NAC 2011

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Re: NAC 2011

Post by mhayes »

scquizbowl wrote:Here is a short report about New Orleans (Jesuit makes finals)

http://www.qunlimited.com/national.htm
It upsets me that Jesuit (LA) participated in this event. They are perennially regarded as the best team in Louisiana, so their support of Chip's tournaments is troublesome to me.

NAQT, HSAPQ etc. have almost zero presence in Louisiana. There are enough college teams there to change things so hopefully we start to see things change for the better. I'm talking to you, ULL, LSU, and Tulane.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Steeve Ho You Fat »

nadph wrote:
mhayes wrote:
Carangoides ciliarius wrote:Is that the same Copley from Ohio that's, like, good at real quizbowl and not this terrible version? If so, what are they doing at this tournament?
I've heard that Copley's coach actually prefers QU to pyramidal formats. I'm not joking.
This is correct; last year Saajid was not on the Ohio NASAT team because his coach insisted that he and his team go to NAC instead. I suspect a similar thing happened this year with PACE.
Graduation kept them from PACE.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by mhayes »

nadph wrote:
mhayes wrote:
Carangoides ciliarius wrote:Is that the same Copley from Ohio that's, like, good at real quizbowl and not this terrible version? If so, what are they doing at this tournament?
I've heard that Copley's coach actually prefers QU to pyramidal formats. I'm not joking.
This is correct; last year Saajid was not on the Ohio NASAT team because his coach insisted that he and his team go to NAC instead. I suspect a similar thing happened this year with PACE.

The same coach was also not in favor of them attending HSNCT.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill »

mhayes wrote:NAQT, HSAPQ etc. have almost zero presence in Louisiana. There are enough college teams there to change things so hopefully we start to see things change for the better. I'm talking to you, ULL, LSU, and Tulane.
Those schools would rather play the high school questions themselves:
http://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament-te ... nt_id=3574
http://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament-te ... nt_id=3580
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by the return of AHAN »

rpond wrote:
mhayes wrote:NAQT, HSAPQ etc. have almost zero presence in Louisiana. There are enough college teams there to change things so hopefully we start to see things change for the better. I'm talking to you, ULL, LSU, and Tulane.
Those schools would rather play the high school questions themselves:
http://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament-te ... nt_id=3574
http://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament-te ... nt_id=3580
ZING! I didn't know collegiate teams COULD use high school sets.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by mhayes »

rpond wrote:
mhayes wrote:NAQT, HSAPQ etc. have almost zero presence in Louisiana. There are enough college teams there to change things so hopefully we start to see things change for the better. I'm talking to you, ULL, LSU, and Tulane.
Those schools would rather play the high school questions themselves:
http://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament-te ... nt_id=3574
http://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament-te ... nt_id=3580
To be fair, the tournament in the second link was part of a state conference for the Honors departments of various Louisiana colleges. One of the events is a quiz bowl competition, and many of the kids who play in this are not part of a college quiz bowl team. In fact, many of the schools on that page don't have clubs.

But your first link is true, since these are all the college teams in Louisiana. I would say that I'm surprised, but I just remembered that LSU's club is run by one of Chip's employees.

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Re: NAC 2011

Post by scquizbowl »

I found an article about a middle school team from Heber Springs, AR that is in Washington this weekend.

http://www.thesuntimes.com/newsnow/x910 ... -nationals
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by the return of AHAN »

The first four scheduled games for the Heber Springs Junior High Quiz Bowl team are ........................... 11 a.m. (vs. Longfellow B).
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Re: NAC 2011

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About to play in the finals against High Tech A. We beat Southport in the semis, and High Tech beat Penn Manor.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by IrvAC »

Good luck and thanks for the Update.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by ryanrosenberg »

We beat High Tech A 275-200 to win. I was named tournament MVP. More thoughts on the tournament in general, the question quality, and the NAC in general to follow, but for now I'd just like to say congratulations to everyone, especially Southport, Hastings, and High Tech A, who gave us three of the best games we've played as a team. Any one of these teams deserved to win. In addition, the Sheraton that the tournament was held in was excellent, a huge improvement over Marymount.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill »

I imagine that any evaluation of the NAC this year could use this "literature" question as a starting point (if you actually heard it during the tournament, it's even worse!):
QU's site wrote:Gary Sinise, who has never been accused of murder, played this character in 1992, co-starring with John Malkovich. Robert Blake, who has been accused of murder, played the role as well. Name this character who murders his friend in Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.
Ans. George Milton
Maybe next year someone could hold a national tournament in NYC. A lot of the teams at the DC site seemed to be centered around that area...
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by the return of AHAN »

