The Quizbowl Resource Center

The head editors of next year's ACF tournaments will be:

Matt Bollinger (Fall)
Chris Ray (Regionals)
Jonathan Magin (Nationals)

The dates for next year's ACF tournaments have been decided. They are:

ACF Fall: November 3
ACF Regionals: February 23
ACF Nationals: April 27-28

Don't most semester schools have finals the first week of May? A quick search of six schools shows that ACF Nationals is the weekend before finals for us and Penn and is in the middle of finals for Ohio State, Virginia, and Michigan. I realize that not everyone's schedule can be accommodated, but given the relative standardization of calendars at universities, has ACF considered the possibility that Nationals is not scheduled for an optimal time? I realize that it's hard with ICT being later this year, but it seems like the weekend before would be easier for a significant portion of schools.

Plan Rubber wrote:Don't most semester schools have finals the first week of May? A quick search of six schools shows that ACF Nationals is the weekend before finals for us and Penn and is in the middle of finals for Ohio State, Virginia, and Michigan. I realize that not everyone's schedule can be accommodated, but given the relative standardization of calendars at universities, has ACF considered the possibility that Nationals is not scheduled for an optimal time? I realize that it's hard with ICT being later this year, but it seems like the weekend before would be easier for a significant portion of schools.

Attendance has been on an upward trend since the tournament moved back to this date from the former late March pre-ICT date.

Plan Rubber wrote:Don't most semester schools have finals the first week of May? A quick search of six schools shows that ACF Nationals is the weekend before finals for us and Penn and is in the middle of finals for Ohio State, Virginia, and Michigan. I realize that not everyone's schedule can be accommodated, but given the relative standardization of calendars at universities, has ACF considered the possibility that Nationals is not scheduled for an optimal time? I realize that it's hard with ICT being later this year, but it seems like the weekend before would be easier for a significant portion of schools.

Hi, Joe--

The two reasons April 27-28 was chosen over the weekend before were (1) to avoid scheduling ICT and ACF Nationals back-to-back and (2) to avoid scheduling against the National History Bowl and Bee (for staffer-allocation reasons). If April 27-28 is going to be a problematic weekend for a lot of potential ACF Nats attendees, we are absolutely interested in hearing about that as soon as possible, since the further out we are the more time we have to find an optimal Nats date.

Also, as Matt points out, given previous attendance trends it would be very, very surprising if late March were the optimal date.

Sorry if I was unclear, I meant the weekend immediately before (April 20 in this case). If it's too late to change the date this year, that's unfortunate for us, but I'd understand. I'd just be disappointed if this weekend became the permanent choice.

Also, I'd question whether or not a later date is really responsible for a rise in attendance, given the expansion of circuits generally since 2007, but either way, my point is about this specific weekend instead of the second half of April generally.

Plan Rubber wrote:Don't most semester schools have finals the first week of May? A quick search of six schools shows that ACF Nationals is the weekend before finals for us and Penn and is in the middle of finals for Ohio State, Virginia, and Michigan. I realize that not everyone's schedule can be accommodated, but given the relative standardization of calendars at universities, has ACF considered the possibility that Nationals is not scheduled for an optimal time? I realize that it's hard with ICT being later this year, but it seems like the weekend before would be easier for a significant portion of schools.

Like last year, where you had multiple top bracket teams not come?

I realize this is entirely self-serving, but BOTH nationals are during exam-time for any Canadian teams that want to go. I was ecstatic to see the April 28th date, and would be disappointed to see it change.

Going to post my full position here:

Joe, based on your post, I'm under the impression that you think there aren't other factors that the editors considered in choosing a date. I will list just one: putting any national championship on the third week of April is basically telling Canadian teams "you can't come" as it is smack-dab in the middle of exams for the entire country. I e-mailed this to the editors before they even chose the date, and I want to be pretty vocal about it here because the "Canada isn't that good and won't send that many teams to ACF Nats" argument isn't going to hold up forever (our high school circuits are growing). Just like you have one problem with the 28th (although I can't take the "its the week before exams" argument seriously at all --- really, dude?), we will have a problem with the third weekend of April for eternity -- it just hasn't been an issue in the past due to lack of a top circuit.

