Played my match against Sneaky's team. Everything went well and everyone was nice. The only issues were the black screen (obviously), and the ping. Our pocket had 140 ping, and our demo had 100, and I think someone else had 100+ on their team. I'm not sure what the actual problem was, since I was on the opposite coast to the server and had like 60 ping, but there was something wrong.
In any case, having Chicago servers is always better than splitting between east and west coast.
In the end it's still better than any UGC match I've played, so I'm happy