reading the pdga message board....

[mirth]

The Texas thread that turned into a flame fest in the Ratings & Skill Based area, who the hell is Guru? BDH? I figured out its not Bruce....

[Bruce Brakel]

BDH=Guru=Executive Director Brian Hoeniger

[Jon Brakel]

He's not my Guru, so I just call him Brian.

[mirth]

had a feeling thats what guru meant.

[Bruce Brakel]

There is a good Pro-Am Rip-Off thread getting started on one of the the Fair Weather Pro threads in the Rules and Standards section.

Feel free to pile on!  

http://www.pdga.com/msgboard/showflat.php?...vc=1&PHPSESSID=

[Bruce Brakel]

The "Pros can go am, no questions asked" thread is interesting.  It is morphing into a Pro 2 for 2007 thread which is another interesting topic.

Jon, do you remember this story?  http://www.pdga.com/msgboard/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=601781&Main=601516#Post601781

Prove it by identifying the kid.  If you remember it, you would not forget who the kid was.

[Bruce Brakel]

O.k., for those of you who are avid PDGA.com readers, you may have noticed Jay Reading baiting me repeatedly, and me not responding much, even to the stupid and misleading things he is saying.

The last time I explained the "why" of this on pdga.com I got a stern warning from a moderator, and I don't need to get banned in the last couple of weeks leading up to Byron Big D.  A couple of years ago I made a New Years resolution not to argue with idiots.   Any idiot can pick a fight with me on pdga.com and not get much of a response, unless they have a semi-cogent argument that I can respond to on the merits.  Jay has not said anything semi-cogent worth responding to.

If he has raised any questions in your mind, feel free to ask, here, there, in an e-mail or at the next IOS. 

Oh, and don't link to this thread on pdga.com unless you want to run the risk of being banned yourself.  Even when someone is a genuine special tutor employing so he can maintain his football scholarship in remedial college classes genius, you are not allowed to point out on pdga.com that someone's bicep size in inches is far greater than their IQ. 

[mirth]

and for those of us who aren't avid pdga.com message board readers.... how about some linkage from here to there?

[CEValkyrie]

Bruce,

  I think it's time you make another New Years Resolution for 2008.  Stay off message boards unless you are promoting events. Over the last year i've heard more & more people talk about your opinions and posts. Several have decided to not play events that you are involved with.

[Abelardo Arenas]

and for those of us who aren't avid pdga.com message board readers.... how about some linkage from here to there?

http://www.pdga.com/msgboard/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=743803&page=0&fpart=8&vc=1

In case the link doesn't work, it's under the topic "Should PDGA pros have to earn the pro card?" Page 8 and on.

That's just one of them.

[Working Stiff]

I don't know why Jay hates Bruce, but he certainly took some cheap shots.

Personally I enjoy reading Craig Gangloff's posts as he denies the existence of the "retail/wholesale difference of Am prizes creating the MPO added cash" phenomenon that is the standard operating procedure all over the country.

I also found the quote that "IMHO, catering to the Am divisions does far more for the sport than throwing money at NT's and Majors" from a woman whose husbands company just completed the annual over-hyped, yellow-roped, God-King MOTHERLOAD of all "throw money at Majors" tournament just three days ago rather ironic.

[Working Stiff]

Bruce,

  I think it's time you make another New Years Resolution for 2008.  Stay off message boards unless you are promoting events. Over the last year i've heard more & more people talk about your opinions and posts. Several have decided to not play events that you are involved with.

Bruce really got dragged into this one when Chuck Kennedy used his tournaments as an example.  I'd find him innocent of instigating this brouhaha.

[Jon Brakel]

Bruce,

  I think it's time you make another New Years Resolution for 2008.  Stay off message boards unless you are promoting events. Over the last year i've heard more & more people talk about your opinions and posts. Several have decided to not play events that you are involved with.

Bruce really got dragged into this one when Chuck Kennedy used his tournaments as an example.  I'd find him innocent of instigating this brouhaha.

Bruce is neither completely guilty nor completely innocent. Bruce is a born instigator. Bruce likes to turn things upside down just to find out what might fall out. As many toes as Bruce has stepped on, he has done 10 times more good by bringing things out into the open. It is because of Bruce's posts several years ago that someone can even post about using AM profit as "added" cash without having his or her ass handed to them.

Sometimes Bruce pisses me off. If he doesn't piss YOU off every once in a while, then you're just not paying attention. But Bruce's words aren't meant to hurt anyone. If anyone doesn't want to play our tournaments because Bruce speaks his mind and they don't agree with it, then I won't miss them. If you don't agree with Bruce and you don't want to post on a message board then come to our tournaments. Brown bag it and talk to Bruce about the issue during lunch. Bruce loves to talk about disc golf politics.

