Thursday, March 19, 2009
Opinion: Why Poor & Weak Leagues Start Dropping Near Mid-season
Of High Timez, Cue Killers, Pool Dragonz, Xtreme 8Ball, and Sexy Poolerz, you instantly see a trend. High Timez, Pool Dragonz... They go 0-for-everything. Cue Killers has a slightly more manageable 2-4 record, and the other two have very good records, with X8B leading the pack at 5-1.
So what's the trend? Pool Dragonz has been replaced by 8Ball Crushers after going 0-5. High Timez's Head Admin has demanded that HT's Interleague Coordinator drop one of the three interleagues they are in. With a 6-4 record and being Playoff-bound in the 6v6 World Pool Championship, and only having to deal with an 0-1 record in the newly-created 5v5 carry Major Pool Interleague, HT's decision has essentially been made for them, sending the message: We aren't good enough to win in MLP, so we'll let someone else deal with what is now an 0-6 record after their forfeit to SS tonight.
Cue Killers are 2-4, and are starting to fall apart with players withdrawing and guys like l3055 jumping ship to play for a team that is competitive in TPL (as soon as he sits out his 2-match box for not reporting when he and his team got smashed by Straight Shots.)
Meanwhile, Sexy Poolerz at 4-2 and X8B's 5-1 record mean that because they're good enough to compete, they will likely stay the course. While it may look like a daunting task to participate in an interleague for 4 months, let's keep in mind... The only two things that are required, are that you have enough tournaments to keep everyone eligible, and bring seven players to a match one night per week. The HT Head Admin, who I will keep picking on because I know more about their situation than PDZ's, has said interleagues are "hurting" the league.
Really? Maybe in the sense that 7 players are unavailable to play in the league at night because some Interleagues (not MLP, by the way) have rules about not being in ANY OTHER GAMES while playing. I've always wondered about this rule. I can understand banning training tables - that has its obvious reasons. But this notion of playing multiple games at the same time being banned is stupid. What is the reason behind these rules? Is it because it slows the match down? If that's the case, set a 30-second timer on the tables like the timers utilized in REAL pool (you know, the game many players Yahoo Pool makes look good on here likely suck at?) Don't allow safetying unless the cueball or object ball hit a cushion after contact. Oh bummer, that can't happen because many refs and admins in interleagues across the board barely pay attention to their matches (guilty. I don't EVER watch snookfests. They're boring, annoying, and are ALWAYS lost, rather than won.)
Some games take 20, 25, FORTY minutes or MORE to play. Outlawing playing multiple games at the same time will not fix that. The only ban should be against bootem and rack & run games, which of course require training tables and would allow the usual suspects to take advantage of the leniency. I would love to, someday, get all of the interleague head admins together and have them explain each of their rules in their interleagues, and have them provide their reasoning for them. I think you would be surprised how many have all the answers (I frankly don't believe any would.)
But with leagues quitting comes a need for more leagues. There are enough leagues who have applied either late or been turned away at the start to replace 3-4 leagues. The obvious question comes with 8 Ball Runners. While we (Admins) haven't discussed it, I think there is definitely a feeling that when we've said "no" to a league at the start of the season, that bringing them in later when others have also applied and not been judged yet isn't fair to the leagues who are active enough. Efforts are being made in 8BR to make the league more active, which bodes well for them when Season 14 rolls around - so long as there aren't any incidents of stat faking or false reporting (or, Jose/David Daniel types) right before the season starts.
Is all the reasoning and logic used in tough decisions interleagues or leagues make sound? God no. We in MLP have made stupid decisions in the past, and we'll make some pretty airheaded decisions down the line. When really thinking about it, 8BR and PK has vastly better players than... High Timez, and Pool Dragonz. But if you always take the best, you have more issues (even without leagues like that, Admins have Magic Pool) to deal with. And the small-time leagues mentioned don't get the chance to show what they can do, and possibly attract players to their league.
I've always liked "the little guy" - it's like college athletics. Let's say MLP is the Atlantic Coast Conference. And a league like Cue Killers is Boston College. Now, they could easily not participate in interleagues, like BC could be in the America East Conference. But who's gonna come to play for BC in a rubbish conference like America East? But put them in the ACC... Players will want to come, because the exposure is greater. That's why leagues like Pool Fiction have thrived. They embrace interleagues as a way to ADD to their member count, not just CREATE a member count. Cue Killers have joined the ACC. People know about them now. That's a recruiting tool they can use with players who might randomly come through their lobby, and might be interested in joining a league.
And this all goes back to High Timez... Interleagues do not ruin leagues. The only thing that can happen is a league might look bad when they, like they've done in MLP and probably will in MPI, do poorly because players aren't good enough. And in some cases, they quit because they don't take it as a chance to get better. Or, because the reasoning ability isn't quite there with the decision-makers.
In the end, it happens every season. Maybe in Season 14, the experiment could be to accept only the best X number of leagues that apply. Forget the leagues like Pool Loverz, Pool Dragonz, etc. which are a liability to drop. Who knows? But the above, IMO, is a myriad of problems leagues and interleagues face.
