I don't think I've ever heard Pat be as wrong as he was about the training stage thing, as he ever been wrong about anything before. And I haven't even finished the podcast yet.
Actually, Woolie's completely full of shit.
1. Training Stage is not chosen because backgrounds interfere with recognizing character model boundaries. First of all, you can choose costumes and colors that have close chromatic patterns to the Training Stage background on several characters. Second, you can choose costumes that
actually change the silhouette of the character, which is the important part for players to visually "read" what's going on.
2. EVO is not "completely for the players". The event is now largely sponsored, both by platform holders (Sony, Capcom, etc.) and by secondary advertisers (MadCatz, Hitbox, etc.), and furthermore by tertiary player sponsors (Evil Geniuses, Team Liquid, etc.). Player individual buy-in is no longer the only component in the tournament, or even the primary component for Ultra Street Fighter IV in particular.
3. Player comfort isn't and never has been the primary concern of the tournament organization. If it were, players would play in private rooms without an audience and the audience would simply watch on a closed-circuit feed of the game from another room. EVO is very much about the audience and spectacle. EVO is a public event.
Pat's not entirely correct, either, though really Matt's the closest of the bunch: any player who's trying to play at EVO of all places who says they need to be on Training Stage to perform
needs to get the fuck good. That's like someone claiming to be a professional artist saying they only work on graph paper.