The future of the WHSQB national poll

[Matt Weiner]

I only had six people vote in this most recent poll. Tell me what you'd prefer I do.

[jewtemplar]

The rankings don't look to have changed that much. I like the idea of a poll, and I think a panel of regionally selected coaches or people active in high school qb is the way to go, but 6 people is just ridiculous.

[irmogopher]

Here's an idea that was somewhat inspired by BCS even though I'm sure it would be more work. What if you were to have a poll by the panel, and then also a poll by accepting ballots by everyone...and you average the results of the two polls to get the rankings? Does that seem too stupid?

[AKKOLADE]

I personally say eliminate the panel and go with anyone over high school age who is still involved with the quizzle bizzle.

As an alternative, maybe you should expand the panel in size, there by hopefully getting more opinions, and in turn increasing the number of voters who actually vote. If you go this route, then you might want to put the "miss once and you're gone" rule into play.

To go through the choices the I disagree with in particular: I wouldn't let high schoolers vote, because I know that some people will get a bunch of their friends to send you votes that are just "WHOOOO!!! *insert name of high school here* IS NUMBER ONE!!!!! YEAH BABY! SCREW THE REST, WE'RE THE BEST!!!" and that may skew the results a bit.

I can't see a mathematical formula working out; working out a formula that would handle all the variables of tournaments would be virtually impossible, IMHO.

Finally, don't end the poll, Matt. It should be viewed as a fun thing that allows teams to get recognition for having good years; people who get all bent out of shape just because of the placement of a team need to cool down. It's not like this is the college football poll or anything. Maybe you need to start putting some disclaimer that your poll isn't meant to be the final word on how good a team is, because obviously it isn't (no offense to you or your poll, but I think that most polls are flawed, especially dealing with an activity that has a "cult" status such as high school quiz bowl).

Just my two cents

[TimDCD]

I guess opening up the poll to coaches and people who have graduated from high school wouldn't be a bad idea. However, the ballots should also be screened to make sure not too many people vote from a specific area, and that the ballots actually make sense.

[First Chairman]

Well, originally I think the poll was open to more people, but the results were highly skewed regionally that the results were deemed to be a reflection of ballot-box-stuffing. As it stands, this is the best we can do for now. Remember that the poll is simply for fun, but you do want people who do know something about the scene nationally to take part. It's hard to do as it stands.

[NoahMinkCHS]

What if you had something similar to the ESPN/USA Today College Football Poll, where a ton of coaches vote? Maybe open it up so that one coach per school can register to vote--no matter who or where. (Of course, if s/he submits a ballot that is garbage, such as heavily and unreasonably favoring his or her own school, city, state, whatever, then it could and should be discarded and that school's right to vote suspended.) Then you could mathematically equate it by region or something, so that if 25 people from the Southeast vote but only three from California, it wouldn't be ridiculously skewed for one region or another, like it was pre-panel. (Of course, since many more teams come from the Mid-Atlantic or Michigan than from, say, Wyoming or Alaska, there should be some weighting towards the more eminent regions; just not so much as to make the poll favor teams from dominant regions by numbers alone.) The panel could be retained as sort of an at-large region, with voting weight approximately equal to any other--that way, there's always a (more) impartial voice from people who know a lot about the national scene and not just their region (assuming they choose to vote--if they don't, I'm sure someone could be found to replace them).

Any thoughts?

[AKKOLADE]

What if you had something similar to the ESPN/USA Today College Football Poll, where a ton of coaches vote? Maybe open it up so that one coach per school can register to vote--no matter who or where. (Of course, if s/he submits a ballot that is garbage, such as heavily and unreasonably favoring his or her own school, city, state, whatever, then it could and should be discarded and that school's right to vote suspended.) Then you could mathematically equate it by region or something, so that if 25 people from the Southeast vote but only three from California, it wouldn't be ridiculously skewed for one region or another, like it was pre-panel. (Of course, since many more teams come from the Mid-Atlantic or Michigan than from, say, Wyoming or Alaska, there should be some weighting towards the more eminent regions; just not so much as to make the poll favor teams from dominant regions by numbers alone.) The panel could be retained as sort of an at-large region, with voting weight approximately equal to any other--that way, there's always a (more) impartial voice from people who know a lot about the national scene and not just their region (assuming they choose to vote--if they don't, I'm sure someone could be found to replace them).

Any thoughts?

I like the idea in theory, but in practice I could never see it working out (no offense). I just can't see enough coaches having a good idea of what quiz bowl teams in other regions are good enough to vote for. For example, in West Virginia, I could see only maybe, say, one or two coaches caring and knowing enough to cast good ballots. The rest would either toss them aside, or just vote for local teams.

But, once again, that's just my view. I like the idea, but I question if it would work.

[ASimPerson]

I say end the poll. There are simply not enough people who are aware of all goings-on in every corner of the US where this game is played. The idea of a mathematical poll won't even work because of the wild difference in questions and philosohphy throughout the many formats in our land. A survey of every coach you can find is a bad idea, mainly because the vast majority of coaches don't really know what happens outside of their home region. (Maybe a regional poll would work?) And from what I can tell you used to let everyone vote, but that seemed to be prone to bad-decision making and bias, so we know that's out.

I would say try to compare the winners of some of the more respectable national tournaments and see what you get, because arguably any team that really knows what it is doing will hopefully avoid Chip. (Or maybe I'm just being optimistic for once.)