[edited for neither/nor, either/or mistake]

[Mukey]

lol, just don't take anything that anyone says online that seriously & everthing will be OK

[Bruce Brakel]

I don't know why Jay hates Bruce, but he certainly took some cheap shots.

Personally I enjoy reading Craig Gangloff's posts as he denies the existence of the "retail/wholesale difference of Am prizes creating the MPO added cash" phenomenon that is the standard operating procedure all over the country.

Before I started posting on pdga.com, TDs all over the country were uniformly in denial about where their pro added cash came from.  Many of the ones I knew personally were just clueless.  They were running the tournament for the club, and the club decided to give $500 added to the pros.  They weren't doing the tournament financials.  That's where the added cash fairy came in.  Now there are only a few old school holdouts left.  So many people understand the truth, it's really hard for guys like Gangloff to continue to deny it.  But he may be as clueless as most TDs used to be. 

Innova is more into this than Discraft.  Innova still requires its vendors to treat its price schedules as confidential information.  Discraft publishes their price schedules on their website.  When Discraft was operating under their price fixing agrerement with Innova, things were different.  But since that has expired, Discraft does not care about all that.  If TDs are buying discs, all that stuff is irrelevant to them. 

Meanwhile, most of my opinions are worth more to me than the buck fifty I won't make on some fool who claims he isn't playing "my tournaments" because he does not like my opinions.  I don't put much weight in the honesty of that statement anyway unless it is coming from a pro.  And then its not what I think but what we do that motivates them.  Players play tournaments that are well run, on good courses, close to home, offer what they want in player packs and prizes, or are the only tournament they can get to that month.  No one is picking and choosing their tournaments based on whether I think the rules committee shouldn't slip unvetted, unannounced rules changes into the final draft 24 hours before it is to be sent to the printer, or whether the PDGA is participating in a felony when it takes $3 fees out of an arizona B-tier.  If Jon is running a good show, it does not matter if the merch guy is a little bent towards paranoid schizophrenic ideation. 

And Jon is right, if you aren't offended at least once in a while by something I've posted, you just aren't paying attention.  But since they've adopted the new moderating stance at PDGA.com, I'm a lot less offensive than i used to be. 

[Working Stiff]

A question for Bruce:

I'm hoping you have seen some better tournaments than I and can explain what you think is the most fair way to set up a prize purse.  Here is what I seem to see in different tournaments.

A) All sponsorship is added to the pro purse.  All cash you can wrangle from the retail/wholesale difference is added to the pro purse.  The TD swells with pride thinking about how all the 1000 rated players will think he is a great guy and wish they had come to his tournament when they get a look at his payouts on PDGA.com.  Ams complain that the Pros made money off thier entry fees. Call this the Greedy Pro Tournament.

B.) Sponsorship is split evenly between pro & am OR split based on a % of participants (60% of players are ams, so 60% of the sponsorship goes into the am purse.)  The extra money provided by the retail/wholesale difference is added back into the am purse where it came from.  No group gets any of thier purse at the expense of another group.  The Advanced Am winner gets more value in Merch than the MPO winner gets in cash.  Pros scream that we are rewarding sandbaggers.  Call this the Greedy Am Tournament.

C) 90% of the sponsorship goes back into the tournament, 10% goes to the TD.  The extra money from the retail/wholesale difference goes back to the TD.  The TD receives some compensation for the hours of work they put into the tournament.  Everybody complains about flat payouts.  Call this the Greedy TD Tournament.

It seems to me that no matter where the money goes, somebody thinks more of the money should have been earmarked for them.  I've never been to a PDGA event where there was no bitching at the end about the payouts.  Is there a "perfect" prize purse out there, or are we fooling ourselves with an argument that depends on what your priorities are?  Do you think the PDGA should do more to dictate what these priorities should be, or should the decision rest with the TD?

Also, what did any of that thread on PDGA.com have to do with earning a Pro card?

[Jon Brakel]

With the IOS Brett, Bruce and I decided that tournament value should be returned to the divisions that added the value. So, we give every Am a nice but reasonable player pack that they can pick out then we payout the rest of the Am payout divisionally with each division getting back the rest of their entry fee in payout. The Pros get their money back (less PDGA fees and course use fees), again divisionally. The Am prize retail/wholesale difference pays for expenses, PDGA fees, trophies (both pro and Am) and a portion is turned back to the Ams in CTPs and flight life. Then a small portion (about $1 -3 per Am player) goes to the TD division which is made up of the individuals and clubs that are adding value to the tournament. This means that some people play for free, some of my motel expenses are covered, some of Bruce's gasoline expenses are covered, etc.

Sponsorship, when we get it, is applied in a manner in keeping with the wishes of the sponsor. I would usually vote to distribute the sponsorship across all divisions based on attendance but I don't think we've ever had a large sponsor that didn't have some idea of what they wanted done with the money. If someone were to find a large sponsor for the IOS I would also support a finder's fee to be paid to that person out of the sponsorship.

