This is what everything good in sports is about. Purdue, not wanting to take advantage of the fact that Drexel needed to catch a flight home, was willing to share the championship with them. I'm a big fan of Purdue in general (Probably because I went there for a year), and I think this sets a great example to everyone of what being a true sportsman is all about. After ranting about Avalanche and Jeremy Salm's despicable behavior, I felt that Purdue should be honored for their grace and charity in doing what they did. Congratulations to both teams, as I'm sure you both deserve it.
I find the behavior of Jeremy Salm to be vile and disgusting. This is above and beyond any other attempts at cheating I've heard of in paintball, and is a disgrace to the sport. I think hey may have gotten off easily by only being banned for 2003 from the NPPL. This tarnishes not only the sport of paintball, but anything else team Avalanche has accomplished in any other prior tourny. Unfortunately, there is no way to know if he was acting alone, or even if this was the first time he's done it.
There needs to be change in the NPPL if they wish to have paintball seen as a legitimate sport. They need to have their own refs, not use players from the teams that play their events, or even other events. Impartial NPPL refs will build a solid base to work with, can be trained specifically for NPPL events, and will not be susceptible to "Trading Favors", which apparently is a popular activity where players who ref an event will look the other way for one team so that that team will look the other way later when they ref an even the first team was reffing. I don't know of any other mainstream sports where players in one event will ref a different event later.
Now, I'm not a tourny player, but I want paintball to be seen for the great sport and activity that it is, and stuff like this just makes me sick.