I do agree that if there are several top teams that can't make Nationals on that weekend, it should be moved - but not to the 21st. Literally any other weekend would be fine. (On the other hand, if NHBB wants to expand to Canada taking the 20th-21st would be perfect)

I would be interested to see what people think about moving back to March, given that the tournament is during or immediately before finals for many schools. I would definitely prefer a March date.

TheCopleyIndian wrote:I would be interested to see what people think about moving back to March, given that the tournament is during or immediately before finals for many schools. I would definitely prefer a March date.

Two big problems with a March date are that you run into spring breaks at quarter-system schools, which is logistically even a bigger pain in the ass than finals week, and that moving the tournament nearly a full month earlier makes it much more difficult for the editors now that ACF Nats seems to regularly require the production of 9-10 blind editors' packets.

fourplustwo wrote:Going to post my full position here:

Joe, based on your post, I'm under the impression that you think there aren't other factors that the editors considered in choosing a date. I will list just one: putting any national championship on the third week of April is basically telling Canadian teams "you can't come" as it is smack-dab in the middle of exams for the entire country. I e-mailed this to the editors before they even chose the date, and I want to be pretty vocal about it here because the "Canada isn't that good and won't send that many teams to ACF Nats" argument isn't going to hold up forever (our high school circuits are growing). Just like you have one problem with the 28th (although I can't take the "its the week before exams" argument seriously at all --- really, dude?), we will have a problem with the third weekend of April for eternity -- it just hasn't been an issue in the past due to lack of a top circuit.

I do agree that if there are several top teams that can't make Nationals on that weekend, it should be moved - but not to the 21st. Literally any other weekend would be fine. (On the other hand, if NHBB wants to expand to Canada taking the 20th-21st would be perfect)

Look, I don't claim to know what was in the ACF people's heads when they chose the date, I just brought up something that seems like a potential issue for a number of American schools that they might not have though of. The last three ACF Nationals have been on the third weekend in April and all had 28 teams, my issue is with it being a week later this year. I'm sure there's some date that isn't during exams for some large fraction of the potential field (if not April 20 this year, then perhaps April 6 or something). I also don't understand how you, in the same post, said that "putting any national championship on the third week of April is basically telling Canadian teams 'you can't come' as it is smack-dab in the middle of exams," and said that "I can't take the 'its the week before exams' argument seriously at all." Isn't what I'm saying, that this date is immediately before or during exams for a large portion of American schools (five out of the six with active quizbowl programs that I randomly chose to check), the exact same as what you are saying about Canadian schools?

Plan Rubber wrote:Don't most semester schools have finals the first week of May? A quick search of six schools shows that ACF Nationals is the weekend before finals for us and Penn and is in the middle of finals for[…] Virginia[…]

UVA's Reading days, where you prepare for finals, don't start until May so I sure hope that our fianls aren't before then! In other words, I think that it might be best if you double check the dates that you came up.with for those school's finals.

Smuttynose Island wrote:

Plan Rubber wrote:Don't most semester schools have finals the first week of May? A quick search of six schools shows that ACF Nationals is the weekend before finals for us and Penn and is in the middle of finals for[…] Virginia[…][/qoute]

UVA's Reading days, where you prepare for finals, don't start until May so I sure hope that our fianls aren't before then! In other words, I think that it might be best if you double check the dates that you came up.with for those school's finals.

