Illinois Community College College Bowl

[Irreligion in Bangladesh]

In the process of inviting nearby community colleges to NIU's mirror of the Early Autumn Novice tournament, I found that a small handful of CCs had official "College Bowl" clubs listed, usually without contact information. As a former CC player in Illinois, this surprised me - my administration had told me there was no program of any sort involving Illinois CCs. As it stands, the only CC activity in the quizbowl community (to my knowledge) has been my short-lived team at Rock Valley College that attended the last ELVIS tournament and the recent College of DuPage team that includes Mike Perovanovic. After some investigation, including a call to a College Bowl advisor, I found the following:

The ICCTA hosted a College Bowl event from 1993 until 2008; an incomplete list of winners is at that link. The program used CBI-esque questions, possibly from CBI themselves. Games used 7 minute halves - was that CBI standard? It folded in 2008 when the ICCTA dropped the funding for it, but some community colleges continue to play as independent clubs funded by their schools.

One such circuit is the Skyway Conference, consisting of 8 CCs roughly southwest of Chicago. They played a conference tournament in Fall 2009, and the point totals indicate to me that question sources probably did not change from CBI style questions.

I don't know if these schools play more than this conference, or if schools outside the conference continue to play. Between now and our ACF Novice mirror, I hope to find out more on each of these fronts. I think we'll likely have a giant new source of teams in this area, certainly a CC SCT in the making. I'd advise anyone who is running an ACF Novice mirror (or other novice tournament) to reach out to the community colleges in your area and do some research into a possible derelict CBI circuit. You might stumble upon a gold mine of new teams.