Your Blogger Answers, batch number one

Well, with the first two commenters, I got enough questions for a full post, so let's get started! Of course, you can still submit your questions for me to answer. In fact, I encourage it. I beg you to ask me questions, PLEEEEEASE~!

Anyway, our first commenter identified himself as "The Lurker Below" and submitted these queries:

1. Do you think any of the play-ins for the TIT stand a chance against their respective top seeds?

Well, the stock answer is that this is e-fedding, not college basketball. Upsets happen more often here mainly because the criteria for victory are so subjective and are dependant on the judge and, more importantly, how well one guy performs in a session. In basketball, if one guy has an off-night, the team can still win. In e-fedding, well, you are the team.

That being said, I can't say that I'm all that familiar with any of the work of the play-ins past their first round performances. However, among the guys who showed up, some impressed and some need work, and if you need work going up against Dan Ryan, well... you know.

2. Do you think PTC's GTT7 will be a success or not? Do you feel that changing the format of said tournament will do any good, when it's tradition has always been single eliminations.

I don't think that format will have anything to do with the success. Rather, it'll be the committment of the handlers involved. that being said, with the high number of no-shows that usually come with a GTT, it'll make it that much harder to pull off a round-robin the way it should be pulled off rather than with maybe one guy advancing because he's the only one that RPed for his region.

However, I think it was the right idea to change things up. They haven't held GTT for over a year, almost two. The landscape of the game has changed, in that I'm not sure how much "new blood" they'll get into the PTC community. We're talking about maybe having 32 or 64 as opposed to the 128+ they've gotten in the past. For the TiT, 32 and 64 works. For GTT... maybe trying something different is the order of the day.

3. Why do you think it's so hard to find an event where both promo style writers and narrative story wrters can compete and be judged fairly? It seems that in FW, promo styles are king, and in PTC it's storyline, and anyone who does differently, puts themselves at a disadvantage

Mainly because of stubbornness on both sides of the coin. Of course, the number of crossovers has been pretty good over the years, but you'll find that the mainstays on either side would rather keep to themselves and write in their style.

I'd like to think that with the ToC, I gave people the most all-encompassing tournament option around, and hopefully, Shinder keeps that going as part of the TEAM tradition. It's too bad there aren't other people as entrepreneureal (sic) as that in other communities.

4. Excluding the big brands, and always famous places like fWo and PRIME, what's a solid fed(s) with a good roster and atmosphere, but maybe not a lot of limelight, that you would like to see more people check out or apply to?

Big is a relative term, but I have three in mind that are off the beaten path, so to speak. And by off the beaten path, I mean they're not located on or affiliated with PTC or FW:

A1E - My home fed and one that's been open for about 10 years now. The roster is great, even without the recent addition of Troy Windham. The atmosphere is welcoming for the most part. It has a rich tradition and history that developed almost independant of the FW circuit until a few years ago, and the roster is smallish, so you can go in and make an impact right away.

NAPW and Rebel-Pro Wrestling - They're sister feds on the indie-scale. One is based out of Alberta and the other North Carolina. A lot of great and quirky talent resides here, and just because they're indie in scale doesn't mean they're small-time in talent. D! won the first ever Tournament of Champions, and Ravager currently holds the Challenge Championship. In fact, he's the only guy who's held it and his reign is approaching two years now. Also, the atmosphere is warm and it's probably the most grassroot duo of feds you'll find.

All three feds get press on the blog, but not a lot of people think to go there as their first choice. They should though.

5. Are tag teams in efedding a thing of the past, or a thing that can only work by creating outrageous angles? Do you feel as if people don't feel as proud to handle tag teams as they do singles? Or is it the lack of a community? or the perception that single(s) championships > team titles?

I don't think they're a thing of the past, but I think it's a lot harder to handle a tag team well than it is a single wrestler. Notice the people handling tag teams nowadays... they're usually older, more mature handlers who've done the singles thing and are looking for something else in wrestling. They're also handlers who remember when tag team wrestling wasn't treated as an afterthought or a joke by the WWE and TNA and are looking to recreate some of the classic tag divisions.

I will tell you this though, NFW has a bumpin' tag division right now, and EPW is looking for tag teams. I can tell you from experience following the latter fed that Brunk treats tag teams right. The people are out there. It's just a matter of folks dropping their preconceptions and going for it in the tag division.

