Steve Davidson on PBChannel

[TJ Lambini]

Mr D is back and he's singin' tha same tune...coupla interesting quotes though:

1. X-Ball is an inherently defensive game and once teams are playing for prize money rather than showboating cos that's what they're being ordered to do, you'll see that it's very dull - or words to that effect

2. USPL format being run as a demo alongside tha NPPL's final event of the year...tester for NPPL to switch formats???

What does tha group think, Steevo still on a Jerry-must-die-and-all-who-stand-wth-him-can-go-too tip, or does he know something we don't?

 

[Furby]

http://www.paintballchannel.com/browse.php?mod=article&opt=view&id=246&style=details

Thanks for spotlighting this, TJ...I was hoping it wouldn't languish in the "Press Release" forum. I'll let Mr. Davidson's Interview stand on it's own two feet here...I'll reserve my comments and observations for a later date.

Just a quick note: Davidson never mentioned Braun's name, so any inference that's who he was talking about is yours and yours alone.

 

[TJ Lambini]

No worries dude, it's good stuff...love him or hate him, he's been around tha block a few times and always has something interesting to say.

And yes, it's my inference that he was talking bout J-Braun...I mean, it coulda bin anybody

 

[Piper]

Definatly an interesting interveiw. You have to love the guy he says what i on his mind, plus it is a nice insight into how it all started!
Nice work guys.

I think you should tell us what you think of it Furby.....


Piper

 

[raehl]

Hrm...

I don't know if I want to clean all the brown stuff that will come out of my speakers if I click on that interview.

I suppose I should reserve judgement until I actually listen to the interview... but....

Nah, I'll just wait until I have some more time and a good supply of speaker-safe cleanser.

- Chris

 

[Furby]

Originally posted by Andy Piper


I think you should tell us what you think of it Furby.....


Piper

I'll reserve my opinions for a later date, however, let me make some observations:

Steve Davidson is not a large man...think tiny evil front player. I had never met Mr. Davidson in person before, but I'd talked to people who had so I wasn't shocked by his small size. He's in his late 30's I'd guess, and his fiancee` is a very sweet lady.

During the course of his interview, I noticed that at some points his hands were shaking, and at other points his eyes would water up slightly, accentuating the ice blue color.

You get the impression from speaking to Mr. Davidson that he's a very passionate man with regards to this sport, and given that he's been there from basically the beginning, it was interesting for me to listen to him talk about how things were back then, and how he feels they are now. I honestly do not follow the political side of tournement paintball, nor do I have much interest in it. However, listening to Mr. Davidson speak about how things were was a treat for me, and a bit of an education. I made no bones about being a fan of Mr. Davidson's precisely because of his penchant for saying what's on his mind, and his lack of tolerance for fools.

Having said all that, I made an effort to stay focused on the interview and to keep from letting my biases interfere with what Mr. Davidson had to say.

Of course, the opportunity to be heard on my show is an open invitation to whomever has something interesting to say...I'll never tell someone like Raehl, Robbo, or Mr. Braun to not bother talking to me if they have something they care to discuss in an interview setting. I interviewed Robbo at about the same time frame that I interviewed Mr. Davidson (about 3 years ago), and of course the invitation is always open to him and anyone else who'd care to comment on the state of paintball today, has a new product, etc.

This year I'll be at the IAO, World Cup, and the Miami Super 7 if anyone cares to look me up and have a chat!

 

[TJ Lambini]

Raehl? Have something interesting to say? Shurely shome mishtake?

 

[Baca Loco]

Originally posted by TJ Lambini
Mr D is back and he's singin' tha same tune...coupla interesting quotes though:

1. X-Ball is an inherently defensive game and once teams are playing for prize money rather than showboating cos that's what they're being ordered to do, you'll see that it's very dull - or words to that effect

2. USPL format being run as a demo alongside tha NPPL's final event of the year...tester for NPPL to switch formats???

What does tha group think, Steevo still on a Jerry-must-die-and-all-who-stand-wth-him-can-go-too tip, or does he know something we don't?