NAC wrote:The competition focuses on academic information - "significa" rather than "trivia"
Isn't the fact that Gary Sinise hasn't been accused of murder significant????
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by scquizbowl »

That's pretty sad to have a Gary Sinise question. I've seen worse. A question about Cash Money Millionaires which determined a semi-final game where they would only take Bling, Bling.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by ryanrosenberg »

For the record, I did not hear that question, nor did I hear any fourth-quarter questions remotely that bad. I have a theory on why the questions the general quiz bowl population hears about are so awful; more on that when I finally have some time.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Marble-faced Bristle Tyrant »

Obviously there's reporting bias; generally the worst of the worst questions are the ones that get noticed.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill »

Yeah, that was certainly the worst of the three questions that was posted on QU's site. The Michelson-Morley question was like a first attempt to write an A set question. The Awakening question seems like it might have been one of those quirky region-tailored questions.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by evilmonkey »

rpond wrote:Yeah, that was certainly the worst of the three questions that was posted on QU's site. The Michelson-Morley question was like a first attempt to write an A set question. The Awakening question seems like it might have been one of those quirky region-tailored questions.
I think the assumption is that since the write-ups are an attempt at legitimacy, the questions that are posted on the website are examples of the best questions at the tournament. I suppose there are reasons this could actually not be the case.

However, I will take this opportunity to rebroadcast the yearly PSA: the arguments against Chip are first and foremost ethical concerns, second question quality.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by ryanrosenberg »

So, the tournament. It was as well run as I've seen, with the only major hang-up (a Sunday protest that took a while to be resolved) finished in a reasonable amount of time with no major consequences for travel plans. The hotel was a great venue: the rooms were easily accessible, the locations presented no major obstacles, and if there were limited food options on site, the shuttle provided almost anything you could want in 15 minutes. The moderators were professional, efficient, and reasonable, if a bit shaky on when to prompt and what to accept. All in all, I can't complain about the logistics and execution of the tournament.

Even the aforementioned delay turned out fortuitously, since it afforded my team an opportunity to talk to Jason Russell about the general structure of QU and the NAC. From what he told me, QU's writing structure goes something like this: a wide variety of writers, whom no one (except presumably Chip) knows who they all are, submit questions to Jason Russell, who edits them (he told me approximately 95% of them will have his stamp on them), then submits the questions to Chip for final revision. Chip has the power to reverse any edit and leave the question as is, which he'll do occasionally. In a writing process such as this, it's not hard to see how Plagiarizing Writer X could slip a question in, especially if this was when Chip took sole responsibility for editing questions. What is disheartening is that the writer was not publicly fired.

Two things I gleaned from this. First, not everyone in QU is a :chip: clone. There seems to be two distinct groups of people inside QU: the old guard (Chip, Chip's friends, most of the writers), who treat the NAC like a game show, playing to the audience rather than the players. They're the ones who insist that no one wants to hear questions over three sentences, that don't edit for hoses, and who think, you know, one-sentence "why?" questions are "fun". On the other hand, there's another group inside QU. The new guard (Jason Russell, the younger moderators, whatever influence David Madden has) realizes the heyday of televised quiz bowl is over. Instead of playing to the--rapidly shrinking--audience, they're writing longer, more pyramidal questions, eliminating hoses and buzzer races, and moving QU closer (albeit slowly) to respectability. Secondly, Jason Russell is doing stuff. He said that his first goal had been to eliminate hoses, and that he felt that they were successful with that at this NAC--he hadn't received any complaints about it all tournament (I noticed one, but over the span of the 15 or so rounds I witnessed it's insignificant). His next goal is to stretch out the questions--making the fourth quarter pyramidal, with as few buzzer races as possible. Again, I noted improvement in this aspect at the tournament.

