Unfortunately, this flaw exists because of the segregated leagues. No new players will ever be able to attain the experience that it takes to compete in top leagues. The top players simply circulate amongst the other top teams. Similarly, teams don't die much anymore. Instead, they just overhaul their roster. Few new teams move up to CAL-invite either. Of course, there are always the new teams that win CAL-premier each year. However, if you look at the history of new teams coming into the league in the modern community, few ever made much of an impact. No new players will ever be able to break the barrier from the lower divisions to the higher ones, except for the few that relentlessly and slowly journey through CAL's divisions. Counter-Strike isn't like a sport in this case. In baseball, you can go to a batting cage every day and practice your swing. You can pitch to a buddy every day and practice your arm, or get someone to hit grounders or flys in the field. You can also work out and become stronger, which may provide an edge while playing a sport. These techniques of practicing can be transferred over when you're actually playing baseball competitively. These are the skills that can be worked on, much like your aim in Counter-Strike. This is how younger baseball players are separated from the “average” player and find their way into the better leagues. Unfortunately, experience is a much more important factor in Counter-Strike, and one can only become experienced by playing matches, attending LANs (like CPL), and scrimming with top teams. It's not like baseball in this sense. You cannot reach high divisions in Counter-Strike simply by practicing on your own techniques. This is why little new blood gets into CAL-invite. They don’t scrim top players, match against them, or play casually with them. The only way to develop CAL-invite experience is to BE in CAL-invite. The problem is that if you don’t already have CAL-invite experience at this point, the chance of you making it to CAL-invite is slim to none. This is the truly harsh circle of the community.

It's also a waste of CAL-invite teams’ time to scrim people that aren't as good as their own team, and because of this, few teams lower than CAL-invite will ever develop the skills they need to compete in higher divisions. CAL-invite teams aren't being mean or having "e-egos." It's simply a lot of time to give for no benefit whatsoever. If you never play with people as good as or better than you, you won't ever get better. If teams in CAL-main only play against CAL-main teams, they will probably never really achieve recognition or team ability past CAL-main. They might develop strategies independent of everyone else and reach the top of CAL-main. However, they have little hope in ever reaching anything higher without CAL-invite experience. Experience affects every second of your ability to play Counter-Strike. There has NEVER been a time in the history of Counter-Strike that any one player has been able to beat this system. Never once at any CPL has there been an unheard of player coming out of nowhere to attain fame and fortune and win anything. Not only would a single player have to somehow develop professional skill, ability, and experience without actually being in CAL-invite, but also his or her entire TEAM would have to do the same individually and together. There is zero chance of this ever happening. Informal checks and balances within the system prevent this. Tons of people PM me constantly asking for tryouts, or confessing how dedicated they are to Counter-Strike. I'm sure you are all incredibly dedicated, and I'm sure you've worked countless hours on your aim and skills. But, because you have no experience, you will never be in CAL-invite, and you will never get a chance (unless you manage to find 4 other people that have connections to the community, work incredibly hard, and somehow get a break). It's not our fault for not trying you out. It takes months and seasons to develop a single person and break them into “CAL-invite material.” As long as these factors are a part of Counter-Strike, this is the way the system will always be. There is no such thing as tryouts in CAL-invite. Tryouts haven't existed for many seasons. Subsequently, no new players are reforming the CAL-invite scene, and the old players are giving up from being burnt out. This is why the scene is crumbling.

Even worse, there is another cap I have yet to explain that simply magnifies the entire process above. This cap is the age limit placed on competitive Counter-Strike. You have to be at least 17 years old in order to compete in the CPL. High school ends and college begins at the age of 18. This is a large change that many people have to face. Because college can be incredibly time consuming and can even change where you live, it can create a negative playing field for Counter-Strike. Many players have to give up on professional Counter-Strike because they commit to school and jobs. However, if they could make a living professionally playing Counter-Strike, everyone would be much more apt to stick with it. This can be seen with the recent signing of Bullseye to coL. His life was passing him by; after college, the time came when making a living for himself was the most important thing - much more important than playing a video game with friends. He retired from 3D, the team that gave him the best chance at winning money; however, a low salary along with small winnings forced him to find a new path. Even if you were to win CPL twice a year, your winnings would total to a bit more than minimum wage. Because coL offered Bullseye a sound financial alternative - what he was looking for in the first place - he made the decision to accept it. Obviously, the time to move on hasn't come for many players. However, we will all eventually reach the same conclusion if circumstances do not improve quickly. Right now, CAL is literally struggling to put together a competitive CAL-invite league. Eventually, they will have to move many unprepared teams to CAL-invite, thus bringing the entire structure down.

The current season of CAL-invite directly shows this correlation. As I mentioned previously, the age that you can play at CPL is 17. Because this is a barrier age limit, anyone under this age who cannot play at CPL isn't really considered to be worth time in competitive Counter-Strike. Why work for months with a player to improve your team when they cannot compete to begin with? Counter-Strike takes years to become good at, but the players who HAVE the time are in high school. These players can dedicate every day to becoming better. However, all these players are underage, and thus will never get the chance or experience to become better. The guys that are of age and have the experience are becoming older and having to either leave the scene or dedicate less time to it. Finally, the guys that are of age and don't have the experience still have years to play before they become any good. After those years add up, they will move away from Counter-Strike anyway. One may ask how the current top players succeeded in a system such as this. The answer is that this system hasn't been in place very long, and the older experienced players went through four years of dedicating themselves to Counter-Strike throughout high school. Because there was no age limit, these players were able to compete in big leagues and be recruited by top teams because it didn't matter how old they were. This age lock can be compared once again to baseball. Each year clubs recruit new inexperienced players so they can develop them over time and replace the aging players. If the system of Counter-Strike and baseball were the same, then those new inexperienced players would not be able to compete for the clubs for several years. If clubs knew that the young players they dedicate their time to couldn't play until years later, it would throw the entire system off. In fact, the clubs would probably just shuffle around the already experienced middle-aged players until they were eventually all gone. When this happens in the Counter-Strike community and all the top players are gone, the leagues will be forced into moving the inexperienced players into the top league, and we will see a huge drop in the Americans’ ability to compete with any other country once again. Unfortunately, I do not see a solution to this problem. It's just a byproduct of many other rules and regulations that make sense and need to be in place. Until there is purpose and motivation for the top players to continue to play and make a living equitable to the Bullseye era, the scene will degrade with time.

Ultimately, this all relates back to the problem I addressed several paragraphs above. This is the huge problem within CAL and the entire community. What can CAL do to help bring motivation and dedication back into the community? I have devised one big solution that will improve the entire structure of everything. The only thing CAL can do at this point is implement a system of paying to play in the league. Before everyone gasps about how this is a system devised only to enrich the greedy pockets of CAL admins and capital gains, let me explain why CAL must do this to improve the situation. If you play within CAL competitively and have ever had a problem, chances are you tried to contact an admin. Chances are also good that you got either zero support or incredibly poor support. This is completely degrading the league’s ability to uphold itself in a professional manner. Taking a look at the numbers, CAL has about 34,000 registered players within the Counter-Strike leagues. CAL only has about 30 admins for all of the Counter-Strike divisions. Based on that number alone, you can perceive why you might not have gotten answered quickly. Let’s also throw in other variables, such as the fact that probably half of the messages that admins receive are useless immature questions. Now let’s also throw in the fact that every admin does this only for fun, does not get paid, and has a life outside of CAL, leaving little room for motivation. The admin may also even compete with a team in CAL as well.