IS THERE ANYTHING STINKIER THAN OLD DIRTY LAUNDRY?

Yes.  Human feces.  But that will be the subject of a different blog.

PSP and the history of tournament paintball (which will eventually lead to a discussion of their recent BPS rule change.)

Did you know that the PSP was founded on a lie and a vain attempt by one Lewis J. Braun to keep himself and his company at the forefront of tournament promotion?

It was.  Way back in 1992 when the teams founded the NPPL, they hired Mr. Braun to be their corporate counsel and also made the stupid-assed mistake of letting this same person volunteer to promote two of their scheduled six events - which later grew to four when Jeff Perlmutter of PMI dropped out of the promotion game. 

Well, ok, ancient history, right? Except for that pesky little saying about being condemned to repeat it if you don’t learn it, that bit of history could be forgotten.

The NPPL dropped its first event, reducing their inaugural season to five tournaments, which it has remained at ever since.  That left Mr. Braun promoting four out of five.

This despite the fact that this same promoter was responsible for the only national tournament who’s champion was decided by a coin toss in the parking lot (no lie – they had to turn on car headlights so they could see the toss.  Mr. Braun’s brilliant scheduling resulted in daylight running out before the game schedule did.)  AND the same person responsible for the world’s first $100,000 prize for a paintball tournament – that ended up handing out only $80,000 in cash.  And the same person who arrived at an NPPL annual meeting to announce that he had signed a deal with ESPN on behalf of the NPPL – any teams that wanted to be in it could pay him $2500 entry fee…(I’m getting ahead of myself.  I hope you didn’t miss the fact that he stepped into the middle of a television deal between the league and the network and then charged the people he was supposedly representing to attend…)

And then somehow Mr. Braun manuevered himself into the position of accepting all of the entry fees and unilaterally deciding how much of the take the league would get from him.  Seems there was always more dollars needed for port-a-johns that weren’t on site, more referees that didn’t show up, scoreboards that were never made…

Then he went through a period of having to ’share’ his wealth with some of the bigger teams who used their own muscle to get a lock on promoting at least one event a year.  Smart Parts got an event.  Bad Boys Toys got an event.  PCRI/PEVs got an event, and others as well.

Somehow they all forgot that NPPL events were supposed to be put out for bid.  Funny – there was only ever one bid meeting…

Oh, and I forgot all about the member teams’ annual dividends.  See, the way things were set up, all of the founding member teams, and any other team that stepped up and purchased a membership in the league were supposed to get a share of the profits at the end of every season.  Year one – everyone got theirs.  Year two – everyone got theres and then decided to roll it back in as an investment in the league.  Year three – no payout.  And there hasn’t been one since.

The above was the result of Mr. Legal Counsel Braun’s suggestion that the league be set up as a shareholder’s corporation like – and I quote – “supermarket chains”. Oh.  OK.  Sure thing.   (“So if that’s the best way to go, how come all the other sports leagues are set up as non-profits?”  “Shut up you!”)  The shareholder thing was a brilliant move to blind everyone and anyone who might question what was going on with promises of money.

Then he moved to disenfranchise the amateur teams (there was a majority of them and they wanted to do things differently) – despite the fact that it was illegal to do so. 

And how was he able to do all of this you ask?  He was the duly appointed legal counsel for the league and, as far as the paper trail is concerned, he never transferred ownership of the corporation to its real owners – the teams.

He also got rid of or bought off anyone in a position to question the way things were being run.  Anyone remember Kevin Donaldson? Jim Anderson?  Steve Davidson? Rosie?  Every one of them will tell you the same story – after they stop throwing up.  Braun used them as fronts and then cut them off at the knees when they got too uppity.

So then along comes Chuck Hendsch.  Chuck had been elected as Vice President of the NPPL the very last time that the organization held legally constituted elections.  Since the President (Tom Cole) had resigned (probably in disgust) according to the league’s legal by-laws, Chuck was in charge until such time as elections could be held again.

Chuck found some friends that gave him the monetary and political clout to take control of the NPPL away from Braun.  He announced what he was going to do (the league’s by-laws were in disarray owing to the fact that there were no legal voting members any more.  Braun killed that too) and then set about doing it, which entailed a complete separation of the league from anything Mr. Braun was involved in.

Go back and check the letter columns in the magazines and the archives of the web forums.  Braun publicly states that Hendsch was stealing the league.  He even went so far as to rename his organization PSP-NPPL in an attempt to confuse the marketplace.  But there was little he could do, since Chuck had been smart enough to secure the league’s intellectual property and Chuck won that shouting match.

The following year, Braun removed the NPPL part of his league’s name and its been in competition with the NPPL ever since.

Over the years, Braun has been alternately praised as having been instrumental in founding tournament ball in the US and reviled as a power-grabbing manipulator.  His reputation became so bad at one point that he had to hide his involvement with various enterprises:  his position with ProCaps as some kind of corporate advisor and distributor, his ownership stake in Cousin’s Paintball, his revenue sharing stake in Paintball Sports Magazine and who all knows what else.  The man was famous for ‘doing favors’ for people and then demanding payment at some future date.

(Quick humorous aside.  Mr. Braun hasn’t always had it his own way.  One company I know used to advertise in his magazine – Paintball Sports International. This company called the magazine up to temporarily stop their advertising since they didn’t want to go in debt.  Braun said he’s run the ads anyway.  The company insisted that the ads stop and stated they wouldn’t be responsible for paying even if they were run.  Braun ran the ads anyway.  Later on that year, the company attempted to purchase a booth at the World Cup.  They were told that they couldn’t have one until they settled their bill with the magazine – just fold it in with the booth price.  The total came to something like $3,000 of which half could be product that would be used for prizes.  The company delivered $1500.00 in bottle o-rings to the event…I’ll bet there are still some players out there using that “prize”.)

One thing is for sure – he’s never given up effective control of anything he’s been involved in.  You may not see him wandering around (which was difficult to do even when he was wandering around), but he’s still out there some where.

So now we come to ramping, rate of fire and the continuing antics of the PSP.  Which will have to wait for part two of this entry.  Except for an answer to Mr. Raehl’s statement in the comments of the previous post.  You are wrong about the history of setting ROF limits.  Everyone in the tournament game at the time was well aware that the ASTM, under major pressure from the American Medical Association, was insisting that there be NO full auto, NO multi-shot modes and that ALL electronic semi-auto markers should be physically limited to no more than 13 balls per second.  13.  Not 13.3.  Not 13 with ramping.  No bouncing.  No ramping.  No memory modes.  One trigger pull per ball.  Period.

They ALL knew it.  Some manufacturers voluntarily accepted the standard before it was finalized by ASTM (Brass Eagle among them).  Others, finding a willing partner in the PSP, chose to steal market share by ignoring the standard – and player safety – instead.

POLITICALLY CORRECT CAVEATS: Hendsch and Pure Promotions have since sold their interest to Pacific Paintball and Shawn Walker.  Since Pure Promotions set up an entirely new corporation, there’s probably nothing that the original NPPL owners (the teams) can do – and at this point it would be a wasteful, disruptiuve and pointless effort.  PSP has been taken over by Lane Wright and company and all of the evidence points to the fact that Lane is at least trying to do things wRight.  In any event, Lane wasn’t around when most of the foregoing occurred and doesn’t carry any resonsibility for any of it.