The national Beer Pong League

"austin"

"umdbeerpong

The bottom line is that beer pong is supposed to be fun. Its origin as a drinking game will never be forgotten. People line up at parties to play it because it is fun. If we can portray our events as big, organized parties that grown-ups out of college can still come back to and enjoy themselves with their friends, we will be in the right direction. ....

Can you give me the cliff notes version of this post Garrett? I can't read that much.

"HellaBinDrinkin"

I didn't read all the posts on this thread, but I get the general idea what's going on. I don't really even play beer pong, but my son got me very interested in it, & it's starting to become extremely popular on the west coast (mall stores selling official bpong tables, cups, balls). I know this idea may seem difficult at first, but it has the potential to make a shitload of money for promoters, & level the playing field somewhat. Here's what I would propose:
 
Create a 3-level ranking system, something like Pro-level, Amateur-level, & Novice-level. All rankings would apply to individual players ONLY, not teams. Obviously, the top teams will be composed of 2 Pros. Any team that enters any qualifier tournament would HAVE to play in the bracket for the highest ranked player-for example, if  someone from Smashing Time wants to play an event with his novice girlfriend as a partner, they must play in the Pro bracket.
 
Start with the top 25 teams from this year's WSOBP V (or whatever-I know there were lots of ties), & those 50 individuals would be ranked as Pros.
 
Allow any person to enter whichever bracket they choose,  so ANYONE who WANTS to play against Ask About Us or Gossip Girl, or  other Pro-level players has the opportunity to do so. Hell, it's their money. Many novice players would probably love a shot at the top-ranked players, just for bragging rights ("Hey, we only lost by 28 cups!").
 
I would suggest that the prizes for each bracket in a qualifier tourney be this:
Pro bracket winner gets the paid entry fee + hotel as the WSOBP currently does
 
Amateur bracket winner gets entry fee only to same event
 
Novice winner gets cash prize of say $100 or something + credit for a bracket win toward moving up to Amateur rank
 
Any person in the Novice or Amateur rankings who wins 3 qualifier events would be forced to move up to the next ranking, regardless of their partners. So if someone is on a team that wins 3 Amateur brackets at 3 different sanctioned qualifiers, they would be forced to play in the pro brackets any any sanctioned events after that. Same goes for Novices moving up to Amateur.
 
I realize that this would create additional work for event organizers, but it would be easy enough to simply enter a player's ranking into the database, & move the winners accordingly. Eventually you'll have a large pool of Pro players like the pro golf tour. Having 3 brackets at each event shouldn't be that much more difficult, & it would certainly draw in a much larger number of players if they knew they wouldn't have to beat the world's best players to win anything.
 
One last thing. I think the prize money should NOT be so top-heavy. Having money to 10th place or 15th place in larger tourneys will also lure in more people if they think they have a shot at winning their entry fee back.
 
Just some ideas to think about to equal out the competition & attract as many players as possible.
 
One last thing. All you kids whining about what the promoters are doing should be thankful you have those individuals working as hard as they do to promote events that you can play at. If you don't like how they do it, either suggest something positive or run your own event.