ether a go-go wrote:Some of them are even convinced that doing well in the IHSA tournament will increase the profile of the team in the eyes of administrators, students, and the community.
The students don't care -- the team understands the issue and the other students will believe whatever we tell them in the announcements. But the community only hears about IHSA because that's all we can get the paper to report; they don't care about quizbowl in general, but will report any results that say IHSA. Quizbowl gets on the front page of the paper once a year; Saturday, March whateverth, with Auburn holding up their trophy. So, because the community is only ever aware of us for this, it's actually correct that the "profile of the team" is increased there. It's a trivially small factor, I'm sure, but when you're a private school in a city with half a dozen other private high school options, you can't throw away publicity opportunities like that, or so my admins tell me.
I've talked with my AD, my principal, and my head of school about the issues with last year's events and the probable issues with this year's questions. They've agreed with me that this is a problematic, questionable event; they agree with me that our 5th place finish at Masonic State this year was our keystone event for this year; they agree with me that the IHSA questions this year were pathetic compared to years past, and they believed me on this before we heard tossup 1 on Monday night. Whether they're just humoring me and nodding when I complain about it or they actually agree and would prefer to not compete, I don't know, and it doesn't matter.
Essentially, it boils down to "bad quizbowl being better than no quizbowl." That's a statement that I disagree with personally, but I understand why dozens of reasonable, informed coaches, myself included, ended up under its yoke this past week.