[solonqb]

I would say keep the poll, becauuse it is a morale boost to teams to see their names get recognized even by a limited number of people. However, I think the structure of the poll should be changed. There should be two panels, one composed of tournament staff from the four major national tournaments (ASCN, NAC, NAQT, PACE). (I exclude Panasonic because of the all-star teams), and the other not really a panel, but some measure of popular sentiment among the QB community, whether it be coaches, students, graduated players, etc. The two could be averaged or shown seperately, depeneding on what is wanted to be seen.

I say tournament staff because I'm pretty sure that moderators and the like have long had their own opinions on good teams, having been at the matches themselves, yet cannot express them that much, at least during the tournament. This would be somehting like PACE's All-Scholar's Team, but for teams, not individuals.

PS: I hate Chip Beall as much as the rest of you do, but some decent teams are still going to the Black Hole of Quizbowl, so we can't count them out. At any rate, the popular participation should cancel out any dissonant opinions from NAC staff.

[Howard]

Keep the poll! To make it work, try expanding the panel. I would try to include hs coaches from teams who are known for travelling to tournaments in other areas of the country. This would help to eliminate geographic factors. Given the small number of coaches in this category, I would add tournament organizers of well known tournaments. You would need to be careful to distribute evenly among the geographic locations so as to not skew the results. If this is still not enough people, perhaps you then need to add hs coaches from well known and respected teams in their respective regions, again being careful to keep the geographic distribution reasonable. And last but not least, if they cannot vote when asked, they do not need to be on the panel. What's the point of having a panel of nonvoters?!

[msuter]

Matt,
First, thank you for completing the poll and posting it even though you had only 6 people who responded. Perhaps more would have responded had the poll come closer to the completion of the national tournaments--when qb was still on their minds and they weren’t on vacation or getting ready to go back to school.

The results pretty much reflected previous polls with a few schools moving in and out of the top 25 and the “also receiving votesâ€

[jeffburns1]

I like the idea of regional polls, using several coaches and/or tournament directors. That would present a truer picture of things. Including feedback from national tournament moderators in some form would also be a good thing for the final poll of the year...

[AKKOLADE]

I think the regional poll idea has promise, though I can't agree with all of the regions that Marian suggested. Also, maybe if there were a smaller number of regions, that would make the idea run more smoothly as well.

[BroNi]

I would agree with keeping the pole, but I have 3 suggestions for improvement (all of which have been said previously in some form or another):

1) Keep the panel, but consider expanding it to say 15 or 20.
2) The panel should be composed of High School Coaches who keep in touch with the nationwide HS QuizBowl world (perhaps those who respond to this message board), those who bring their teams to numerous tournaments, and/or those who consistently bring their teams to one or more of the National Championships. It should also be comprised of those of you in college and beyond who run/volunteer at a number of HS tournaments, either large regionals or nationals. I'm thinking of Matt, Samer, etc.... You guys see and hear alot and your input would be invaluable. I would also like to add that you guys are often underappreciated for the work that you do and the time that you commit. I thank you for keeping HS quizbowl alive and well.
3) Replace those on the panel who do not respond say 3? 4? times. By keeping aware of tournaments and this website, you should always be able to find replacements.

[cvdwightw]

We all (or at least most of us) know that the BCS does absolutely nothing for football except to make it more confusing for all of us. However, I think a BCS-type poll would be theoretically feasible here.

First of all, I like solon qb's idea of the two separate polls. Teams should not be penalized for inaccessibility to tournament formats (like California and PACE), and should be rewarded for doing well in several formats (like the Virginia/DC area, which competes in 3 to 5 separate formats). Also, have one about general sentiment, which will likely be biased heavily towards the areas that care more about quiz bowl (southeast, Virginia/DC, Michigan) but will serve as almost a strength of schedule factor. If there are only a few good teams in an area like California or New England, but several in other areas, it's not fair to have the one vote from the West or New England overshadow a Southern team that doesn't win too much because every tournament it's at has two or three of the top ten in the Academic Format Poll.

Second, there should be some kind of "strength of team" factor. Points Per Game is a better indicator than Margin of Victory, because a team that wins 305-155 (150 points) over a marginal team should be rewarded more than a team that wins 195-20 (175) over the same team. Since the point structures vary from format to format, it would be a good idea for each voting member to have some sort of "expected score" for each format.

Lastly, regional style determines a lot of the dominance. Some states play ASCN best, others NAQT, others PACE, others NAC. Each major QB area (state/region) should decide on how many major formats are in the area, and whether they are mutually exclusive (for instance, NAQT and NAC formats coexist in Southern California, but the only team that plays both is Edison). One main format = x10, two main formats = x6, three =x5 and four =x4 to multiply the points given by each sub-section of the Academic Format Poll. This also rewards the teams that perform well in many diverse formats.

All these factors would be averaged so we wouldn't get sleepers like my school in 2001 (unheard of to 15th due to T-5th at NAQT) or Charter School of Wilmington this year (no votes to 18th due to T-8th at NAQT).

I realize that this is all as convoluted as the BCS system, with no foreseeable possibility for implementation. However, the BCS was created because of the instability of the then-current system, and is creating a whole new set of ideas for choosing college football's #1. Perhaps this post will spring a better idea from someone else.

[emactruman]

How about also having experts from each state give their rankings as deep as they can go. I can help with MI.

[NoahMinkCHS]

If anyone has a proposal for incorporating all of the Michigan top sixty into the poll, I'd love to see it...

[ihatenicksaban]

Uh-oh. I smell an online, interstate throw down a-brewin'.

[emactruman]

It could be worse noah.... At one point in time I had the top 180 ranked in Michigan

[alhsqb17]

Use a mathematical formula and combine other national polls.