6. In hindsight, when looking back at first opening TEAM, is there anything that you'd change? If so, what?

Well, when I first ideated TEAM, it was totally different from what it became. But assuming that you meant when I did the first TEAM Invitational Tournament... well, there's only one thing I'd change. I wouldn't have invited the malcontents from the WfWA into the ToC in 2007. They had a lot to do with my e-fed related malaise that followed in the wake.

Now, onto "The Rage" who asked the following queries:

1. Who do you think advanced to round 1 of TIT?

Well, certainly not Masked Violator 2, Josh Anderson or Brian Larsen *snicker*

Anyway, Shinder's going to have a tough time deciding who'll take the vacant Anderson/Larsen spot, or whether he's going to go for a bye in that situation. Although Lance Spencer went 3 to 1 on Nate Dakota, I thought Dakota was good enough to make the match close.

In the other contested play-in, I really wasn't feeling either guy... sorry "Rage" but in my honest opinion, I thought that you fell a little flat, but that the potential was there. Still, I wouldn't feel right advancing one loser and keeping the other one home without giving them a chance to do a one-RP shot for it.

2. PTC vs FW in a trash talking contest. (ICly of course) Yay? nay?

Yay if only because the guys who would come out would do it well. I'm not sure who'd do it though. Some of the PTC guys that we'd all want to see might stay home because they would feel it a waste of their time or that they'd get smoked. Some of the FW guys might stay home because they wouldn't take it seriously. But among those that I think might come out for it, it could be fun.

But then again, wouldn't the TiT count as a "trash talking contest"? ;)

3. A big, I mean big 256+ or 512 member roleplaying tournament from feds from every circle, even those email feds, and pay to play, because I hear writers from email feds > web feds. Think it could work?

Of course it could work, but it would take a dedicated group of people to run it and for all the competitors involved not to expect even short-form writeups until the later rounds. IE, it would be really, really fuckin' hard to do.

Alright, hope that answered all your questions... remember, KEEP 'EM COMIN! I'll keep answering these questions as long as you keep asking them!

Hell Freezes Over

No, I didn't clone myself for e-fedding purposes :p

Did you read the latest A1E show? If not, you missed a hell of a debut. Troy Windham made his return to the e-ring and it was in A1E. Gregg PMed me on Facebook the other day telling me he was making a return in a place I didn't expect him to. I took it to mean that he was Captain CongaLine, who's handling the Spaniard and Capt. CongaLine in various feds, but he said that that wasn't him. I never thought in a million years that he was talking about A1E.

So what does this mean for A1E? Well, for one, it's an infusion of main event talent into the fed. Right away, Windham can step into any amount of dream feuds, including Marcus Westcott, Chip Friendly, Ken Cloverleaf, Cross, Troy Douglas or even with yours truly (and I don't mean Adam Benjamin, although that could be a fun feud too :p). Although A1E is heel-heavy already, Windham has come in as a sort of uber-heel that even top fed-baddies like Westcott and Friendly would have no problem working against as a temporary face.

I think it also means free pub for A1E and for a new rush of people who may not have wanted to try the fed out, or who were there before five or six years ago and left with a bitter taste in their mouth to come back and try it out. If the fed is good enough for a legendary CSWA character, why not them too?

I have very high hopes for the new partnership between Windham and A1E. It should be an interesting ride at the very least.

The Return of the Blog: Why I gave up TEAM and where I'm going from here

Well, I said that there was always a chance that this blog could come back, and now here it is. Don't ever say I never gave you guys anything :)

So, in case you haven't noticed, I've decidedly ramped down my activity in eW over the last year. The blog was the first casuality for the simple reason that I couldn't keep my attention span at a full level with all the stuff going on around me. I started to prioritize my eW activities, and I figured that being an eW journalist was nice, but ultimately it wasn't needed.

Now though, things have slowed down, I figure I can bring the blog back, although with the caveat that it won't be as journalistically themed as it was before. I mean, that doesn't mean I won't spotlight different feds at different times, but I wouldn't expect full card reviews like I was doing.

*booing and hissing from Katz*

Now that that's out of the way, the meat of the post. Part of my eW ramp-down included me giving up the reins of TEAM. TEAM and this blog have almost been synonymous with each other, mainly because I drafted the original idea for it here and used this blog as a pimping tool for it. It was a happy marriage, and it worked out well for me. That's why it was so hard for me to give the pseudo-i-fed up. Still though, as I said on the boards, it was a combination of life and the cardwriting becoming much like a chore for me that I had to give it up.

