In our 6 Pocket Association we are going to set a very high standard as to what defines a Pro. There will be a code of ethics, a dress code, and a requirement to support the billiards industry by ways of exhibitions, autograph sessions and other things that are not necessarily being done on other tours.
FL RESPONDS:
I am not a lawyer, but you must remember pros are a free agent, a basic sub contractor. I don't think anyone has a right to dictate to them too much until you become their primary source of income and main and only employer. So my basic take is until you are paying me 6 figures a year, or at least 75K and up, you should not be telling me what to do and bossing me around too much outside of your event. When you are paying me 6 figures you can then say she-yit, and I will squat and ask what color would you like and how big do you want the patty? So until you achieve that, I would go light on making people work for free.
I would not want anyone telling me to do a free exhibition. I get paid $750 to $1500 for an hour show. Free I do not understand. Many players cannot do exhibitions because they are shy and don't know any trick shots. If you made them do one, they would screw it up so bad it would be a disaster. If I do a sub show at any event, I expect to be paid extra. You find 1 or 2 who are good at this, and pay them. Leave the rest alone.
Everyone dresses nice on the UPA tour. I think all you have to do is have them looking like golfers on TV, nothing more. If somebody shows up looking like the Viking tour, you send him to Macy's to buy decent clothes. Most of those guys look like they were dragged out of the drunk tank, they are a disgrace, some look like homeless people.
I would want neat hair, no dirty nails, no bad breath, no liquor on your breath, and you can't come in smelling like Bogdan of Poland, who smells like a Yak left out in the rain. Nothing can be offensive. Somebody has to be the ref on that one. Bogdan I would send home to buy underarm deodorant, splash old spice between his balls, and back off on the garlic. Some have to be told what to do because they are stupid.
Black leather shoes, no white socks, golf slacks, no jeans, golf shirts, no T shirts that says born to lose. I like a visor to shield my eyes, and I would allow only them, no ball caps that say Cat or Harley.
There has to be rules on patches plugging sponsors. You need to allow them, but not let the guy come in looking like a billboard or a NASCAR.
That was stupid in the IPT trying to get them in business dress shirts and suits. Or the Artistic tour making us go penguin, Fatty said, puttin a pool player in penguin, is like puttin whipped cream on a hot dog.
A coat, tie, vest, is restrictive and hot. Golfers and Tennis players stopped dressing like that in the 1930's. It's stupid and totally out of date.
Golf has shown it’s not how you dress than counts, it’s how you act that counts. Let's see Tiger Woods play golf in a tux?
I think every pro should sign anything put in his face with a smile and not be allowed to charge at an event, what he does or sells outside of that, is his business. I never saw Nicklaus or Palmer turn down an autograph. And when they enter the event, make each one sit down and sign balls, T shirts, stuff that can be put up for sale to help pay the tour bills.
Sports teams hire players, and then they try and control them. A minor league baseball player begins at the minimum of 50K a year, most push 100K. The bottom figure for a major leaguer is $316K and most are pushing 500K. These are the rookies and not the super stars getting the mega bucks.
Name me 5 pool players today making over 316K? In guaranteed salary, with insurance, benefits, retirement?
What we have out there today is a giant joke. They toss a 25K adder and want 50 guys to try and make a living off it. It’s like tossing a T bone steak into a dog pack of 12 hungry dogs. Only 1 or 2 will get fed, the rest go hungry and they cut each other’s throats over what is out there.
I charted what the players made on tour for years, and for a couple of decades, 11th place, made 11K a year. You can get a better deal working down at the local 7-11 store. Only the top 10 have ever had a chance. And they pull all the exhibitions and endorsements leaving nothing for poor 11th.
I think the closest model to pool is golf. You don't get paid a salary and you play when you want to, not when you are told to. But golf has the TV contracts and IBM, Cadillac, Rolex and all the top sponsors and you win a million for a major. If you just showed up 52 weeks in a row, made the cut, came in last every time, you would win 500K for the year. Most make a million a year up and only work half of the year. That is prize money, and does not count into their side deals, endorsements, etc. A golfer gets paid for coming in last place, what a pool player gets for coming in first place. That is why I call pool, an underworld, because everything is upside down, opposite of what the real world is all about.
I am going out to Vegas next month to play in a pro UPA event; I will spend $1500 to get out there and back, 500 entry fee, and 2K to play. On a real tour it would not be using our own money to pay us with. There would be no entry fees and I would be given a check for $1500 when I walked in the door to cover my expenses.