Sorry about that, I misread the schedule. Your exams do start the week after, which is what I was looking at, although since you have some reading days before I guess it isn't as big a deal for you.

fourplustwo wrote:Going to post my full position here:

Joe, based on your post, I'm under the impression that you think there aren't other factors that the editors considered in choosing a date. I will list just one: putting any national championship on the third week of April is basically telling Canadian teams "you can't come" as it is smack-dab in the middle of exams for the entire country. I e-mailed this to the editors before they even chose the date, and I want to be pretty vocal about it here because the "Canada isn't that good and won't send that many teams to ACF Nats" argument isn't going to hold up forever (our high school circuits are growing). Just like you have one problem with the 28th (although I can't take the "its the week before exams" argument seriously at all --- really, dude?), we will have a problem with the third weekend of April for eternity -- it just hasn't been an issue in the past due to lack of a top circuit.

I do agree that if there are several top teams that can't make Nationals on that weekend, it should be moved - but not to the 21st. Literally any other weekend would be fine. (On the other hand, if NHBB wants to expand to Canada taking the 20th-21st would be perfect)

Unless you guys have finals on weekends, I can't see how "it's in the middle of finals" is much different from "it's the week before finals." In any case, it seems that the current date might well create difficulty for a number of teams.

Many schools (including Univ. at Buffalo) have weekend exams during finals week, I had a final on Saturday last year.

MathMusic wrote:Many schools (including Univ. at Buffalo) have weekend exams during finals week, I had a final on Saturday last year.

Well, that's just cruel; but if that's the case for a substantial number of Canadian teams who have a chance of attending ACF Nats, then I'd agree that we really ought not move it a week earlier.

The Eighth Viscount of Waaaah wrote:

MathMusic wrote:Many schools (including Univ. at Buffalo) have weekend exams during finals week, I had a final on Saturday last year.

Well, that's just cruel; but if that's the case for a substantial number of Canadian teams who have a chance of attending ACF Nats, then I'd agree that we really ought not move it a week earlier.

We often do have finals on weekends; certainly UBC did (I don't pay that much attention to Waterloo's schedule).

nobthehobbit wrote:

The Eighth Viscount of Waaaah wrote:

MathMusic wrote:Many schools (including Univ. at Buffalo) have weekend exams during finals week, I had a final on Saturday last year.

Well, that's just cruel; but if that's the case for a substantial number of Canadian teams who have a chance of attending ACF Nats, then I'd agree that we really ought not move it a week earlier.

We often do have finals on weekends; certainly UBC did (I don't pay that much attention to Waterloo's schedule).

I have friends at Waterloo who often have finals on weekends.

Masked Canadian History Bandit wrote:

nobthehobbit wrote:

The Eighth Viscount of Waaaah wrote:

MathMusic wrote:Many schools (including Univ. at Buffalo) have weekend exams during finals week, I had a final on Saturday last year.

Well, that's just cruel; but if that's the case for a substantial number of Canadian teams who have a chance of attending ACF Nats, then I'd agree that we really ought not move it a week earlier.

We often do have finals on weekends; certainly UBC did (I don't pay that much attention to Waterloo's schedule).

I have friends at Waterloo who often have finals on weekends.

I wrote a final this year at 7 PM on a Sunday night. These things happen frequently.

Man, it's almost like schools across the continent in multiple nations are on all sorts of different schedules and any date you pick will be somewhere within the hallowed couple weeks of finals for someone.

Plan Rubber wrote:Sorry if I was unclear, I meant the weekend immediately before (April 20 in this case). If it's too late to change the date this year, that's unfortunate for us, but I'd understand. I'd just be disappointed if this weekend became the permanent choice.

Also, I'd question whether or not a later date is really responsible for a rise in attendance, given the expansion of circuits generally since 2007, but either way, my point is about this specific weekend instead of the second half of April generally.

ACF Nats 1999: April 23, 22 teams
ACF Nats 2000: April 22, 22 teams (plus "two Masters exhibition teams")
ACF Nats 2001: March 23-24, 16 teams
ACF Nats 2002: April 20, 27 teams
ACF Nats 2003:April 19, 22 teams

I'll point out that in addition to being short on teams, ACF Nats 2001 was also pretty short on strong players; I know that Chicago wasn't the only school that sent a seriously depleted team (and, really, I should also point out that Chicago sent a single team, vs. the 2-4 they've sent to most other iterations of ACF).