But the question then becomes why I gave it up instead of closing it down. It can be told sort of anecdotally at first. I probably told this story before on here, but I'll tell it again. Back when I first got to FW, Andrew Medina had a fed open which for the life of me, I can't remember the name. Well, for whatever reason, he closed it down when life got to be too much for him or whatever reason. The problem was that the fed still had a lot of handlers who were willing to keep it going, guys who plans and wanted to RP in it.

That situation made me realize that feds didn't really belong to the fedhead, no matter what some people might think. Sure, some are more inexorably linked to fedheads than others. NFW is one such fed, probably the closest example I can think of to a fed being equal to the guy running it. But in reality, even in those feds, the fed belongs to the handlers.

Think about it. You can theoretically run a fed without a fedhead, or at least one singular fedhead. E-fed communism is possible in theory. Whether it works in practice is another thing, but that's not a conversation for this entry. However, if you don't have handlers, your fed is either a concept or it's just masturbation. Besides, who wants to do all the work by him/herself? Not me, says I.

So that's why I put TEAM up. I know that there are people out there that still want to participate in these events and that still want to defend their titles. Even though I set the entire infrastructure up, it's really nothing unique. Tournaments and one-off shows... nothing too revolutionary there.

Thankfully, Adam Shinder, a guy whom I think is a terriffic handler and an untapped resource as a fed-staffer, took the ball and will run with it. Hopefully he can do as good a job or better than I did with it.

So yeah, that's where things stand right now. Here's a toast to being back on the blog, and hopefully, I'll update this frequently enough for you guys to enjoy it.

The Hall of Fame Question, Part 2

I know I've come out hard against Halls of Fame in the past, and for good reason. Feds that don't really have a sense of longevity should tread lightly on how they're going to throw around an honor that should be reserved for the best of the best. I've somewhat mellowed on the issue over the years. Really, if you're going to institute a Hall for your fed, you'd better be damn sure that your fed's been around and active for at least five years and that you don't get into the habit of enshrining active characters or characters who come in, win every title and then quit the fed a week later because they have nothing left to prove.

As an aside, quitting because you have nothing left to prove is the biggest cop out. You always have something left to prove if you're truly great in this hobby. You're not just satisfied with winning the World Title, you want to defend it. You don't want to be great for a month, you want to be great for years. To me, a Hall of Fame worthy character is a character that proves time and time again why they're among the best in the hobby. The best recent example of a guy who should be a first ballot should his fed open a Hall is Big Dog. He went on a tear early on in his career, and then after he had his run with the title, he "settled into the back," focusing mainly on angles and stories. Then, he comes back and takes the World Championship again and on top of that, ventures into the interfed arena and places respectably there as well. That's greatness. It's not a one, two, or even six month run. It's sustained greatness, and it's even more magnified in this hobby, where characters can flame out in a matter of months.

Be that as it may, I'd still be hesitant to fully support any kind of character-based Hall of Fame. I mentioned it briefly in this thread at PTC, and yes Jay, your thread is the inspiration for this blog entry ;). I figured I'd explain it more here. It's not really all because of the temporal nature of characters either. Each character mentioned in that thread that I'm familiar with fits the mold of a true Hall of Fame character. They have longevity (Hell, Melton, along with Hornet and Mark Windham, is the most long-lived character in eW history, still going strong after two decades), they have their peaks and they have entrenched themselves in the history of their respective feds. Still though, it might come off as a slight to the handler behind the character, or in some cases, to the guys feeding ideas to the handler behind the character just to enshrine the person "on stage." Even though real wrestling Halls honor the character, usually, those characters are inextricably linked to the person playing it. Many of us have handled way more than one character, and a good amount of us have handled more than one character very successfully. On top of that, Joey Melton doesn't/didn't write matches. Steve Thomas does/did, and my criticisms about him handling the EPW crew notwithstanding, Steve Thomas has done an excellent job writing matches, ideating angles, giving personality to various NPCs, elevating other handlers by association and steering directions of entire feds. Just to honor what Joey Melton has done in character is a tip of the iceberg of what Steve has done both in and out of character over the years. In the grand scheme of things, which is more important?

That's why if I'd ever really get behind a Hall of Fame project, it'd have to be an across the board Handler Hall of Fame. That would pretty much solve a lot of problems. For one, it'd give people who were very good with several characters but never really had a defining character a place to be honored. It'd take into account things like fedheading, matchwriting, angle planning and the like. It'd also be a place for people who may not have had a great impact in a fed or via handling, but busted their asses to provide forums, host interfed events or mediate crises, forum guys who've had great impacts on the hobby but really don't have a character or fed attached to them.

