Steering a Team Away From NAC

[High Dependency Unit]

My team wants to go to . We are currently registered for NSC, but a majority of the team wants to go to NAC (because it is more "fun" and "the questions are better"). We have not played a tournament all year and we just won our NAQT state championship. How do I convince them otherwise?

[Sniper, No Sniping!]

Why is your team deciding what national tournament to attend?

[High Dependency Unit]

Why is your team deciding what national tournament to attend?

I honestly don't know why it came up. For the past couple months we've been planning on attending NSC, and then someone brought up the idea of because they felt NSC would be too difficult and wouldn't be "fun". All of a sudden, they got like seven people to agree with them. I will say that as a middle school team we attended JNAC. I swore that I would never go back: I'm not. However, I need to convince them that attending NSC is better.

[Sniper, No Sniping!]

If he/she isn't a regular player then don't let the decision rest with him. Assuming you're the captain/leader, what you and your coach thinks should ultimately matter.

[High Dependency Unit]

They are regular players. Also, people don't listen to the coach (he's new to quiz bowl) that much, and they listen to me less. It's pretty much a free-for-all when it comes to making decisions.

[ryanrosenberg]

Talking points: number of games offered, diversity of competition, chance of getting screwed over by Chip exponentially less at NSC. To support the last point, bring up the single-elimination bracket, the variability in QU questions from packet to packet, the recycling of questions, and the favoritism showed. I don't know how your JNAC experience was; you may have been lucky enough to avoid anything questionable happening to your team, but there are plenty of examples out there (the "Criticisms of the NAC" article on QBWiki is good for that, and I could also give you more recent ones if you need) that should be enough to convince players who prefer QU questions right now.

[High Dependency Unit]

Can I have some more recent ones?

[zachary_yan]

This is probably a wildly uninformed question, but why don't you guys go to HSNCT? I mean it's more "funn" and has an easier field than the NSC and it's also got a cheaper base fee than Chip bowl.

[High Dependency Unit]

HSNCT is fun. is "funn". We aren't going to HSNCT because it would be too logistically difficult at this point (quite a bit of red tape) and it's our club's first year, so we don't quite know exactly what we're doing.

[ryanrosenberg]

What I remember from the 2012 NAC:
-- Irvington losing a semifinal match on a math question that was protested and resolved wrongly
-- Tossups that asked you to name a _cable car_ and _goat_ by listening to the noise they make (different questions, it wasn't both at once)
-- A number of questions recycled from local QU tournaments

In regards to the quality of the field, the teams that play NAC are nowhere near the best teams in the country, and it would be disingenuous to call it a "national championship". The best teams that play are generally somewhere in the 80-100 range in the Morlan rankings, and most of the teams, in my experience, are nowhere near that standard.

[the return of AHAN]

In regards to the quality of the field, the teams that play NAC are nowhere near the best teams in the country, and it would be disingenuous to call it a "national championship". The best teams that play are generally somewhere in the 80-100 range in the Morlan rankings, and most of the teams, in my experience, are nowhere near that standard.

ANNND, there's the main selling point to Master Borecki's teammates. That it wouldn't be a legitimate claim to being the best in the land is of no consequence. After all, it's not THEIR fault the LASAs and IMSAs of the world avoid NAC.

[High Dependency Unit]

In regards to the quality of the field, the teams that play NAC are nowhere near the best teams in the country, and it would be disingenuous to call it a "national championship". The best teams that play are generally somewhere in the 80-100 range in the Morlan rankings, and most of the teams, in my experience, are nowhere near that standard.

ANNND, there's the main selling point to Master Borecki's teammates. That it wouldn't be a legitimate claim to being the best in the land is of no consequence. After all, it's not THEIR fault the LASAs and IMSAs of the world avoid NAC.

ANNND, you're right. They're afraid of losing badly.

[Cheynem]

At NSC, your team will play a range of teams with skill level and eventually end up playing teams with similar records/skill levels in hopefully competitive games.

[High Dependency Unit]

And now they're being lured in by the cash prizes.

[the return of AHAN]

that YOU paid for with an inflated entry fee.

[Sniper, No Sniping!]

At NSC, your team will play a range of teams with skill level and eventually end up playing teams with similar records/skill levels in hopefully competitive games.

Sad thing is, if I'm predicting this right, if they're worried about not getting blown out then I'm not sure how PACE length tossups are going to make them want to come. Sometimes people are only in quiz bowl for the vacation.

[KnicksRule]

Mike, Darien is a solid team. You guys almost beat Charter this year, beat Lexington, and beat AMSA (albeit by 5 points in an overtime game). You will win a decent amount of games at PACE.

Tell them to look at stats from last year at PACE, especially at teams you have beaten this year. Also, it is no fun to go to a national tournament with no competition.

[Howard]

that YOU paid for with an inflated entry fee.