It's getting better. I played two packets at practice today: one from 1998, one from 2009. The increase in question quality from 2009 to present was greater than that from 1998 to 2009.
evilmonkey wrote: I think the assumption is that since the write-ups are an attempt at legitimacy, the questions that are posted on the website are examples of the best questions at the tournament. I suppose there are reasons this could actually not be the case.
Chip does the write-ups. Chip does not give a (four-letter word) what anyone on these boards defines as "legitimacy". He's posting the questions that he personally likes, with maybe a token "pyramidal" question thrown in as a bone. The actual questions throughout the tournament are much better, or I wouldn't have survived last weekend. The write-ups are useful, however, as an example of what really needs to change. Chip is still the head of QU, and it's still his tournament. For all the progress that's been made, until Chip retires or realizes he can't favor his cronies over the players, the NAC will still be inferior to the other national tournaments.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by scquizbowl »

Here is another article from the Tulsa paper about a middle school team that did well at the Junior NAC, and could be "#1" in middle school for the nation:

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article. ... UTLIN17020
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

The #1 middle school program in the nation is Kealing, and nobody else can possibly dispute that claim.
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Re: NAC 2011

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scquizbowl wrote:Here is another article from the Tulsa paper about a middle school team that did well at the Junior NAC, and could be "#1" in middle school for the nation:

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article. ... UTLIN17020
Joe, you spend a lot of time on this board posting worthless links to terrible quizbowl matches on video and terrible quizbowl tournaments in articles. Why? Do you realize that you're giving these bad things more legitimacy?
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Re: NAC 2011

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Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:The #1 middle school program in the nation is Kealing, and nobody else can possibly dispute that claim.
I agree. Kealing is the #1 middle school.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by the return of AHAN »

yellow7206 wrote:
Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:The #1 middle school program in the nation is Kealing, and nobody else can possibly dispute that claim.
I agree. Kealing is the #1 middle school.
+2
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill »

Harrison took the whole thing, with Ardsley taking second:
http://www.jconline.com/article/2011061 ... ampionship
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Re: NAC 2011

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rpond wrote:Harrison took the whole thing, with Ardsley taking second:
http://www.jconline.com/article/2011061 ... ampionship
I can confirm this. We beat White Plains in one semi, and Harrison beat Copley (without Saajid) in the other.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by i never see pigeons in wheeling »

One thing NAQT/PACE really need to do is reach out to the media. Because Chip's organization is established, he ends up receiving far greater publicity in his NAC than the substantially larger HSNCT. One of the ways good quizbowl can be propagated is through the media, assuming a member of such an organization is willing to explain to outlets that these tournaments set themselves apart through their question quality. One thing that particularly irritated me was the quote from the coach of St. Pius X that "There's so much uncertainty. You don't know what questions they'll be asked." It almost seems like this coach is excited because she has no idea whether her team will be hosed or whether they'll win the next buzzer race, not because her team actually knows more than the others present.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill »

The publicity only depends on the teams that compete. If Ardsley won the tournament, I probably wouldn't have found an article about it so soon. I think :chip: affiliated teams are more drawn to (and possibly obsessed with) publicity, while NAQT and PACE do have one significant advantage over the NAC: actual footage. There is, to my knowledge, not a single video of anything at the NAC from the past 15 years, yet this year HSNCT got to broadcast twenty-something games and its entire awards ceremony through its partnership with iHigh, and there are mp3s of matches from HSNCTs held a few years ago.
Anyway, the partnership between NAQT and iHigh is a great starting point. If people tried getting more coverage for regular season tournaments, that would be fantastic.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by jonah »

rpond wrote:The publicity only depends on the teams that compete.
Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, but this sounds to me like you're saying that NAQT and PACE needn't do more (or anything) to get media coverage of their respective tournaments. Is that what you're saying?

In any event, I strongly feel that NAQT and PACE should indeed do more on the press front. I don't know what exactly they should do / how to go about it, but I'm nearly certain that NAQT, at least, is interested in suggestions.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill »

I should have put that sentence in the past tense. I meant in terms of the news articles and whatnot that have been linked here throughout. For the HSNCT, you had the one (fairly comprehensive) article on Arizona teams, and another about George Mason. The NSC had no such articles (to my knowledge). For the NAC, on the other hand, you had at least 10 articles about various teams attending or qualifying for it. The publicity that Joe and I were linking this whole time has only been produced by the competing teams- :chip: himself just settles for his own write-up which he hasn't done yet, while Harrison had the site that already published the article about their New Orelans win write up an article about them in about 6-8 hours.
I think the NAQT should try to generate more of its own press- something which QU doesn't do. Not sure how they'd start on that, either.
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Re: NAC 2011

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Guess y'all didn't see both the blog post and article in the AJC.

I sent this email out basically on a whim and it turned out to be quite productive. The reporter for the article was awesome and very interested in all the details of everything quizbowl, but I think the article got heavily edited to focus on the local/human interest side.

I fully agree that good quizbowl needs better PR, so I'd encourage people to make quizbowl stand out from the hundreds of other event releases that reporters get- you have to be enthusiastic and it doesn't hurt to contact people individually rather than just use a contact form (i.e. make some phone calls, find out who does what, and get in touch with them directly). Understand what kind of angle they're going for and don't just bombard 'em with press releases filled with quizbowl lingo (I've tried that before- doesn't work).

