Cheynem wrote:Part of the problem is that the state championship is really just an arbitrary tournament, but it has taken on such an aura over the years that it's pretty engrained in some schools' minds that this is the "big one." Before it was played in Lansing, it was played in Port Huron and received support from a local congressman. That's the ultimate trouble of reforming it--in a lot of schools' eyes, you're not just tweaking a pretty big state tournament, you're changing how a "champion" is crowned.
You are exactly right, but look at who the "state champions" were this year. Catholic Central, Country Day, and I forget the third team. Anyways, those 2 finished 1 and 2 in the NAQT state championship, and basically every tournament they entered in the state was won by 1 of them.
There are 3 other problems, if you assume the same champion will be crowned.
Questions
Volunteers
How do you run a tournament with 90 teams?
Questions could be HSAPQ, but I feel like right now that is too rash. It would be like sticking a school of goldfish in pH 4 water, the circuit would hate it (or just die out). Some of the more progressive coaches in the state didn't care for them, so it could work.
We could do an HSAPQ state championship, but it would have to be separate entity from this tournament.
So basically, at this point, questions would have to be written by college students/those retired from the circuit, or some in-between vendor that is not NAQT. Michigan is saturated with NAQT, all IS series are being used up. Does anyone know of any question vendors that fit this?
Volunteers:
If this is a true state tournament, which good quiz bowlers are behind, this should not be an issue. Good mods are needed, and these good mods need to be willing to to do this new format. I've got a pretty solid list from the MSU community, but if this is a tournament with more than 35 teams, some out-of-towners are going to have to step up.
The big problem is how do you run a tournament with 90 teams?
This is how it is run now:
Basically, the state tournament is 3 tournaments, A, B, and C based on size. If we assume each one has 30 teams, and it is double-elim, there will be 60 (or 61) games. That leads to 180 games for the whole weekend.
By comparison, March Madness had 30 teams, with a 7 game round-robin. 7X15 = 105. If 90 teams come, then that's over 300 games between all 3 classes.
This is not an option, unless someone can bring a huge set of mods from out of town.
Less teams is also not a realistic option. How can you be crowned Class B champion, if you had to compete against 15 teams? Basically, every single high school needs to be given an opportunity to qualify or come to the tournament. And then at a very minimum 20 teams per class need to be at the big tournament.
Qualifying tournaments could be set up, but it would require regional commitment from people in each part of the state. Anything west of Lansing, and north of Saginaw is what is the issue. People from there would need to step up and want to run qualifying tournaments with good quiz bowl, and get teams from that region of the state to play it. The teams that come every year for this tournament would not be happy if they had to qualify. At some point teams had to qualify, but what's the point of qualifying if you are running Academic Hallmark or Patrick Press questions?
We could run the tournament hold the tournaments on different weekends, but then volunteers actually come into play. The state tournament occurs down the post spring break stretch when undergrads are preparing for finals, and graduate students are writing theses.
I talked with the grad students of the MSU team about running a "good quizbowl" tournament on the Sunday after "states". Aren Hellum, who is one of the best readers in the state said, "i can barely talk then, half the mods voices will go out".
As far as facilities go, I can reserve all of the Wells Hall classrooms, which should provide enough space for 40-45 games to play at once, provided we have questions and people to read said questions. A one day (Saturday), or two day (Sat/Sun) is defnitely possible. Friday/Saturday is basically impossible unless every team wants to play 1-2 games on Friday (which is basically what happens right now).
Basically, I need some ideas that can work considering the situation(from anyone), and few non-MSU people to step up and say I will help run this thing (can't really be high schoolers, as this needs to be a TD-type committee). Otherwise, this tournament that still seems to work in some people's eyes will continue to exist as is. Creating other tournaments will not suffice, as this crappy tournament will continue to exist and certain teams will regard it as THE tournament.
Bottom line: Improvement needs to be a collaboration between college players from multiple schools, hs coaches who will endorse this and provide suggestions, and people retired from the circuit.