That's weird.

The Championship Gaming Series, DIRECTV's take on pro-gaming, just announced a commissioner for their sport and he's the former COO of the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour.

I understand that sports are sports, but it would be nice if there was a little bit of cross-over between Andy Reif's previous job and his new one.

Reif will oversee the establishment of the league and its development in North America, South America, UK/Europe and Asia/Australia.

"The opportunity to start a major sports league, with global television coverage in more than 100,000,000 homes through DIRECTV (North America and Latin America), BSkyB (UK), and STAR (Asia and Australia), has never happened before," said Reif. "No other major sport started with such an arsenal of media. We have been assembling the very best talent from the gaming and broadcast worlds and CGS will change sports entertainment forever. We are going to provide an unparalleled entertainment experience to rival any other major sports league."

"Our 2006 invitational events were a tremendous success," said Eric Shanks, Executive Vice President of Entertainment at DIRECTV. "Now with the arrival of Andy, we're ready to elevate pro gaming to the world stage. DIRECTV is committed to seeing that professional gaming has the best production team in the industry and we will be creating more than 30 hours of programming for the 2007 season in North America alone, which is an unprecedented level of coverage for the sport."

The new league will kick-off with a qualifying period and a draft. CGS said they will be announcing North American online qualifiers soon as well as offline regional qualifiers in New York and Los Angeles. Brian Crecente

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