Give ALL the money back, or get out!

Why in the heck do bass fishermen put up with the outright abuse by Tournament Directors and sponsors of bass fishing tournaments? To every tournament director and promoter out there I say to you, if you can't pay back 95% or better of the money throughout the year then let someone else handle the job. What are you doing for the fishermen when you keep the fisherman's money. Imagine an event that promotes itself and then uses the entry fee money to pay expenses. "Excuse me Mr. Tyson, we are gonna need you to pay an entry fee of 1.5 million and we will be paying you back 80%, would that be okay?" "Yes Mr. Gordon, we were thinking if you wrap your car in these ridiculous colors and wear this clown outfit and get all the other guys to do the same so that the corporations can make money and then if you don't mind if you could all put your entry fee in a pot and we will be giving you back 90%."
Good Grief Charlie Brown how far does this have to go? We can't keep giving the money makers a pass. If you are a promoter you go out and you show corporate and small business sponsors how being a part of your event MAKES them money. They in turn then pay you and you ADD value to the entry fees of your participants. You remember them, the fishermen that buy the boats, trucks, rods, reels, tackle, gas, hotel rooms and pay your ridiculous "membership fees."
Surely we dumb ol hicks could find us a local constable and pay him to hold our money at the ramp and then we could simply payback 99% of entry fees. Heck I bet if we work as hard as a coon with a shiny thing we might even figure out how to make a schedule and get word out on the Internet! Seems like anyone can write stuff on here now!
Let me take a crack at this here promotion.

SATURDAY SATURDAY SATURDAY ( Say it like an old radio spot for a good drag race and it sounds so cool)

Lake Guntersville, $150.00 per team entry fee, $10.00 optional big bass pot. Take off at safe light and weigh -in at three p.m.

I tell ya boys this is tough, I almost forgot p.m.! Imagine the confusion when all us rednecks showed up to weigh in 20 hours later in the dark. Sure glad we have tournament directors!

Now let's see we will OVER first place winner so that people get all dollar bill eyed. Then we will have a points system BUT make the championship open to anyone who fishes all our "events" and really get em good we will make them pay an entry for the championship. But maybe best of all the Point System we will have NO Payout! Why, because we gave it all away at each "event."
(Look for a later blog post on why in the hell we can't get a real money payout for points and really fishing well ALL year not just getting lucky once!)

Now if I have everything right I am done. Unless of course a real promoter should spend forty hours a week looking for corporate and small business sponsors to pay more than 100% of entry fees. Unless someone can tell me why tournament directors and promoters shouldn't work the hours the rest of us do to enjoy this sport. Oh and don't even start in about all the hours at the event, driving there, setting up! That is manual labor that an $8.00 an hour employee could do and if that is all you do for the money, my point is proven! If you want to be a promoter, a difference maker, a leader, well then GET TO WORK.

Tournament fishermen should right now and I mean TODAY demand that any tournament they enter pay back MORE than 90%, pay at least 1 in 6 finishers and have a director on site that can explain their efforts to help the FISHERMEN not just the trail itself!
It is easy to understand that if you are fishing for less than the entry fees that YOU provided, Someone else is laughing all the way to the bank.

And oh yes fishermen, if you think that it is okay to NOT support the companies, people and individuals that put CASH money into fishing then you are part of the reason that you are paying to play with yourself!