1--product of field design. Some of the field designs used in X have been more conducive to aggressive play and some allow more defensive play. Right now players and teams are trying to figure out how to win games so we don't yet know exactly how it will play out but prospect does exist for teams to play defensively with leads in back half of games, to close out periods and so on. Not sure that's a problem though. The USPL format does potentially have the advantage of a more sophisticated point producing format that might, repeat might, tend to make for more consistently aggressive play.
2--if true would tend to suggest NPPL uncertain if current tourney format has any real TV potential.

 

[raehl]

Well..

It was definitely three years ago, as the last time Furby interviewed Steve was right when Steve was making his run at college paintball. (It's no secret that I don't particularly care for Steve.)

I'm listening to the interview right now. I have to laugh quite a bit about Steve's "perspective" after the fact on needing a "non-profit" sports league, considering how hard he fought tooth-and-nail to get college paintball running under a for-profit structure under his control as opposed to the non-profit structure we run under now. "Waive money under people's face and hope they go blind" was very much a Steve Davidson tactic - All Steve could talk about was how we'd be on TV any second if we just did what he said. Saying that it took 3 years and way too much paperwork to form a non-profit organization is *EXACTLY* the argument Steve Davidson made to us 3 years ago about why it was better to accept his LLC over our non-profit. Seems laughable to have him faulting someone else for allegedly doing the same thing.

On the patent issue, I laugh. There's no field divided into zones in X-Ball. Penalties and game divided into periods? Yeah, but so does every other sport virtually (as steve points out earlier in his interview.)

I have two general comments on Davidson:

Take anything he says with a very large grain of salt. I don't think Steve lies; I just think that somewhere along the line what he remembers happening tends to take a severe departure from the reality of the situation. It's nice that Steve blames someone else for his format not getting on ESPN, but the reality of hte situation is that Steve's proposals just plain stunk. The way Steve was marketing the USPL (patented format? yech) prevented any real possibility of it ever growing, and anyone with 2 cents of common sense (including ESPN) could see that.

Steve has some very good visions/ideas. His weakness is he's never been able to plan how to get from the way things are NOW to the way he wants them to be. The last USPL attempt was case in point of this - it's a nice format, the whole revenue stream thing was a good idea, but Steve failed miserably on taking the necessary, incremental steps to move people from where they were to where Steve wanted them to be.


- Chris

 

[steve davidson]

responses

Seeing as how Mr. Raehl likes to follow me around on the internet and spew his invective I'll only be responding to him once here, as otherwise this forum would become nothing more than him ranting and me trying to respond to all kinds of wild accusations, twisted history, unrealities, distortions, half-truths and etc.

Mr. Raehl knows full well that the offer USPL made to the college teams was to act as a marketing arm - not form a League. For some reason - despite the fact that the other two league coordinators at the time this all took place were heavily in favor of the arrangement, Mr. Raehl saw it as a threat to his personal control of college paintball and fought it tooth and nail with some of the best propoganda I've ever seen.

We had a short term opportunity to get coca-cola usa and several other major sponsors behind college ball - but we needed to show them a solid market, and in order to do that, we needed to be officially representing the schools/teams via a contract. Raehl stonewalled the contract, accused us of making a money grab (yeah, right, stealing money from poor college players...the very same ones we were trying to get money for...).

In short, Mr. Raehl is personally responsible for making sure that college ball is still without national funding. No surprise, this is the same guy who accused me of trying to make money off of college teams and then, a few months after USPL pulled out of the arrangement, told his 'membership' that he wanted to start collecting fees from them. One poster on his site even noted the seeming contradiction, which was ignored (big surprise).


So, that's about all I have to say about Chris. Go ahead and rant, spew your garbage, continue to distort everything and be happy, because you know that if you shout often and loud enough, some people are going to believe you no matter what.


I'm now on 'Ignore Chris Mode' (I have a button in Explorer just for that) which will no doubt open the door for him to make numerous unresponded to accusations (those are the ones that most people tend to believe) but you know what? Chris doesn't matter and, therefore, nothing he says matters. Its a blanket response, appropriate for anything he may say in the future. He just doesn't matter.

***

As for the other responses here so far: NPPL Super Seven is not necessarily going to change their current format, but they do know that they will need something for spectators in the future and we're working together to see if we can make something happen.

Oh and I also have this to say: I most specifically did not mention any names (other than the one I did) - which means I've moved from being up-front and open about 'who-must-die' to keeping the list to myself...