And how does pool do it, the PBT, the US Open, the IPT, and the UPA in Arizona, pays you checks that bounce and don't cash.
Anyone can launch any tour and get some bozos to show up and play for chump change, because they have nothing better to do. What nobody seems to care about, or focus on is first, these men have to be paid a decent living, or you have bums, druggies and gamblers who are nothing more than low rent criminals with rap sheets who can't get a real job. And that corporate American does not want to fund. I can name you 3 pros right now that went to prison for selling drugs. Name me 3 golfers that have been in the big house?
What is a tour, the PBT had an event once a month, then the UPA 6 a year, now down to 2. A tour, a real tour is playing every week, 52 weeks a year, like golf, not now and then when some sucker is going to put up 25K and then hold an event and lose 25K and then write rubber checks? The Pool tour today, IMHO is a very bad sick joke.
And the pool industry is greedy and only interested in their own profits. They would not fund or help pros or any real tour. The BCA only helps those who make things, not play with things. That is the real killer; the industry will not support the pro game.
Unless you play for a million and push the gambling which is how Poker did it, and pool was too dumb to see that and the stupid BCA was pushing playing -penguin and pretending no gambling existed in pool, or did everything they could to kill off those who did. There is nothing wrong with gambling, casinos are everywhere, everyone’s doing it.
I don't think pool will ever gain respect until they can fund and pay out to begin with, 1 million a year, and guarantee the top ten 100K a year each, just for showing up. Then you have to fund to support a top 20, 11 to 20 making at least 50K a year. Then you have a tour. This is never going to happen until a zillionaire comes along or a fortune 100 sponsor picks it up and runs with it. ESPN wants you to pay them to get on TV. Pool never goes anywhere fast until it gets on TV, on the weekend, at a regular time like Golf, and a major network pays you to put the sport on like it does all the other major sports.
All you need is 10, well groomed, well trained players, who can interact well with major sponsors. That is how snooker did it in England for decades, a trained stable of 12 who were all trim nice looking lads. It was not open to any bum who crawled out of a back room of a pub and could play. That is why you don't need Earl with his mouth running, or Kid D stoned on a joint and 350 lbs of fat flopping around. I see them now coming out of the can to play brushing the powder off their noses. They should all have to Pee into a jar, before and after every event and anyone who is doing drugs should be DQed and their prize money won, forfeited. To have any serious tour, major corporate people are going to invest in; the drugs have to be gone. If they don't agree to that, then don't show up.
The problem any new tour has, is it needs that major sponsor to put up a couple mils to get rolling and the problem is, the tours out there, for decades, have been tarnishing pool's image to the point where there is nobody that does not know by now we are a bunch of losers and misfits, drunks and drug bums. And to be sure nobody misses that; every pool movie made makes that its central theme.
Golf movies show heroes winning majors. We show Fast Eddy drunk.
It gets worse, The PBT, then the UPA, then the IPT, has hammered about every potential corporate sponsor by now and totally turned them off. The UPA cannot find a single one. The IPT did prove that even if you put up a couple mil, and got a tour rolling, which they did, big time TV won't buy in. What they proved, IMHO< is pool is finished in the big time. Without TV, you have nothing. So you are now back to finding the zillionaire that will fund it and a couple of mil is chicken feed to him.
Golf has 25 to 50K people a day show up; Baseball can fill a stadium with the same amount of people. Pool cant and that is what keeps it in the gutter. 500 people are considered a huge crowd. Only main line TV contracts can save it. I have been to a number of pro events where there was more pros playing, than fans watching. When we can't even fill up a small ballroom what chance does the game have.
Does Bill Gates or Ted Turner, play pool? That IMHO< is your only shot and chance.
And now the economy has tanked and the big corporate people are pulling back and out of sports, so the timing is lousy. Who is going to take on pool when we are in a depression? Vegas is even trashed now.
I am sorry my message comes off negative, but telling the truth about a trashed sport is not going to be pretty. I did not trash it. So do not shoot your messenger. The BCA, BD and P&B mag will tell you its all great and they lie like dogs, I tell it like it actually is and they will tell you I am crazy. Oye Vey? So the question is, do you want a bowl of bull shit from them, or the truth from me.
I wish you the best of luck and success and I pray you pull it off, where all the others have failed so miserably.
click the pic to enlarge it.
Posted 25 May 2009 - 07:22 PM
FASTLARRY, on May 25 2009, 08:03 PM, said:
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