Even though many of our best characters have a lot of us in them, when the character is honored, a lot of times, it feels like the person behind it isn't being honored as much. In the end, everyone just wants to feel pride, and I say there's more pride when someone is honored for the work they did, not just as the piece of work that they roleplayed as.

Novelty

Last year, when I first ran the TEAM tournaments and other events, the response was amazing. Sure, I had no-shows. I'm not going to pretend that everyone RPed and RPed enthusiastically either, but there was enough RP going on for me to be proud of it. The second iterations, well, the TiT and ToC were still both well RPed-for. Some of the SuperShows have become a bit sparsely participated in, despite the somewhat enthusiastic turnout for people signing up for them. The absolute nadir thus far though, has been this past week in the Dupree Cup. I think there were a total of three or four matches that had participation from everyone who was scheduled to be in the match. For one meet, only one person RPed for only one team in the entire meet. One person!

For me to chide people about not being active would be pretty hypocritical, seeing as my time and energy lately has been sapped pretty bad, but at the same time, to have one team totally no-show and another team only have 1/4 representation is kinda depressing. I asked around and got a few responses. They ranged from the totally excusable (death in the family) to absurd (dropping out of the tournament because they thought they wouldn't be fairly judged), but I still haven't gotten a response from most of the people who didn't show. It makes me wonder whether the sheen is off the rose and they don't really want to come out and say it. I could understand if that was the case. I mean, I wouldn't want to tell someone that I didn't RP because I thought the novelty was gone. At the same time though, TEAM isn't a regular fed. It should always have some kind of novelty attached to it, shouldn't it?

That's one question I really don't know how to answer. On one hand, I love putting on SuperShows, I love running the tournaments, and I love having the interfed titles. On the other hand though, I'm very nonplussed about the lack of participation. It makes me wonder if the sheen is off the rose. I've been sort of fighting with myself over this in my mind, whether I was the one taking the novelty away, and it's been recently confirmed by two other minds. One is Jarret, who on his blog mentions that TEAM may be getting too much like a regular fed, and the other Karl, who suggested the same to me privately. It's not like that was coming from two bumpkins who came in with no idea of how TEAM worked. Both guys are respected RPers/handlers, and they've competed in several TEAM events before. For them to notice the same thing really drives the point home to me.

TEAM has become everything I never wanted it to become.

Seriously, I wanted to do things with TEAM that people wouldn't do in their regular feds, that people COULDN'T do in their regular feds. That's why all the secondary titles are differently gimmicked. I really don't want to have regular RP battles for titles when that kind of thing doesn't work unless you have a history going into it. The CoC, yeah, because you expect the best of the best to come up with stuff out of their asses, and a lot of times, with the sort of Victorian Era European royalty we have in the main-event pool for TEAM, you do get matchups with history. Still though, I can see now how people would get burnt out on the FFA~! Title if there's one every other week.

So, I've already decided to scale back on the SuperShows. Instead of having them all the time, scaling back on them will have fewer TEAM matches for people to feel obligated to sign up for. Having fewer of them means that TEAM matches are more likely to fall on lulls for the regular cards, and people will have time to RP.

The tournaments... well, hopefully that's just a byproduct of too many SuperShows, because if week 3 of the Dupree Cup ends up like week 2, I'll be pretty bummed out. I guess that's my question... has TEAM really lost its novelty? And can I ever get it back? I have no plans of folding this thing anytime soon, but I really would feel bummed out if people didn't get up for TEAM events.

I know this post seems a bit emo, but that's just the mood lately. I'll snap out of soon, I promise.

In a funk

As you can see by my decreased output both on this blog and in the feds themselves, I've been in a bit of a rut lately. I really haven't felt like this about eW in awhile, but it's not like I don't like doing this anymore. Far from it, I'm still amped about NEW and EPW coming off the supercard and heading into hot PPVs. I'm still excited about the Dupree Cup too. It may not show, but I am looking forward to these things. So why the doldrums then? I don't know. I do have a lot of other stuff on my plate too. Work has been kicking my ass lately. Work locally has been kinda scarce, and they've been running me to exotically annoying locales such as DC and NYC. Fun for the whole family.

The thing is, I never used to be able to empathize with people who couldn't do this because of time constraints, mainly because I've never been in that boat before. I always make concessions for them, and rightfully so. IF you feel like you don't have the time to do the things you're doing, then don't do it. Now though, I feel like I'm somewhat in the same boat. I mean, the desire's there, but the time and energy is becoming scarce. Now I know how it feels, and I can really feel for those who have to bow out because they're truly busy.

