Not certain if anybody caught the little blurb a couple weeks back in the BassBlaster newsletter about a possible set of new rankings for professional angling coming out. Here's the clip from that issue:
Not sure what that means, if anything, but my first guess would be a subtle hint that Kumar and Co. might be creating their own (again). Jay was original creator and developer of BassFan and their rankings (along with some math nerds), of which he sold the whole thing off many years back. My guess is any non-compete clause has probably long since expired. Pure speculation though.
Regardless, this might be a good thing, as the rankings the way they stand are pretty weak in my opinion. Never have cared for the BassFan system of rankings, even creating my own set that I ran for a year or so because I was so unhappy. Seems like the current owners aren't overly pressing the issue of making them widespread and "powerful" or more recognized. It's been 4 weeks since they were last updated, and there was only one other update since August of last year.
There is another set of rankings out there, BassRankings.com, but they seem content to kind of sit in the shadows for now. While BassFan's old system likely has weighting added to it in various categories, the Bass Rankings are pretty much straight stats, more like you might use for playing fantasy fishing or some such endeavor. There's one year, two year, women's, pros, and semi-pro rankings, as well as the ability to break things out separately by tour. There's no single set of rankings they push or promote (by intent), and there seems to be no move to try and lay claim to a world ranking status. As such, the door has been cracked to let another player into the room to dance with, one that might have a pretty good chance at making claim to "official" world ranking status should they aggressively decide to pursue such namesake. Only time will tell.
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