ML, an excerpt from one of your posts: "Tournaments benefit a small minority at the expense of a greater majority."
This is a statement that is worth further analysis. It is my belief that when a tournament comes to town, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and more likely millions of dollars are infused into the town and surrounding area. Just considering hotels (side question: why is "Patel" the best guess for the last name of a hotel owner?), restaurants, retail, and marina activities, there are a lot of people benefiting there. The trickle down to the less afluent is real also. It is also my belief that fishing by locals increases before and after the tournament, and this has it's own trickle down.
If you consider damage to a body of water, this needs real evidence, and I can't say either way as to what damage is done; it should be analyzed in short, medium, and long term considerations.
As far as Ray Scott, you have to give credit where credit is due. This man is a visionary, like it or not. He blazed the way for other national, regional, and local clubs. He helped TV shows, lure companies, boat companies, etc. to become thriving business, which created massive trickle down, by organizing a sport.
Truly, I could care less one way or another. I subscribe to Bassmaster Magazine because I like some of the information content, but I could care less who was angler of the year. It's just like Playboy - I only get it for the articles.
Now some of us could have the feeling that he took what we consider to be a sacred hobby or interest, and blew it up into something that is not so far behind NASCAR. We may not like the wheels of progress sometimes, but let's not get crushed by them either. An example would be if you discover a music band that you really like, before they made it big; once they make it big, a lot of people would say they sold out. I think that the greater reality is that the band is just way more popular now.
Final comment for now: I would estimate that the Bassmasters Classic, that was in Pitt. a few months back, spent in the range of $10,000 to $20,000.00 in the efforts to keep the fish alive in order to be put back in the native water. There was a pretty sophisticated operation set up right under the weigh-in table platform. In one way to look at it, they want those fish to become bigger more than the locals.
