The Quizbowl Resource Center

Randy Buehler, who did Magic the Gathering stuff for awhile.

If you have any questions about early Vanderbilt stuff (c. 1990), let me know and I'll ask him.

In 2003 or so, I took over Randy Buehler's fantasy baseball team in a league with Phil Groce and Charlie Steinhice and some other people. I have never met Randy. I do get a little mileage out of that story at Magic events though.

I worked at or TD'ed more than a dozen ABC's between 1992 and 1999. I can also answer a lot of questions anyone might have.

Would you mind just sharing some random thoughts about the tournaments? I'm sure people would be interested in hearing about the development and history of the event (and if they aren't, screw 'em, because I definitely am).

Awesome. I would be very interested in the history of Tennessee hs quizbowl in general and especially if west TN used to have more presence in the rest of the state. Also, how did ABC end up attracting so many far flung teams? Some kind of marketing or word of mouth?

I played at the Vanderbilt ABC in the fall of 1993 for Clevelnd HS in Cleveland, TN. I think I remember having some matches Fridy evening and then more matches Saturday. I don't recall if the Friday matches were just scrimmages or if they counted as part of the actual tournament or not. I think that the prelims were followed by single elimination playoffs. This was the first tournament that I ever travelled and spent the night to attend. Cleveland, TN is about 3 hours from Nashville. It was a fun time in my recollection, but I don't recall what the match format was like or any of the other detIls. It certainly provided a vision for what quizbowl could be like in the future with large tournaments attracting teams from a large area. I guess that the sparseness of tournaments in the past led to more teams participating than we see today. I would love to know what kind of marketing/advertising that Vanderbilt did so long ago to attract such a large field.

I would like some clarification on an incident that has entered my high school quizbowl team's lore. Back in the 1990s my coach brought North Kansas City to the fall ABC with some regularity, and apparently one year, they went into the playoffs with a high seed, only to be eliminated by a not notable B team (I believe from Riverside?) because, according to my old coach, there were multiple questions relating to a specific science fiction series in the packet, and somebody on Riverside had clearly read those books. Do you have any recollection of such a packet?