What happened to CPBL?

A few months back, a Cebu-based pharmaceutical company organized a province-wide basketball league manned by personalities with legitimate basketball backgrounds.  Invitations were sent to municipalities for them to join the Cebu Provincial Basketball League.  The format is similar to the now defunct GUV Cup Volleyball tournament where municipalities are divided into four clusters and top 2 finishers on each cluster moves on to the next round.

CPBL, as I understand, had a North and South cluster divided into two sub-clusters.  Each team plays a double-round robin format where top teams in each sub-cluster fight for the cluster championship.  Winning teams on the North and South cluster then go for the league title.

During the early 90s, a provincial basketball tournament sponsored by the administration of then Gov. Pablo Garcia had municipal teams travelling to both ends of the province for home and away games since clustering was not done then.  That was a nice experience for teams and supporters as they get to see the sights and mingle with the population of a different place aside from cheering for their team.  Usually, travel time takes at least two hours and the norm is for the visitors to be at the venue a few hours before game time to relax and discover the place.

Meal time is fun time and appetites of athletes never cease to amaze me.  I myself have a good appetite but these guys eat so much that it is not advisable for them to have pets as their animal friends will starve because there will never be leftovers.  Their cats and dogs will make layas and find refuge in their compassionate neighbors.

If the visiting team loses, it will be a long way back home.  It’s a different story if the home team loses.  Each town has their own collection of queers and these kind of organisms usually make the lives of  other living things challenging.  There were several instances that team vehicles were targets of retaliation, where tires are deflated and hoods and sides were made instant scratch pads.   A few experienced unidentified flying objects landing on vehicles along the way.   These are some of the consolation prizes for winning away from home.   A P100,000 top prize was up for grabs and during that time, it was a very substantial amount that almost all municipalities of the province participated.

That was then.  This is now.  After the launch of the CPBL, several meetings with representatives of municipalities were called with the tournament supposed to start at the last week of October of this year.   October passed and November is about to end and the CPBL still has to see the light of day.

A good number of municipalities had prepared and formed competitive teams.  Likewise, the pharma company involved did the necessary things to promote the tournament with league officials visiting towns to further drum up support from sponsors and local officials.

Aside from discovering talents, CPBL aims to help municipalities in promoting local tourism thru film clips and product showcases during scheduled games which are on a home-and-away format.  A good way for visiting teams to know more about the locality they’re in.  This would had been great had the tournament went on as planned.

I had a recent talk with one of the league’s officials and the sad reality is that politics has again cast a gloomy shadow on the tournament.  It seems that some municipalities can’t agree on who will, or to put it more clearly, whose credit the team goes to.  A few towns formed competitive teams then out of nowhere, different teams materialized backed by rival groups with very obvious agendas.  Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Time, effort and resources were already spent by the organizers and interested parties only to be snuffed out by narrow-minded, ego-tripping, selfish individuals.  I guess the only reason these creatures  came into existence is to make other people’s lives miserably complicated.  Sadly, this kind of species multiplies annually and is immune to chemicals and pesticides known to mankind.

The CESAFI basketball wars are over and the birth of the Cebu Provincial Basketball League is overdue.  Unless conflicting parties agree, the league will be still-born even thru C-Section done by the best gynecologists in the country.

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This Sunday at Macau’s The Venetian Cotai Arena, Manny Pacquiao battles a much taller Chris Algieri.  This will be an important fight for PacMan as some quarters declared him already as past his prime.  Had he concentrated in boxing and not strayed into other endeavors, politics included, PacMan, in my own opinion, can’t be beaten up to this moment.   When the final bell has sounded and maybe Mommy D’s voodoo works, PacMan will make Algieri bitay at Cotai.  With Macau three hours away, hopefully, the next time Cong. Manny fights at The Venetian, I can bring my wife and children there.  God willing, finances permitting.