It can be tough for a national organization without local ties to make it into most papers (it would be great to see some kind of New Yorker/The Atlantic comparison article that fully explicated what a joke :chip: is, but I doubt that's coming) though, so it's really up to each team to work the local media and get more of these stories out.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill »

I forgot about that one completely, whoops.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Whiter Hydra »

I've been prodding my dad, who covers the Spelling Bee for the AP every year, to do something for the HSNCT or NSC, though so far there hasn't been much success on that front.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Cassian »

I emailed 4 different people at the Statesman in Austin to get them to do something for Kealing's MSNCT championship (and 1st, 4th and 5th place finishes for their 3 teams), but I got no responses at all. It's a shame really.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by centralhs »

cchiego wrote:Guess y'all didn't see both the blog post and article in the AJC.

I sent this email out basically on a whim and it turned out to be quite productive. The reporter for the article was awesome and very interested in all the details of everything quizbowl, but I think the article got heavily edited to focus on the local/human interest side.
Thanks so much, Chris, for your work in getting these articles into the Atlanta newspaper. I can't tell you the number of people who told me that they had seen the articles in the AJC, so they were definitely effective at getting some attention focused on the HSNCT and on quiz bowl in general. The article did turn out to be mainly a human interest story about Adam Silverman but since he ended up being the #1 scorer at the tournament, I would say that all the attention placed on him was warranted.
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Re: NAC 2011

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Cassian wrote:I emailed 4 different people at the Statesman in Austin to get them to do something for Kealing's MSNCT championship (and 1st, 4th and 5th place finishes for their 3 teams), but I got no responses at all. It's a shame really.
That's a joke. I mean, we didn't have equivalent coverage here in Chicagoland, but I can't say I phoned anyone either. OTOH, one of my starters for Barrington Station A was a semifinalist in "The Bee" last month and he got TV AND newspaper coverage.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by jonpin »

Moving Day wrote:
Cassian wrote:I emailed 4 different people at the Statesman in Austin to get them to do something for Kealing's MSNCT championship (and 1st, 4th and 5th place finishes for their 3 teams), but I got no responses at all. It's a shame really.
That's a joke. I mean, we didn't have equivalent coverage here in Chicagoland, but I can't say I phoned anyone either. OTOH, one of my starters for Barrington Station A was a semifinalist in "The Bee" last month and he got TV AND newspaper coverage.
Worth noting: The Spelling Bee is, literally, a media creation. Local spelling bees are run by the local newspapers and the national competition is run by a publishing corporation.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by i never see pigeons in wheeling »

jonpin wrote:
Moving Day wrote:
Cassian wrote:I emailed 4 different people at the Statesman in Austin to get them to do something for Kealing's MSNCT championship (and 1st, 4th and 5th place finishes for their 3 teams), but I got no responses at all. It's a shame really.
That's a joke. I mean, we didn't have equivalent coverage here in Chicagoland, but I can't say I phoned anyone either. OTOH, one of my starters for Barrington Station A was a semifinalist in "The Bee" last month and he got TV AND newspaper coverage.
Worth noting: The Spelling Bee is, literally, a media creation. Local spelling bees are run by the local newspapers and the national competition is run by a publishing corporation.
That's another thing. It might be possible for an organization like NAQT to gain media sponsorship or something like that without compromising question quality/tournament integrity.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by scquizbowl »

Here is the article from :chip: on the finals. Scroll up to see the beginning of the article on the "Chicago phase".

http://www.qunlimited.com/national.htm#chjv
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

So does like, the #1 team in West Virginia by far, Parkersburg High, like never go to the HSNCT, and instead go to Chip Nationals?
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Andrew's a Freshman »

Am I the only person who has their browser crash whenever they get on the qunlimited site?
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Re: NAC 2011

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CavsFan2k10 wrote:the #1 team in West Virginia
That's not saying much. Parkersburg's a very good team, but you can distinguish them a little more than that. I distinctly remember crushing the Montana champion my freshman year.

I have no idea why they chose NAC over HSNCT. It's not a matter of money, as I believe both places would have roughly similar travel costs, and Parkersburg did attend the NHBB. Maybe they just wanted to explore Chicago.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

ryanr345 wrote:
CavsFan2k10 wrote:the #1 team in West Virginia
That's not saying much. Parkersburg's a very good team, but you can distinguish them a little more than that. I distinctly remember crushing the Montana champion my freshman year.

