Dale Ford is know to some as the paintball news man. Through his paintball news letter and website, The Ford Report, he is able to keep the people who are interested upto date with all the latest happenings in the paintball world. He takes time out of his busy day to talk to PaintBaller.ie about his paintball background, his thoughts on the sport, his website and his Magazine.
Richie: Hi Dale, thanks for taking the time for this interview Dale: Of course, sir. Thanks for taking the time to do the interview!
Dale on Dale R: Lets get the basics out of the way first, how long have you been playing paintball? D: I started in 1988, at a field near Bloomington, IN. I'd just gotten out of the Army, and my high school friends thought it'd be fun to try, and they figured I'd have an advantage because I was in the Army...as it turned out, I got lit up hard by a guy with a SMG-60. I did just about as badly as any other new player out there, but I had a great time!
R: How did you get into it? Was it the typical story of trying it out for fun and getting hooked? D: I tried it an liked it, played a few times in the 80's and 90's, then I went to school and didn't play but once or twice during that time period. After I got out of school, got a job, got married and all that, I used a bonus from work to buy a Tippmann M98 in March of '99, and I've been pretty much non-stop ever since. I moved from the T98 to a 'cocker, then into an Angel LED, several LCD's, and then into the Angel 1 and nowadays I use Egos. Over the years I've developed a strong preference towards English paintball guns, but I do have a strong liking for the Alias Timmy, just because they sound so cool.
R: What attracted you to paintball?
D: Initially it was the adrenalin rush and the excitement. As I grow older, it's a way for me to vent frustrations and cope with stress. The adrenalin is still there, and I still love being out there, but nowadays it's that release I want and paintball gives it to me. My bosses at my day job know when it's been too long since I've played, and start subtly hinting that I ought to go out and shoot someone.
R: What type of paintball do you play these days, woodsball or speedball? D: Woodsball/Scenario these days. I'm too old and too beat up physically to try and keep up with the kids playing X-Ball these days. Most of the successful X-Ball/tourney players are short, light, and stupidly fast. I'm fairly tall for a paintball player (5'10") and overly heavy (190 pounds) and both of my knees have had work done on them, so trying to keep up with a 17 year old kid is really out of the question.
R: Do you play for any teams and enter any tournaments ( speedball or woodsball) D: I play for The South Beach Pimps, a group of old/former tournament players who've taken it into the woods. We're what is best described as "Hybrid" players, in that we play a tournament style game out in the woods We are the nastiest, most violent team in the south-east U.S.!
Dale's Markers R: what was your first marker?
D: Splatmaster Rapide. When I got serious about paintball in '99, it was the M98.
R: Do you still have it, or would you like it back? D: Got rid of the Rapide long ago, but I still have "Fat *******", the M98, and by God, it still shoots good, too!
R: Are you a marker whore as such and have to have all the latest paintball gadets? D: I have a primary gun and a backup. The Primary I try to have as new as possible to satisfy my cravings for the latest and greatest, but the back up is something that I've put a lot of time and emotion into Right now my Primary is an Avalanche '09 Ego that Frank Connell sold to me, and the backup is a Vicious '07 Ego 7 that I put a lot of work into Both are pure evil.
R: What is it that you like about egos?
D: The biggest thing about the Ego is the reliability...they're plug and play. The accuracy and performance are added bonuses to me.
R: Are you a poppet marker man or would you / have you tried the Geo? D: I've tried the Geo, and I was very impressed with it, but I'm a poppet guy. When I'm playing I need that noise and visual stimulation that the bolt flying back and forth, though.
R: What do you think is the best marker out there currently for a new person starting off playing woodsball? D: Probably the Proto SLG or the SP Vibe, assuming SP can work their way through their current financial issues. They're great little guns that shoot like much more expensive guns but without the sticker shock.
Dale at Work R: Are you working, or have ever worked within the industry? Or would you just class your self as a player? D: I've owned a shop with friends, but that's about the extent of my involvement with the industry. I've always worked a day job outside of paintball. I do the writing, magazine, and consulting stuff on the side.
