AuguryMarch wrote: What am I not taking into account?
AuguryMarch wrote:Specifically, if you are a hardcore high school kid, you are just as likely to have had your fill of quizbowl as you are wanting more in college.
AuguryMarch wrote:also, matt, if your hypothesis is true.. where are all these hardcore freshman and sophomores who were inspired by their high school experiences?
Matt Weiner wrote:What I mean by that is that good tournaments can start doing something that will be very beneficial and may tie in to your ideas about mentoring and personality. Right now we have certain bad tournaments run by certain not-so-talented editors, which are something of an institution in their regions and attract many of their teams for more social than competitive reasons. You know what events I'm talking about. If the group of people who are currently moving on from full-time playing stay around as editors, we could see things like MLK becoming Ryan Westbrook and Dave Rappaport's annual event, or ACF Regionals becoming Seth Teitler's annual event (Seth probably has a few more years of student play left in him and doesn't really belong in the aforementioned group of impending retirees, but I'd really like to see this happen since we all like his editing and sources tell me he's the Nicest Guy In Quizbowl, and anyway I'm just throwing out some examples). If such tournaments can be established as the pinnacles of the calendar year in and year out and these editors continue to strike the balance between difficulty and quality that they are known for, then there's no reason we can't just move to a new paradigm and continue catering to the vast bulk of players, and let the occasional wannabe-elite player come up as he may. This is, in my view, the best-case scenario out of the realistic possibilities for the next few years and it's what I think people should work towards.
Matt Weiner wrote:As far as NAQT, I think you're leaving out the big picture. The college program is a loss leader for them. They may not make a huge profit on it if you just look at the costs of producing the SCT and ICT versus the money they bring in from entry fees, but what they are doing is putting the product out there to get customers and writers for the high school sets. It's apparent that the high school questions are a financial success on the high school level alone; NAQT's share of every crappy college tournament run on high school questions is 100% profit, because the expenses are already covered by the high school market. Furthermore, they bring in new writers of the high school questions and new college customers of them for high school tournaments by keeping the brand exposed. Combined with obvious team demand, I doubt there is any reason to expect NAQT to pull out of college from a purely financial standpoint. And I think you overestimate the intangible factors--part of the reason NAQT stayed involved in college for so long when it wasn't making money was because they (or at least R) wanted to be running a national championship tournament; that probably hasn't changed. And dealing with kvetching doesn't bother people who just ignore feedback as a rule, which of course NAQT does. R's cadre really doesn't care what we think, so I wouldn't fret over the possibility of hurting their fragile emotional state.
Birdofredum Sawin wrote:Where are the vibrant programs encouraging young players to develop into competent editors, as was the case at Michigan under Ezequiel's guidance?
As it happens, R. does care what people, even Matt, think about NAQT. But that isn't the point.
Rather, Paul is suggesting that if NAQT were to draw up a list of reasons for and against continuing to produce the SCT and ICT, the "against" column (the questions consume an inordinate amount of time to produce, given NAQT's other commitments; they lose money on the tournaments; it's becoming extremely difficult to line up hosts; a vocal segment of the community seems to despise them) would overwhelm the "for" column (which, as far as I can tell, would boil down to "prestige" and "a few influential people in NAQT are still committed to the idea of running a decent national championship, regardless of the drawbacks"). I think that's true.
Some late-fall and early-spring tournaments should swing a little farther toward regionals, as otherwise there's a big jump to regionals from the difficulty newer players are used to.
theMoMA wrote:Consider how much work catching up to the college competition takes. Then consider that many quiz bowl dinosaurs aren't retiring any time soon. The prospect of working for years just to get beaten by old-timers is not an attractive one for many.
Finally, new players need to be encouraged to integrate themselves into the quiz bowl community. The forums and the IRC channel are really fanstastic resources for the new player. Which is to say, you guys are really fantastic resources for the new player.
Ryan Westbrook wrote:Sometimes, it feels like you need every good player available on the planet just to create the strength of field that tournaments routinely had three years ago.
I don't even mean on a standard university team - the truly solid acf team may hear its death knell after the dissolution of texas a&m and chicago A - I'm even talking about the individual players.
