Pool Cue News and Review

Well, it seems that the trend of players losing sponsorships is continuing.  Most of us heard about this in Charlotte, but Gabe Owen has made it publicaly known that he and Mueller’s are done.  Gabe posted a thread today on the old AZ Billiards Forum, letting everyone know that he’s single and looking.

This ain’t good.  Gabe and Allison were with Meuller’s and the APA for as long as I can remember.  The Allison thing is probably a little different, as the rumor is that her asking price was simply too high for the APA, but its a bad trend nonetheless.  As Mrs. Lovett said, “Times is hard”.

With the GenerationPool.com 9 Ball Championships in the books, there’s been a bit of a shake-up in the rankings for both the WPBA as well as the all important PCN Power Rankings (the one you really care about). On the WPBA side, Allison Fisher is still holding on to her #1 ranking. A Ga Young win would have put her in the top slot, but runner up points weren’t enough to get her there. New entries into the Top 10 include Melissa Herndon, so congrats on breaking in.

The PCN Power rankings had a bit more of a shake-up. Souquet held on to the #1 spot due in large part to how well he’s been playing throughout the year, but a strong 3/4 finish for Johnny Archer in the GP tournament along with the fact that he seems to be playing just about every tournament he can get to has pushed the Scorpion into the #2 spot. Shane Van Boring’s two and out performance dropped him to #3. Due to the generally outstanding performance by the ladies and the crapfest from the men, for the first time we’ve got three ladies in the Top 10. Jeremy Jones rounds out the list. He doesn’t really deserve to be in there, but he did win (or should I say didn’t lose) a major, so he’s in at #10.

The complete rankings are always up, just underneath the Threat-o-Meter.

What can you say… five years is a long time in this day and age. According to a press release, the APA and Allison Fisher are kaput. Naturally, there’s lots of speculation on why this happened, most of it going toward the camp of “the APA must be in trouble”. Neither Allison nor the APA had any comment on the matter, so I’m going to give you my own viewpoint on this matter and its not nearly as doomsday or jaded as my opinions normally are.

The APA is filled with people like me: C and D Players (yes folks, I am a pretty poor excuse for a pool player). Typically, as you get better, you leave the APA behind for the BCAPL and VNEA. Casual players don’t know or care about Allison Fisher. If you asked them to name a pro pool player, most of them will likely cite [shudder] Jeanette Lee as the most recognizable face of pool. After five years, they probably finally came to the realization that Allison isn’t a good match for the league. Either that, or they were just really uncomfortable with the idea of giving Allison some wood for their 5 year anniversary.

The doomsdayers are going with the theory that the APA is on the ropes, but even with pool being in the proverbial crapper, the APA is still rolling with 200,000 or so members. As I see it, this is all about putting a new “face” on the APA. The APA even said this in their release “citing a desire to redirect market dollars outside the industry in an effort to reach new pool players”. In my opinion, Allison has never been a good fit for the APA. I don’t even think she’s a good fit for Cuetec for the exact same reasons as why she wasn’t a good fit for the APA, but that’s for another day.

So what will the APA do with the money they’re saving? If they’re serious about spending it outside the industry, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some ads on other “sporting” events that pool players like, namely poker, bowling, fishing and NASCAR.  I’m keeping the Threat-o-Meter at yellow for now, but I’ve got my eye on you APA.

As I’m sure you’re all aware, recently the men’s “association” The UPA sanctioned an event without making sure the promoter could actually pay the prize money. The players got their checks and sure enough, they bounced. Johnny Archer, Mika, John Schmidt and a few other names you probably know got rooked out of $36,000.

Enter billiards svengali Mark Griffin. The guy works out a deal with the promoter to buy a bunch of his tables so the promoter can take the proceeds and pay the players. So the reality is that if it wasn’t good for Mark Griffin, he wouldn’t be doing it, but I doubt the net result of this from a financial standpoint was much more than a wash. Of course he wins a shitton of good will from the players and the community for doing this, which more than makes up for the fact he’s probably not making a profit on the deal.

Generally speaking, I’m a bit of a skeptical ass, but in this case, color me impressed. The guy’s a smart businessman and has some long-term vision, which you see about as often as a komodo dragon running through a mall when it comes to this industry. As a result, I’ve moved the PCN Threat-o-Meter down to a cautiously optimistic “yellow”.

So I’m killing time ripping through my news feeds looking for something to riff on and I come across this article from the Modesto Bee. The article is about Noel Campos, the gal who won the BCAPL Women’s Open division championships. The story isn’t so much about her winning the title (and some serious jack to boot) as much as it is about her putting some mouthy player in her place. Ok, I know its not hard to believe that some trash talker got put in her place. What is hard to believe though is that she was talkin’ smack to someone who is in a wheelchair and legally blind to boot.

As the story goes, Campos’ opponent sees who she’s up against and then says “Oh, great. I get to play a gimp”. Campos then proceeds to drill her en route to winning the open division. I get talking smack. Its part of playing at a high, competitive level. What I don’t get is why people feel the need to take it “there”. Tell someone they’ve got no game, talk about how you’re gonna put them in a hurt locker, that’s all fine. What isn’t fine is getting personal or prejudicial on someone.

You all of course know the end of the story. The only thing that could have made the story even better was if Campos would have gone over to her after the game and in the best Southie accent she could muster up, said “How do ya like THEM apples??”

If you have a few minutes, hit the Modesto Bee and check out the article. Better yet, after you’re done reading the article, drop an email to jjardine@modbee.com and give Jeff a shout out for giving some positive juice to our happy little industry.