R: The Ford report is a great resource for people looking to keep in touch with the main stories. How did it all come about? D: I was partnered with a couple of friends in
68Caliber.com, and over time one of them decided that he wanted out. I'd been doing the Report as a part of 68 for quite a while, and when Steve and Karen Davidson bought the majority of the business, I kept
TFR separate. As things went along with those two, I felt it necessary to develop a separate website for
TFR as insurance, and sure enough in November 2008, they pulled what can best be described as a hostile takeover of the business. Rather than spending alot of money on lawyers to run them out of business, I decided to focus on
TFR, and let them run 68 into the ground.
R: When you started the Ford Report.com, what were your hope and aims for it? D: When I started it, it was just going to be a place for people to find out about the report itself, see old reports, and have a place to sign up. As I've moved forward, I've branched out into game coverage, reviews, and the like. It's really taken on a life of its' own and I'm having a grand old time with it.
R: How is it progressing within those plans, still growing I assume? D: Slow but steady growth. There's such a thing as growing too fast, and even so I've had to double my bandwidth with my hosting company to keep up.
R: Where do you see the website in 2 years? D: It'll likely look even better than it does now, but the quality of the content will be the same. Hopefully even more people than now will know about it and I'll have to quadruple my bandwidth!
R: Are you making a living from it or is it just a hobby that pays for itself? D: Not even close. It's a place for me to express myself, and it helps pay for my paintball addiction. In its' best year during my tenure,
68Caliber.com made $40,000, but I had to share that with 2 other partners, so no, I've never made my living in paintball. Oddly enough, alot of people think I do.
R: Do you know of anyone apart from PBNation who is making a full time living from paintball online?
D: I think John Amodea is making his living from running Paintball X3, but I'm not sure about anyone else.
R: What is your day job? D: I work on copiers and printers for a dealer here in the Tampa Bay area.
R: Is a goal of your to be able to give up the day job and concentrate and get paid to do what you do, or would that be just too much paintball stuff for you? D: It's not necessarily a goal, but if the right opportunity came along, I'd certainly be willing to give it a try. One of the nice things about having a day job is that I'm not directly connected to the people I'm reporting on, so the possibility of threatening me with my job really doesn't come into play.
R: Over the years of the Ford Report, what was your favourite story? D: Probably the one I did with TechPB, at Kohn Sports here in the Bay Area. Mike, Willie and I are all friends, and one of my supervisors at work is a mutual friend of me and Willie's, and we'd both been on him to come out and play paintball. He finally relented and came out with his son. They watched us playing all out, and then we introduced them to the game using this idea that Mike had come up with. It gives you the rush of playing, without the possibility of getting shot. On the other side of the equation, it's a great movement drill. My supervisor got to fulfill the fantasy of all supervisors, by shooting his employee! He not only shot me, but he was using my gun when he did it!
http://thefordreport.com/2009/<wbr>01/the-fun-way-to-introduce-<wbr>people-to-paintball/ R: What was your most controversial? D: I tend to specialize in controversial, because I have that detachment from the industry, and being from the Midwest I tend to be pretty blunt. Probably the worst of the lot was when I commented a few years ago on the discovery that Patrick McKinnon of MXS (now gone, obviously) was a convicted rapist. I didn't necessarily report on it directly, because I found the details of McKinnon's crime disturbing, but I received several threatening letters from lawyers about it because I was thought to have been the one that distributed the original information. As it turned out, I didn't but it was rough there for a while.
R: What was your strangest? D: Just recently I put up a video on the site showing this guy running down the road with skates strapped to his body. It had to have been someone in Europe, since American police would arrest someone doing something insane like that.
R: Where do you get your stories? Do you make phone calls, is it all emails being sent to you or do you spend a few hours a day crawling forums and other places?
D: I talk to people on a daily basis, emails, crawling forums, and of course I have a legion of minions who tell me things. Minions are the faceless 'they' and 'them' who are out there hearing things, talking amongst themselves and generally finding things out that may or may not be things those being reported on want me talking about.
R: The internet has a big part to play in paintball, from gear news to watching tournaments live online. What are the bad points with having information travel so fast? D: Paintball has always had a massive rumour mill, and the internet has made it worse. Now some twit sitting in his room chatting with his buddies can 'hear' something and go post up on whatever forum, and the next thing you know some poor ******* working at XYZ company is having to deal with total bull**** that some moron created for whatever reason. Alot of it is competing companies talking **** about each other, and they develop into rumours. I hear lots of it every day, and you develop a sense of what's real and what's not. If it smells true, then I'll ask whoever wherever and get a comment, or not, depending on how juicy it is.
