid in product completely screws the retailers in a local area because they're going to be flogging brand new guns off at half price while the ones on the shop wall will slowly collect dust.

We Are Screwed

These are the guys that are supposed to be the best and the brightest when it comes to play, conduct, and representation of the sport. What came out of the woods into the Xtreme Kool world of youth adrenalin sports has become something totally different. How the hell are we going to manage to do anything except piss people off with shit like this happening for the whole world to see?