I have no idea why they chose NAC over HSNCT. It's not a matter of money, as I believe both places would have roughly similar travel costs, and Parkersburg did attend the NHBB. Maybe they just wanted to explore Chicago.
They attended 6 NAQT events this past year, and they brought 4 teams to 2 of those events, and B and C teams to the others save WV States. They also made the long trip to Dayton for the Rowdy Raider (they beat a fully loaded Copley team), not to mention they hosted an NAQT event, and they had the statistically best player in West Virginia. It doesn't appear they ever went to the HSNCT, and I don't know about PACE. It appears they had the potential to be a real threat at a tossup/bonus Nationals.
Last edited by Sniper, No Sniping! on Sun Jun 19, 2011 12:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Angry Babies in Love »

ryanr345 wrote:
CavsFan2k10 wrote:the #1 team in West Virginia
That's not saying much. Parkersburg's a very good team, but you can distinguish them a little more than that. I distinctly remember crushing the Montana champion my freshman year.

I have no idea why they chose NAC over HSNCT. It's not a matter of money, as I believe both places would have roughly similar travel costs, and Parkersburg did attend the NHBB. Maybe they just wanted to explore Chicago.
If I remember, from talking to Nick, their captain, at NHBB, it was an administration thing more than anything. He knew that NAQT was better but I think he was in a bit of a bind.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by ryanrosenberg »

Wurzel-Flummery wrote:
ryanr345 wrote:
CavsFan2k10 wrote:the #1 team in West Virginia
That's not saying much. Parkersburg's a very good team, but you can distinguish them a little more than that. I distinctly remember crushing the Montana champion my freshman year.

I have no idea why they chose NAC over HSNCT. It's not a matter of money, as I believe both places would have roughly similar travel costs, and Parkersburg did attend the NHBB. Maybe they just wanted to explore Chicago.
If I remember, from talking to Nick, their captain, at NHBB, it was an administration thing more than anything. He knew that NAQT was better but I think he was in a bit of a bind.
I can see that. I know if I tried to get Ardsley to go to HSNCT administrators would look at me like I was crazy. Pure inertia is a very powerful force.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

What if you tell the Ardsley administrators that Chip Beall regularly engages in practices that would assuredly violate their honor code and force them to fail any students who did the same thing?
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:What if you tell the Ardsley administrators that Chip Beall regularly engages in practices that would assuredly violate their honor code and force them to fail any students who did the same thing?
Not a very good idea, in fact I think calling the Harrison coach an "idiot" was a better idea than this. Schools aren't required to have quiz bowl clubs, and I don't think trying to manipulate an honor code to get out of the little competition your school would let you do in the first place would get you far. It would be a matter of biting the hand that feeds, and while it may not be the fairest and democratic situation, there are worse situations, i.e. Administrations that try to kill quiz bowl clubs, severely cut funding for, etc
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about. Pointing out to administrations that Chip Beall routinely engages in plagiarism, which is something every respectable institution of education in America abhors in student work, is exactly the right way to go about convincing administrations to stop giving money to him. They can't possibly justify it when presented in those terms.
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Golran »

By going to the administration with ethical issues, the group is more likely to be cut than to change its path. This would leave the group in the position of asking "Would we rather play this terrible format where the money paid by our administration goes to a known plagiarist or would we rather not play any form of buzzer knowledge competition at all?"
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Re: NAC 2011

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about. Pointing out to administrations that Chip Beall routinely engages in plagiarism, which is something every respectable institution of education in America abhors in student work, is exactly the right way to go about convincing administrations to stop giving money to him. They can't possibly justify it when presented in those terms.
Chip Beall runs a free enterprise. This is like saying I should get my school to sign a contract to someone like Adidas for my schools athletics apparel, because Nike does unethical things that goes against my school's views. Even if selling the "plagiarism goes against your views" claim actually happens, there are several rebuttals that could be expected; a.) What do you want us to do about it? b.) Questions Unlimited has been around longer than NAQT, so plagiarism obviously hasn't been the cornerstone of Chip Beall's company's history c.) Given that NAQT hasn't been around as long, what is to say NAQT doesn't plagiarize from Chip Beall? (Disclaimer; I'm writing in the objective voice of a theoretical unbiased administrator, not at all am I accusing NAQT of plagiarism, there are two sides to a dispute). I don't think much would be gained from this argument unless objective reasoning is presented, not "we don't like Chip, he sucks, he plagiarizes, get us out of that mess".

Also, what Ian said.
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