Dale on Shooting Hot
R: Did you read many print mags back before most of them went digital? D: I liked Paintball 2 Xtremes the best, but SPLAT was always good too.
R: You are involved with a relatively new Paintball Mag, Shooting Hot. Tell us a little about its content and intended audience. D: We're getting ready to put out our 4th or 5th issue now. Most paintball magazines are targeted towards the younger audience, in the 12-24 year old range. Our target audience is aimed more at the the mature player, the 24-54 year old who is still playing or came back to the sport after a period of time, who likes to play the game his way, rather than how the younger crowd does. There are enough people now that were demanding this more mature look at the game that the decision was made to move forward.
R: So you saw a gap in that particular demographic and decided to go for it. Who was the main driving force behind its start up? D:Billy Smith is the publisher. He runs a very successful field and store in Georgia, and we'd been working together for some time. We're also friends, which makes a huge difference to me. He'd been busting my balls for well over a year to head up a new magazine, and I finally got it into my head that it was time to stop criticizing my editors at the magazines I wrote for at the time and do it my way. Along with Billy, we have Joe Holleran, who's my Associate Editor, Bill Murray who does alot of our graphic work, and Rich Struth, who handles the hotties.
R: How do you gauge the success of an online publication like this, is it based purely on page views? D: Page views, and the buzz that we create. Lots and lots of people are talking about what we're doing.
R: There may be some people with stuff to say out there, are you looking for contributors or photographers? D: We're always looking for people who want to give their voice to the game.
R: What does it take to put together an online publication, how many hours a month do you put into it? D: Joe generally spends the last week of every month working with Bill to put the content I've either created myself or edited from our writers. It's not as intensive from my end as it is for The Ford Report, but it's something that I have to do every month, or there's no magazine. It's challenging, but I'm working with an amazing group of people, so it's a labor of love.
R: Where do you see Shooting hot being in 1, 2 and 5 years? D: We got the groundwork laid in 2009 by getting our first issues out...2010 will be building our base. By 2012, we're going to be the magazine of choice for players who want the real deal, and in 5 years, all of my old editors will be working for me.
R: Where do you find the hot ladies for photo shoots, paid models or friends? D: Rich Struth has a way with the ladies. The first few issues were paid models, but now we're getting interest in posing by wives, girlfriends, and real women that play. Models are great, but I'm older now, and looking at a woman closer to my own age is more fun than some 19 year old model. I know that sounds odd, but I'm old enough to be a 19 year old's dad, which is kinda gross. Besides, I wouldn't want to bother with teaching a 19 year old what I like...my 42 year old wife is as sick and demented as I am, which is one of the many reasons I love her!
R: So shooting hot would be aimed towards a more mature audience, Will be still be readable by younger people or will the articles be based on the older man. I.e. would a 16yr old looking for info about the latest gear still get his fix from it? D: If that 16 year old was into scenario play, yes. Our target audience isn't as tournament oriented as the younger crowd is. Alot of the stuff we're going to be doing is going to be scenario/woodsball related, because that's where 95+ percent of the play is happening. It's always been that way, but it's taken this massive downturn in the economy for the industry to fully understand it.
Dale on Paintball Club 21
R: What is Paintball Club 21 all about? D: PaintClub 21 is an event ONLY for adults over the age of 21. During the day, we hit the field and play all out. Nobody will tell you how fast to shoot, give you hard time about cursing, and you won't have to worry about lighting up a 12 year old. It's specifically geared for experienced players, and the food and entertainment is geared for adults as well.
R: Why did you start it? D: PaintClub 21 is the brainchild of Billy Smith, Joe Holleran and me, and our frustration with what we called the "Disney Effect", where everything associated with paintball has to be politically correct and sanitized. We feel that paintball is the antithesis of politically correct, and we went about creating PaintClub 21 to appeal to that player.
R: Who is involved with it? D: Billy Smith is the creator, along with Joe Holleran. I was brought on to help with the PR aspects of the event, and because at my core I believed in what we were doing. As a bonus, we managed to piss off just about every paintball media person out there.
