Cash Cow Champions?

So, after many months of speculation and bickering, the WAKA championship is finally over (even if some of it's divisions are still not finished playing yet). But what really does it mean? I don't think very much.

Sideshow Bob reports from Miami that 10 teams took part in the "biggest kickball tournament ever" as the WAKA guys boasted it would be. To put this in context: my WAKA DIVISION has more than 16 teams! Hell, the last party I threw represented at least a dozen teams. That seems a little ridiculous and would be embarrasing to me if I owned WAKA. I mean, their spokesman recently stated that they had 50,000 players - and just 10 teams showed up for their "World Championship" tournament?

This could have been forseen though; as I correctly predicted the regionals around the country were a failure. Please recall most of them were canceled due to a lack of interest from teams. So this was the first sign.

Sign two was the asinine idea of moving the finals to Miami of all places! The reason given for this was the growth in that area, and that sounds plausible. Until you find out that only 2 teams from Florida even bothered to show up! Half the teams were from the DC-VA-WV area and a few from some other places. So all of this to promote kickball in an area where hardly any of the teams cared enough to show up to play. Great move genuises!

WAKA must be making tons of money though, and I believe that's really what it's all about. And listen, I am all for capitalism, make money if you can and lots of it, but how about providing your people with something aside from promises? Please note that you could buy - for $100 for people playing KICKBALL - a tent with your team's name on it. Or if you are not a captain of a team, you can buy a $15, 2 hr open bar booze cruise (okay that one I like). Ooorr a Bloody Mary Brunch for $30, wtf? Kickballers don't drink Bloody Mary's! Well, I'm sure the WAKA guys got a nice cut.

I guess the bottom line here is this: I feel cheated. When I first started playing with WAKA it was fun to meet people, be able to drink at a discount, and have a few parties. My team won a decent amount and made it to regionals a few times and that was cool. Now it seems like WAKA is all about being a cash cow and claiming the "World Kickball Champions" title. I don't think that's why most of us fork over $60 or $65 to WAKA to play. In fact, I'm sure of it. And I'm glad that the Miami people are happy that they held the championship there, but the turnout was the lowest ever, and the travel made it impossible for many of us to go. And really, what was it for? The same teams that won still won, just with less of an audience to see it.

Maybe WAKA has outgrown itself. Certainly it has outgrown it's original intent, a fun way to meet people and play a goofy game. Now people argue on message boards about how great they are at WAKA and if you just want to play to have fun you should go play elsewhere. Amazing. I guess WAKA will need to change the rules about not being able to play if you are a professional kickball player, because it seems like that's what they want their league to be.

Sad because most of us just want to have fun. Seems like the WAKA founders are out of touch with the majority of their customers. In any event, the guys who won are the "Champions of the 10 who showed up" I guess. Or the "WAKA Cash Cow Champions". And that's hardly the world.

CORRECTION: 11 Teams showed up, Sideshow must have been too drunk to count.