Many on both sides of the debate here have been unclear at best, and misleading or ignorant at worst. Here is the bottom line. The BCAPL absolutely can demand whatever they want from anyone using their name. Whenever someone is sanctioned by the BCAPL, it is a contractual agreement, and anything--anything-- can be stipulated in a contract. If the BCAPL wanted to stipulate that in order to be sanctioned by the BCAPL that you had to use a certain table for your event or league, they most certainly could demand it, and they could enforce it.
The problem is that the BCAPL would lose a lot of money by doing this, so it doesn't make good business sense. Let's face it, the BCAPL wants to see the best for pool, and wants the players to have what they want, but first and foremost for any business is what is best for the business. They aren't a charity and have to keep their own self interest in mind as well, and particularly when push comes to shove their self interest is (and should be) priority #1.
If the BCAPL demanded the use of diamond tables in order to receive sanctioning, there would be a severe drop in revenue for the BCAPL due to less tournaments, less leagues, and less players. Many areas don't even have diamond tables, so there would be no BCAPL league in those areas, which means less income for BCAPL. In other areas, the league would be limited to the few places that do have diamond tables, which means a much smaller league with less players, which means less income for BCAPL. And that is assuming the leagues would even choose to stay with BCAPL in those circumstances. Most would probably just choose to convert to another league system besides BCAPL so they could keep more members and play wherever and on whatever. As for state tournaments and the like, many promoters wouldn't want to pay the additional cost for Diamond tables, and the tournaments either wouldn't happen at all, or they too would switch over to another league system, again a massive loss of revenue for BCAPL due to lost events and lost players. For any national league to require diamond tables would probably put that league system out of business. To require it only on regional and state events would ensure that many of those events would cease existing, or would switch to another league system, causing a serious loss of income for BCAPL. You could argue that any or all of this would be a serious loss for pool as a whole as well.
As for what is best for pool, who knows. You can argue that having a lot less tournaments and leagues and players but where they are playing on better equipment is better for pool. You can argue that having more leagues and tournaments and players playing on a variety of equipment that is not always ideal is better for pool, which probably makes more sense. But it doesn't really matter because what you can't argue is that a national league should demand that everyone has to use only diamond tables when it isn't realistic or feasible and would be business suicide.