R: Year 2: Project Chaos, can you give us some details about it? D: Bigger, Badder, more Epic. We've had a hard time upping the ante from the first event, but I believe we've figured out a way to do it.
R: Would be be worth travelling over from Ireland to take part in 
? D: Absolutely!
R: What other projects have you got going on that you want to mention?
D: I have a couple of consulting gigs that I'm working on right now, nothing I can talk about at this point, though. The Ford Report, Shooting Hot Magazine, my day job and my hot wife keep me busy, which is how I like it!
R: Paintclub21, what are the costs involved for those thinking about attending? D: $150 covers your paint, air, and first case of paint, as well as dinner and beer. You're on your own for mixed drinks and tips for the entertainers...
R: Is it a 'what happens at paintclub stays at paintclub'' type thing?
D: Precisely.
Dale on Paintball R: Giving the current climate, how would you describe the current state of paintball as a whole? D: We're right in the middle of a reset. For years and years, the industry poured the majority of their PR and advertising budgets into the tournament side of paintball, and with the economy the way it is, it's no longer feasible to support tournaments and teams at the levels they were previously enjoying. Everyone's going back to the weekend recball/woodsball/scenario players, because that's where 95+ percent of paintball is, and always has been.
R: If left as it is, where do you see paintball in 5 years time? D: National Tournaments will be a thing of the past. There will be regional series that do well, but on the national level there'll be nothing.
R: If tournament paintball were every to fail for what ever reason, do you think that woodsball / rec ball will always remain there as an activity? D: Of course! Tournament paintball is not the core of paintball, the guys going out on the weekends at their local fields are the core.
R: What changes, if any would you like to see with in the industry and tournaments? D: Well obviously they all need to be advertising with The Ford Report and Shooting Hot Magazine. Aside from that, build in margins for field owners and store owners to make a reasonable living. On the competitive side, I'm not really sure what the solution is. I'd probably leave that answer to someone who's more current with the way things are in the tournament world than I am. I basically walked away from tournament paintball after the 2007-2008 season, and I don't regret it one bit. Paul Richards is the guy to talk to, I'd say. Him or Camille Lemanski. Alot of people discount her because she's a pretty girl, but the fact is that she's extremely intelligent and has her finger on the pulse of the game at that level.
R: Can you ever see a world body for paintball to govern the various aspects and standardise rules etc, or would it be a bad thing? D: It's probably something that needs to happen, but I can see lots and lots of pitfalls in making it happen.
R: Who do you admire in the paintball world, and for what reason? D: There are so many people that I look up to and admire in the game, that it'd be impossible to name them all in a reasonable amount of space and be fair about it. The standouts right off the top of my head are Billy Smith, Joe Holleran, Bill Murray, Eric Stork, Frank Connell, Brian Barno, John Navarro, Larry Cossio, Kristie and Andy Graham, "Georgia" Joe Hamilton, Mike Phillips,Willie Galarza, and of course, my wife, Jamie "The Tiny Blonde Goddess" Ford.
R: Who do you despise / hate / not like etc... or who would you not buy from etc. D: Steve Davidson can kiss my ass. Other than that, I can pretty much get along with most people in the game today.
Quick fire questions: - Favourite Alcoholic beverage: Yeung Ling or Amaretto Sour
- Burger King or McDonalds: Burger King
- On tank or remote line: On gun set up
- Spray and pray or precision: One Case One Kill
- Speedfeed or lid: Lid
- Rotor or Prophecy: Rotor and my Versa Shelled Invert Too
- Pbnation or TechPB: TechPB all the way !
- Favourite Pro-Team ( psp or nppl etc): I'm friends with Frank Connell and Rocky Cagnoni, so definitely Avalanche. Jeff Stein rocks too, so Hurricanes as well.
R: Thanks for the time dale, if your every in Ireland, make sure and hit us up. D: Once the magazine starts bringing in income, going to Europe is definitely on the list. We'll stop by for a pint!
Links and References:
Pictures: Jamie Ford & PBuprising
Rapide NSG Splatmaster Rapide in Box - mcarterbrown.com Shooting Hot Magazine Paintball News - Paintball Uprising 
Dale 'Furby' Ford of the Ford Report 