It's not as bad now, but the first (and last) time I considered going to NAC, before really even knowing anything about it, this was my take. Another coach recommended it to me, saying we could win and get the cash. My take was that winning was statistically unlikely and there was no way I could justify spending several thousand dollars on one tournament whose advertising included questions with errors.

Realistically, this should be the decision of those who would attend and play. Your club does not exist to support QU, NAQT, or PACE. In fact, two of those exist to support your club. Your club does exist to support quiz competition activity and the students that participate. If you wish to boycott NAC, this should be your right and shouldn't be an issue.

The only confounding issue I see is that you've already started plans for NSC. And I'm not sure why HSNCT involves additional red tape but NAC doesn't. So that could be reasonable grounds for an authority figure to say the decision has already been made, but we can talk about what we want to do next year.

[AKKOLADE]

Mike, Darien is a solid team. You guys almost beat Charter this year, beat Lexington, and beat AMSA (albeit by 5 points in an overtime game). You will win a decent amount of games at PACE.

Tell them to look at stats from last year at PACE, especially at teams you have beaten this year. Also, it is no fun to go to a national tournament with no competition.

Yeah, I don't just rank whoever in the top 200.

[Couch's Kingbird]

If you guys has been practicing on pyramidal questions all year, then you're going to have to buy practice sets for the NAC (which, I understand, are quite expensive; also assuming that you would practice for it) and pay an additional $600/team in entry fees (bad ideas for clubs with not a lot of funds). Also, if you (Mikee) aren't going to go, and you are the strongest player on the team, shouldn't that be a pretty big talking point to sway everyone else from going?

[sbfromcopley]

So Copley is traditionally a team that does go to NAC, i'm not entirely sure why it has been like that but it has been. This year we (as far as I know) are finally not going to go, and it is in large part because apparently we got screwed over last year at Chicago by some horrible handling of an in-game protest or something of that sort of thing. It also helps that this year the majority of the people on the team also realized that they no longer wanted to go to it when we could go to a much better tournament like HSNCT, but it had a lot to do with our coach also not being so compelled to go anymore. If I were you I would just try to make sure your teammates realize that 1) The questions are really sketchy, I think people have given examples above and 2) The tournament is run HORRIBLY, favoritism, lack of good judgement by moderators, it is really easy to get screwed over, weird misdirects, etc. Just try to make sure your team gets that the tournament is pretty awful, and if that doesn't work I guess I would just hope that your teammates experience some of these so that in the following years they won't want to go anymore. You have 3 more years to steer away, and hopefully you won't have to go this year either.

Also, I hope they realize that playing the teams that go to CHIP on the questions used there is an awful combination that results in a very apparent lack of fun. Sure, staying in Chicago is fun, or whatever site you guys would go to, but that's the same case for going to any other national tournament. Winning or losing games based on a series of riddles,weird questions about trundle beds and guessing a composer whose name starts with B when the sound doesn't work for an audio tossup (this happened my freshman year) is NOT fun or rewarding in any way.

[Sniper, No Sniping!]

If you guys has been practicing on pyramidal questions all year, then you're going to have to buy practice sets for the NAC (which, I understand, are quite expensive; also assuming that you would practice for it) and pay an additional $600/team in entry fees (bad ideas for clubs with not a lot of funds). Also, if you (Mikee) aren't going to go, and you are the strongest player on the team, shouldn't that be a pretty big talking point to sway everyone else from going?

(Not trying to backseat moderate/tell people how to post, but an observation: I never understand why people from the same high school team end up replying to each other on this board instead of having their own discussion off the board.)

Why the bullocks would anyone pay $$$ just to prepare for an already unpreparable tournament? I guess if there was a quasi-justifiable reason why lazy teams end up doing NAC vs NAQT, it's because you could win without actually being good or having to prepare, so of course no one who knows better is going to pay for prep material. How Chip Beall makes any money from selling practice sets is that there's always those ignorant teams that think shelling out money for crap questions somehow is advantageous not just for ChipBowl, but actual quiz bowl. Whopping majority of those teams actually might not know any better, which I guess is partly excusable. Then there are the teams that know what pyramidal style is, have played it, know that the resources for pyramidal quiz bowl are *free* but STILL choose NAC (I guess the school I'm thinking of is the Ohio school mentioned on Chip's testimonial page) for some mysterious reason.

[the return of AHAN]

If you guys has been practicing on pyramidal questions all year, then you're going to have to buy practice sets for the NAC (which, I understand, are quite expensive; also assuming that you would practice for it) and pay an additional $600/team in entry fees (bad ideas for clubs with not a lot of funds). Also, if you (Mikee) aren't going to go, and you are the strongest player on the team, shouldn't that be a pretty big talking point to sway everyone else from going?

(Not trying to backseat moderate/tell people how to post, but an observation: I never understand why people from the same high school team end up replying to each other on this board instead of having their own discussion off the board.)

Because they're NOT on the same high school team? Look at Julia's sig more closely. She was a teammate of Michael's at Middlesex, and anticipates attending Darien NEXT year.