Teitler, Jerry, Sorice, Weiner, and others fit this profile - dare I say there's no lack of charisma in today's qb (I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, I'm notoriously demented about these things).
What there does seem to be a lack of is desire and work ethic from the promising people coming out of high school. Sure, it's well nigh impossible to accumulate the canon that experienced players have had many years to develop - I'm not looking for that, I'm looking for the dogged accumulation of any canon.
a vast desert of mediocrity and umpromising anonymity, with a few bright oases here and there (and I don't mean to offend those oases with this rant). But, that desert is the problem.
grapesmoker wrote:We're fooling ourselves if we think that the general level of play has ever been anything other than medicore. Most teams have been and are weekend warriors, and I think we should just accept that as a fact and learn to live with it.
Ray wrote:i'm not trolling, i just thought the point was kind of obvious...maybe you just want me to use proper capitalization, fine
Back in the mid to late 90s, quiz bowl was easy enough so that some random undergrad who paid attention in his classes could go to a tournament and probably get a tossup or two each round, before the giveaway. I think we should go back to this instead of continuing to make every tournament progressively harder.
One trend I've noticed is that people will write a tossup on a reasonably accessible thing but pack it full of incredibly obscure clues until the giveaway and think that this is good because it challenges good players while remaining gettable for perpetual n00bs like myself. The result is that second-to-last clues today are harder than leadins were 5-10 years ago. I wish people would stop doing this. These questions are no more pyramidal than questions composed entirely of leadins, though I suppose they are the less undesirable of the two extremes.
We can continue to have questions like these for ACF Nationals but for your average circuit tournament, I think it's more important to ensure that the field can get a tossup before the giveaway than to ensure that there not be a buzzerrace between two of the very top teams on a leadin.
I know that this is going to be an unpopular opinion on these boards, but I really don't care if Matt loses to Jerry on a buzzer race on the leadin of the last tossup of their at a circuit tournament if it means that a weaker team was able to get more questions before the giveaways and have more fun. Besides, they'll meet again in the finals anyway and we can save the incredibly hard, Eiffel Tower-shaped questions for then and keep actual pyramidal questions in the rounds that most teams will be playing.
Ray wrote:One trend I've noticed is that people will write a tossup on a reasonably accessible thing but pack it full of incredibly obscure clues until the giveaway and think that this is good because it challenges good players while remaining gettable for perpetual n00bs like myself. The result is that second-to-last clues today are harder than leadins were 5-10 years ago.
Matt Weiner wrote:Ray wrote:One trend I've noticed is that people will write a tossup on a reasonably accessible thing but pack it full of incredibly obscure clues until the giveaway and think that this is good because it challenges good players while remaining gettable for perpetual n00bs like myself. The result is that second-to-last clues today are harder than leadins were 5-10 years ago.
This is called a "bad question" and does not reflect the stated philosophy of anyone that I know of.
That's what the SCT and ACF Fall function as- tournaments that can appeal to casual players yet still attract top teams and players. The demise of either one would be a grievous blow to younger teams and players."What we need to do is find some way to keep these casual players showing up at good tournaments so those tournaments stay viable, and not fret over the rate of good players emerging. "
Having some easier and some more difficult tournaments just seems like a good compromise that will keep these players interested."College quiz bowl is held up not only by a few elites, but also by a vast supporting cast of capable players."
Unless you establish a separate division for these newer teams, they're not only going to get destroyed by the competition but also not get many questions. Having slightly easier questions at least lets them feel like they have a chance on every question and lets them enjoy playing. Of course, this should not be a crutch that should continue indefinitely, but I think there should be a way to make the transition to tournaments of higher difficulty easier on newer players and teams."Some late-fall and early-spring tournaments should swing a little farther toward regionals, as otherwise there's a big jump to regionals from the difficulty newer players are used to."
You do know of Ryan Westbrook, right?
vig180 wrote:I was pleased at this year's ACF Fall in the Southeast to see teams like Tulane, Alabama and UL-Lafayette who seem to be relatively new to the circuit. While it's not exactly exponential growth, getting new schools involved is always a good sign and that's what having some easier tournaments can help do.
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