Now, this isn't some long, drawn out retirement entry. Far from it. I have committments in several feds that I plan on keeping. Thankfully for me, all the feds I'm in except A1E are on the work-friendly schedule, so I don't have to cut back any more than I have to. Plus, if I'm dropping your fed, I'll tell you to your face.

This post is more just a vent really. That, and well, I feel like the lynch mob will come after me if my blog postings get any sparser :p

Anyway, just to make this more user friendly, are you in a funk right now? If not, have you ever been in one before, and if so, how recently? Just to gauge how many people out there have felt like this before.

The Tag Rope Repaired

Just when you think you have a trend down cold, it has to go and reverse itself. In some cases, this is a bad thing, like growth on the stock market that suddenly makes a u-turn and crashes. In other cases, you're left pleasantly surprised. The apparent resurgence of tag wrestling in eW is one of these cases.

About a year-and-a-half ago, I bemoaned the dwindlage of tag team divisions. (To show how dated that post is, WFW still had pretensions of being an active fed then :p) Up until even a few months ago, that post rang true. The only fed that I knew of that had anything resembling a healthy, thriving tag team division was NAPW. Mind you, NAPW's division could stack up with any great tag division in the history of eW, but the truth was that even feds that did have a tag division ran it on life-support.

Then, something happened. People started giving a shit about tag teams again and made efforts to handle them as one handler or, the best part, palled together with other handlers to form tag teams. As a result, you had a great turnout for the MCW Tag Team Tournament, a concerted effort from Jarret and A1E to re-establish the tag division and the overflow in PRIME's newest roster expansion to enthusiastically enter the division and make it viable once more.

Does this mean there's been a sea change in the way people feel about tag teams? I would say no, because I feel that deep down inside, everyone wants to have a tag division. I would say that there's a sea change in the effort put forth to have a tag division, at least initially. It's very, very important to note that with PRIME and A1E, this re-expansion of the tag divisions is still in the infant stages. Who knows if and when people will get bored of it and go back to their selfish singles division exploits. For now though, things are looking up, and I feel that's a good thing.

When you have an active tag team division, you have a battleground for people to enter and do battle with other characters regardless of standing on the card. It's the only true place on the card where position really doesn't matter all that much. It's also the best avenue to show the collaborative side of eW, which is what I feel makes eW so great and sets it apart from other forms of writing.

Hopefully, the interest in tag teams stays up. I have a good feeling that it will though.

The Good Guys Do Win

I don't know what 2006 is wholly going to be remembered for. It's been a crazy year. Feds have died (ACW, AWC). Feds have been born (SbW, RevPro). Feds have come back from the dead (MBE). Wrestlers have pretended to be imitations of other wrestlers (Anti-Cross/Beast, "Slambo"/Steven Shane). There've been a multitude of face and heel turns, and a plentitude of big title wins.

However, to me, there haven't been two bigger title wins this year than two that happened at the tail end of the year, one in A1E and the other in PRIME. If you haven't guessed by now what two guys I'm talking about, well, allow me to illuminate. James Irish captured the A1E World Championship from Richard Farnswirth at Cyber Brutality, and Nova captured PRIME's Universal Championship from Tchu at King of Kings (a pretty good read, by the way... you should peep it just for the Face-Eater stuff). These two title wins are the most satisfying I've read all year... well, aside from my own A1E Title win with JA and LVW Title win with Cowboy Jimmy Donovan, but you knew that :p.

Why are they so gratifying though? Because both guys are guys who worked and worked and finally got over the hump after years of toiling to get to the spotlight. They're both the kinds of guys that everyone feels good about winning the big time, mainly because they've come so close so many times.

Take James, who's been in the main event scene in A1E for about three years now. He's consistently one of the most entertaining guys on the roster, a well-done face in a sea of heels (although A1E seems face-heavy at times...), but he never got over the hump until last month. He'd come so close; sometimes, it felt like reading my own match to see how he was going to do.

Nova, from my understanding, has had a lot of real life stuff intervene with his march. Always a PRIME fan-favorite, he was *thisclose* to getting there when he went to France to study for a semester, thus killing his involvement in the hobby for that time. While it was a wonderful opportunity for him in the real world (which is what counts), it still left people feeling bad for him that he couldn't capitalize what he had worked for. Then, he came back and came close again with the Great American Nightmare match. I haven't been following PRIME as long as some other people who read this blog, but I still felt an immense sense of pride for Nova getting over the hump.