TheCopleyIndian wrote:I would be interested to see what people think about moving back to March, given that the tournament is during or immediately before finals for many schools. I would definitely prefer a March date.

Speaking as the head editor of Nats, a March date would put an enormous amount of pressure on the editing team and, if history is any indication, result in a smaller field. I don't see any positives outweighing those major issues, so the tournament will almost certainly take place in April.

I hope this isn't a dumb question for whatever reason, but does anyone have any strong objections to April 6 or 13 weekends?

EDIT: spelling

It would not end well for anyone if ICT and ACF Nationals were on the same weekend.

Oh wait, yeah, that was just me getting two different weekends confused. Whoops. So what about the 6th? I know most of us would really prefer not to have two nationals on consecutive weekends, but we can at least talk about it.

The Eighth Viscount of Waaaah wrote:Oh wait, yeah, that was just me getting two different weekends confused. Whoops. So what about the 6th? I know most of us would really prefer not to have two nationals on consecutive weekends, but we can at least talk about it.

A few things to point out:

-This gives the editors three weeks less to work on the set.
-The aforementioned back-to-back Nats weekends--this is hard on teams, sure, but I think it's even harder when it comes to staffing the tournament.
-If a similar submission schedule to last year's is used, this means that the no-penalty deadline for Nats packets would be before ACF Regionals. I suspect that this would result in more packets being submitted late.

I spent some time looking for an answer but couldn't find it. Are there plans to allow off-date hosting of ACF tournaments? Since the mirrors all have to be on the same day would it be possible to say, host a Nov. 17 ACF Fall mirror for people who didn't play on the third? I got the idea from the HSNCT mirrors for people who didn't play: por ejemplo http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3838. My school's fall break starts just before Nov. 3.

Coldblueberry wrote:I spent some time looking for an answer but couldn't find it. Are there plans to allow off-date hosting of ACF tournaments? Since the mirrors all have to be on the same day would it be possible to say, host a Nov. 17 ACF Fall mirror for people who didn't play on the third? I got the idea from the HSNCT mirrors for people who didn't play: por ejemplo http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3838. My school's fall break starts just before Nov. 3.

Hi, Justin--Generally, there isn't a lot of enthusiasm for delayed mirrors of ACF Fall, especially when we're talking two weeks instead of, say, letting a team host on Sunday instead of Saturday. The last time we did a delayed site of Fall was in 2010 for the UK site; the fact that the UK circuit is less well tied in to the US circuit helped avoid some of the usual problems with delayed mirrors like making sure people avoid question discussion on IRC, etc. It also enabled us to have open (non-private-forum) discussion of the questions immediately after the tournament, which generally seems to get the most people involved in the question discussion. (We had the very small number of British players on the boards abide by the honor system to avoid the thread; I don't think we could rely on this for a US site since more of those players would be on the boards.)

For the future, if the Fall date continues to be a problem for your team, I'd encourage you to contact us as soon as possible after the announcement of the year's ACF dates goes up so that we can figure out the best way to deal with your conflict. No date will ever be perfect for everyone, and sometimes you're going to have to attend a tournament on an inconvenient date or not at all (as an alumna of a quarter system school, believe me, I'm familiar with your situation!), but if we know about potential problems before we've started nailing down bids, we'll have a lot more options on the table.

Hey, so I know it's a little early, but since I'm writing questions for VCU Closed and WIT right now anyway, do we know what the packet submission deadlines for Regionals are going to be?

Fond du lac operon wrote:Hey, so I know it's a little early, but since I'm writing questions for VCU Closed and WIT right now anyway, do we know what the packet submission deadlines for Regionals are going to be?

We do indeed--they are on the website here.

We're having a logistical meeting about Regionals tonight and hope to have an announcement up ASAP.