TEAM: Beyond the teams

For those of you who've been around FW for an amount of time, or who've been longtime readers of the blog, you know that I came up with an idea for team-based wrestling last year called TEAM. My vision was big... too big as it turned out, and thus it hasn't gotten off the ground.

At this rate, and in this form, I doubt it ever will get off the ground. Maybe if there was a boom in wrestling and handlers were as abundant as flies at garbage dump, then maybe it could work. Now though, I doubt I'd get the devoted handlers and characters to fill out four teams let alone the eight I ideally wanted to start out with as a minimum.

While TEAM in its original concept may be on hold, the name won't die. As you may or may not have known, I've run two tournaments sponsored by TEAM. The first one had the TEAM name branded on it; it was the TEAM Invitational Tournament, won by Karl Brown. The second is of course the Tournament of Champions.

I had this crazy idea that maybe TEAM could live on not as some fed that had a bunch of teams like baseball clubs populated with wrestlers, but as a sort of fed-connecting hub for major communities and their affiliated feds.

I think I've done a good job making the e-fed world smaller, at least in the three communities that I'm involved in. Right now, the blog and the TEAM events have attracted readership and participation from over twenty feds. I'm actually humbled by that fact.

The best way to keep that vibe going is to keep doing short-term things with little committment (like the TEAM Invite and ToC). I also want to reach out to more commnities. The e-fed world may seem big enough to us now with FW, PTC and EWN all having at least a passing knowledge of each other, but there are plenty of other communities and feds out there. I know for all the shitty Geocities-caliber feds out there, there are more than a few diamonds in the rough, like NAPW, and I think I need to find them and bring them in the fold by including them in TEAM activities.

So how do I plan on doing this outside of the two tournaments? Well, I have an idea.

Basically, I want to rn three big events a year. The TEAM Invitational and ToC will be two of them, but I need something to run in the summer months. I was thinking about doing a Summer Pickup League, but Yran beat me to the punch with his Sunshine Wrestling idea. Not really a big deal, and I fully support that, but I don't think I want to do that full time. The idea of having "pick-up" e-fedding events (kinda in the grain of what TEAM was originally going to be about) is something to keep in mind. Maybe I can run pick-up matches at various points in between the big events.

Some other ideas I was kicking around was having a Lethal Lottery event, or maybe some "memorial card" type things. If you have any ideas, let me know. I want to make TEAM as much a part of your e-fedding life as I want it to be mine.

But that's basically what I want. I don't even think I want to run the team-based league anymore. This sounds a lot better.

I hope you think so too.