Remember the day when CAL Premier was first announced to the public? Everyone was excited that this league would be the most competitive of them all. Not only will people be playing for bragging rights, but for that all important CAL Invite spot. The difference between Premier and Main was that Premier would include the lower tier Invite teams along with the cream of the crop from Main. Both sides wanted to prove they belong with the best.

However, it seems this league was doomed to fail from the start. With CAL adopting the first ever 32-match season, this killed more than half of the CAL Premier teams in the Atlantic division alone. Outside of the league, Premier teams seemed to be doing well. Aside from all the team deaths, the competitiveness within CALCLUB-p was intense. Slanderous comments about races, religions and mothers were being thrown left and right, not to mention all the accusations of being terrible on LAN. It seemed CAL had accomplished half of its goals. They made a league that was awfully competitive.

I’m going to stop right there with the history of CAL Premier because that’s pretty much where the good stuff ends. I’m going to start talking about the point of this article, about how Premier players are killing their own league. Sadly, this is also an overview on North American Counter-Strike in general, because Counter-Strike is in a very stagnant state, which will be explained a bit more later on.

As a veteran member of CAL Premier, I can tell you that this league is somewhat killing Counter-Strike. All it does is create egomaniacs. The difference between Premier then and Premier now, is that people played because they wanted to and because they wanted to get better. Teams, no matter how much was said between one another, would always practice. Nowadays, all they practice is their ability to talk down to others. It’s heartbreaking when I see teams wanting to get into Premier. Why? Because I know it’ll end up killing them. Not since the first season, has a move-up team ever kept the same roster. And to a more extreme extent, some even struggle to stay alive. These teams practiced and played their hearts out to get to a higher league.

Why do they end up dying? Because everyone in CAL Premier thinks they’re better than everyone else. The worst day to be in CALCLUB-p is move-up day. The new teams don’t have the time of day to even breathe without getting bashed. Yes, this happens in every league, but it’s not the same. In Invitescrim, most teams have some sort of huge backing to be able to talk down to others. As wrong as it is, they have an ESWC placing under their belts, a high placing at a big NA LAN; they have something. They’re also talking to teams they beat at a LAN or placed higher than at a LAN. Most teams in Premier brag their LAN wins without the team they’re making fun of even being there. Who is to say X team wouldn’t have placed higher? Teams have the right to talk if there are facts behind it. No one in Premier has that right, aside from maybe two teams, twice a season.

What happened to the days where you used to be able to PM the other team and find out what went wrong with your strategies? Scrimming the same team over and over on a few maps a night; working out kinks and figuring out every little thing that went wrong. This used to happen in CAL Premier. Egos have grown though, and so have mouths. PM’s no longer include helpful tidbits, unless it involves how to have sex with your own family, since the other person has. Egos are too big to even scrim the team you’ve just lost to, for the obvious reason that they have 3rd party assistance. Also, remember, playing out is a joke. You're only scrimming to win, not practice!