I call this the "Fair and Balanced" plan. I don't understand why pros would think they are entitled to any of the Am profit since none of it is their money, however in the "Fair and Balanced" plan the Ams do pay for the pro trophies.

[Bruce Brakel]

What I think is fair is to let people know what you're going to do and then do that.  We're upfront about our pro payouts at the IOSeries.  They suck.  That actually works for the newer and lower pros because it tends to keep the 1000+ rated players looking for some other tournament to play.  Pretty much everything we do is at brasscash.com.  Anything we do weird, funky or different, like Am IV, we advertise it.  

The Memorial this year is going with a Big-Player-Pack-and-NO-PAYOUT format for the amateurs.  It is on their website.  If ams want to play that, there is nothing unfair about that.  If they don't want to play that, then they probably won't come from all over the country to play that.  But they are advertising it, and I'll sure advertise it too, and then we can see how people really feel about that.  There's nothing unfair if the players know in advance.  

The Homie is promising to pay out the top 1/3rd instead of the top 40% of pros and 50% of ams like the PDGA charts probably say.  Its on their website, on their flyer.  If you like the payout distributed that way, play that tournament.  They'll also have food and two good courses.  For the tournament itself, the player pack and the food, that tournament is usually a good deal regardless with what they do with the payout.  They're advertising it so I think its fair.  I love that tournament.  I'm busy this year making trophies for my own tournaments, but I highly recommend the Homie.  

If you don't have significant outside sponsorship you can do two of three things: you can add decent cash to the pros, you can give enough to the "volunteers" that they'll keep "volunteering," or you can spend most of the amateurs entry fees on the amateurs.  You can't do all three without significant added cash.  Most tournaments do not have significant added cash.  Most TDs talk about sponsorship more than they actually get it.  

At IOS tournaments we call "sponsorship" the cash and free stuff that comes from advertisers, manufacturers, vendors and benefactors.  All of that goes back to the players in a manner that is consistent with the purposes of the donor.  I treat as sponsorship the free stuff that Discraft gives me, but not the wholesale-retail difference.  I give all the value of the free stuff back in the larger Discraft Player Pack, the Throw Discraft CTPs, and lower prices on Discraft.  I do a lot of maths and accounting to make sure that Discraft's sponsorship is going back into the process, but Discraft wouldn't know or care if I put it in my pocket.  Meanwhile, most of the wholesale-retail difference gets split between the amateurs from whom it came and the PDGA and the park district.  People have no idea how much the PDGA takes from an IOS and its players.  It is in the ballpark of $700 to $1000 per tournament for us.  More like $200 to $400 from some half-full tournament that tries to run on our weekend 90 miles away.  The PDGA almost always makes more off the tournament than the volunteers actually doing the work.  That's why sometimes it sounds like I hate the PDGA.  I don't, really, but my feelings for the PDGA parallel my feelings for the government.  

I think the PDGA should enforce the value criteria for running sanctioned tournaments and they should require that TDs follow the rules.  Beyond that, I think they should be really loose on innovations that are well advertised and can fit on the TD report form.  The main thing is truth in advertising and delivering the value promised when you decide to run a PDGA tournament.  The PDGA could do a better job of reporting that information to the players too.  Their spreadsheet calculates amateur value and pro value automatically.  I wish their tournament stats would display those numbers.  Our tournaments deliver far more to the amateurs than the PDGA requires, and it would be nice to see that confirmed on their website.  It would be pretty cool if you could look at last year's scores and also see that the Milwaukee tournament delivered 100%, the Homie delivered 178% and the Hot Rags IOS delivered 204% to the amateurs?  Ditto if you're a pro?  It would eliminate a lot of the guess work trying to decide which tournament to play.  

What did any of that have to do with earning a pro card?  PDGA.com threads have thread drift like a balloon in the jet stream.  I just look for posts relating to my favorite topics and then respond.  I don't hijack too many threads but I'll fly with the hijackers.  

[Jon Brakel]

Yes, what Bruce said. I'd like all the TDs to advertise what they are going to do and then do what they advertise. I call my plan the "Fair and Balanced" plan but some other TD might have a different idea of fair and balanced. I'm fine with that. Put it on your flyer and have fun with it.

[Working Stiff]

Thanks for the responses.  I guess the fact that you allocate some money to compensate the individuals that make the series run is what has folks bashing you.  It's the "Hey, that's my money!" syndrome.  I've noticed that most of the people who complain about "money Grubbing TD's" have never held that job and have no idea how much work it is or how thankless it can be, so I take thier criticism with a grain of salt.

BTW-I've been watching that thread.  Suzette Simons should have Bruce completely off the hook by now.  Today she posted "Ams build the PDGA, Pros suck the money and resources out." 

Of course, I doubt Jay Reading has the balls to blast Suzette Simons on the message board, so maybe Bruce is still on the hook.