Now, don't mistake this for displeasure at the former Champions. Richard Farnswirth and Tchu made phenomenal Champions, and I felt good for them when they won their respective titles. However, for both of them it was their second run with the title in question, and both of those guys have an air of dominance around them, like they don't even need to try. That's not a bad thing, but it certainly evokes different feelings.

So while 2006 on the whole may not be represented by the hard worker finally getting his due, the end of this year certainly will be punctuated by it. It just goes to prove... the good guys do win after all.

250th Entry: What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

Yep, yet another milestone. It's a quarter of... a thousand! Pathetic, I know, but you take whatever milestones what you can get in this life. It can be short. This past week was a painful reminder of that.

Anyhoo... "When I grow up..." that's something you always say when you're younger, but how many times do you end up being what you say you want to be when you're a kid? It's what you want to be when you're a young man that defines you. When you're 25, that's still pretty young (Quarter of a century, quarter of a thousand entries? Coincidence? Yeah, probably :p). So what do I want to be when I grow up, in this hobby? Silly question, you might ask.

But really, how many people in this hobby do you know who are older than the age of 30? You PTC heads probably don't know anyone like that. It's more common with the FW crowd. Usually, the oldheads, like Chad, Steve, Katz and JAAAMMMMARRR~!!!! *shakes fist* don't have the time to be as active as they want to be.

However, there are a two guys who are among the most passionate in the hobby, and they're both over 30 years old. They come from the A1 community. They're Dan West, who many of you either know as The Spoiler, Chip Friendly, Victor Molotov or Steve Watson - CPA, and Shane Gerlach, who's a workhorse as IrishRed. These guys have jobs, lives, families and friends, and they're as integral to every fed or competition that they're in as anyone else. How do they do it? I can't even begin to pretend to know. Maybe it's because they love wrestling. Maybe it's because they're masterful jugglers of time. Maybe it's because they can actually stop time. I don't know.

But what I know is... when I'm in my 30s, I want to have the passion for this hobby as they have. I want to be as much a part of the hobby as they are. Maybe I'll be in the same capacity as I am now. Maybe I won't.

But I still want to be a part of this game.

RAH RAH RAH

I was talking to Katz last night, and he was kinda lamenting the fact that no one besides myself and Bobby Nickens (Chris Storm, Joe Average, Guy Boudreaux) post on the NFW fan board anymore. No one really has the rah-rah spirit in NFW. I agree with him, actually. Honestly, it doesn't affect me as much as it does Katz, because as long as people continue to RP and send in segments, I think the fed's doing fine.

But as a fedhead, I can see why Katz wants more. I mean, I always crave feedback when I post TEAM happenings and cards. Plus, the more discussion you have, the better your OOC atmosphere is. I mean, everyone wants to have OOC harmony (or something close to it). But when no one's discussing things, it almost seems that you have that harmony because no one cares. While I honestly think that everyone who's in NFW cares about the fed, I also must point back to when I said that perception is reality. And if it's perceived that no one cares, then folks will think no one cares. Then things like considering shortening the regular season or cutting some roster fat start being considered. Then folks come out of the woodwork.

But if you think about it... who on FW does have that "rah-rah" spirit? I mean, the CSWA doesn't have an active fan board when the fed is active. WFW is the same way. So is NEW unless it's Sean trying to jumpstart conversation with the show status threads or by letting us know how he's doing in real life. The only fed that has an active OOC board by standards is EPW, but even EPW's board isn't that active by objective standards.

But what it does have it can probably owe to the infusion of either new, eager talents like Josh Ray or Scott Franklin, or the fact that so many A1 guys are there, and the A1 feds have always had active discussion on the OOC boards.

The other FW feds? They all have the P* standbys who've seen it all, and maybe that's a reason why they'll join a fed, but they really won't say anything on the OOC boards, because they may feel that what's been said has already been said before.

If you look at it, NFW has a good amount of those FW standbys. And they also have a lot of guys from the EWN and PTC circuits out West. I don't know why they don't contribute more. I'd like to speculate but I can't find a reason.

So that's my take on it. Honestly, this is one thing that I can't really diagnose as anythign else but the base of handlers getting older and not being replaced by younger enthusiastic guys. I mean, the youngest member of the NFW roster is probably Lindz, and they have a few guys on there in their thirties. They got other stuff to worry about than posting to the OOC boards.

So yeah... if anyone else has an idea, I'd be more than happy to entertain it, actually.