The Future of CULT

[Mike Bentley]

One thing I know for certain is that I won’t be producing another iteration of this tournament for next June. I just don’t have the stamina to write another 18+ packets of trash questions in such short a time frame. Additionally, but this time last year I had already written maybe 30-40% of the set. Even if I found one or more people to contribute to a large portion of the set, I’d still feel compelled to do most of the editing and don’t want to undertake this. My current thinking is to maybe do this tournament as a bi-annual thing, so the next version would take place in 2012 some time.

I was also very disappointed with the number of teams that ended up showing up to the different iterations of the tournament. I don’t have the records on hand, but I think we ended up getting less people at the main CULT site than we did for tournaments like Chris McCray and ASS II that were also held in the same region around the same time. Maybe it was the “nationals” part of the tournament that scared people off? Maybe it was the fact that this tournament wasn’t far enough removed from the parade of high school national championships in late May and early June. Maybe the general interest level in trash tournament is decreasing? I don’t think it helps that this tournament attracted pretty much a distinct field from TRASHionals. I’d be especially interested in hearing why some of these teams that attended TRASHionals decided not to attend this tournament (feel free to e-mail me at [email protected] if you want to send your feedback privately).

[stevebahnaman]

I can tell you the reverse: I didn't join a team for TRASHionals just because I was busy during the weekend of regionals. I would have been happy to play both.

[DumbJaques]

That's certainly a shame to hear, though entirely understandable. It sounds like you did a herculean amount of work and that's surely not sustainable continually. Considering that CULT was the best national trash tournament ever written by an almost incalculable factor, I'd hate to see it go away (or reduced to a bi-annual thing). Would you consider setting up some kind of rotating editor deal? If someone else could be found to write the next iteration (and there's no reason this person would have to do as much of a one-man job as you did this year), then couldn't CULT simply become an annual tournament in something like the style of CO?

Of course, I have no idea who would (or could) take over something like that - do you have any ideas, based on trash writing that you've seen over the past few years? I was also disappointed by the attendance of this tournament, but I think the quality of the set and the continuity of having already run the year before would significantly change that for next year, whereas having it be just an occasional event would make it hard to build a continuous base the way a national tournament does.

[Jamnman23]

I echo Chris on this. This is definitely not something that one person can produce over and over again over a bunch of years, and I think rotating editors and writers could be a possible solution. As people have become more disillusioned with TRASH over the years, there has certainly been a void that a well-written national trash tournament can fill and there certainly is demand for it. I know it must have been really disappointing to only see ten teams show up after putting in all those hours of work, but I would not attribute that reality to disinterest towards this kind of tournament. Attendance at this tournament and many other trash tournaments suffer from the same thing: a lack of continuity, consistency, and structure in the schedule of the trash circuit. There just have not been many solid trash tournaments that one can depend on over multiple years, so playing trash kinda goes event by event. However, this is changing. Obviously, CO Trash has been a good dependable tournament recently, and some schools are now starting to make it a habit of writing solid annual trash tournaments. As the circuit gains structure as more of these tournaments pop up, and because many people will attest to the success of the first iteration of CULT, I don't think it will have problems in the future attracting teams. If CULT can continue as an annual event, which I believe most people are hoping for, I think it could easily assume its place as a natural culmination of a growing schedule of trash tournaments throughout the year.

[Ethnic history of the Vilnius region]

First of all, thanks for the tournament to everyone who worked on it and to the tournament staff. It was a great trash tournament as far as I’m concerned.

I was disappointed in the number of teams as well. I have a few theories, but who knows if they’re helpful. But here I go. First of all, as others have expressed, it might just take a couple of years for this to catch on. TRASHionals is the only established brand name for national trash tournaments, so attracting some of the traditional TRASH customer base and other new competitors might just take a string of really well-done, well-publicized CULTs.

I thought the marketing was pretty good in terms of trying to get a national field. The tournament announcement was posted long ago on the boards and I even got a direct e-mail about it. One thing I would recommend, and this might sound silly, is a name change for the tournament. I’m usually a believer in straightforward names for tournaments in general, and I’m definitely a believer in simple names for tournaments that are trying to get a national field. I think for a tournament that is trying to attract a field that might not necessarily be plugged in to hsqb and our naming proclivities, a more simple name like “Pop Culture Nationals” might be easier for people to wrap their heads around. Would CULT have attracted more teams with a different name? Who knows, but as someone who tried to get a team together for this tournament, it was kind of ponderous explaining what CULT was supposed to be. If a tournament is called TRASHionals, at least you know it’s in theory supposed to be a trash tournament that will attract a national field. CULT should entertain something similar.

The proximity to the high school tournaments doesn’t seem like a big drawback to me. There must have been 15-20 people at least playing or staffing CULT who also staffed or coached at NSC, NASAT, and HSNCT.

Finally, I was also disappointed that there weren’t some more academic-oriented players at CULT. People should give well written trash events a try.

[Cheynem]

1. Pairing CULT with some academic side events might have worked to get some people to come out and maybe join up with a team just for the heck of it for the main event.

2. I agree that the name change might have helped in sort of "branding" for the first few years.

[stevebahnaman]

I think "National Pop Culture Bowl" or something of the like might be a better name for this tournament anyway since it broke a bit more highbrow/relevant than the word "trash" might indicate. Not always (thank God) but often enough.

It's still Trash in the quiz bowl sense, but not necessarily in any vernacular sense.

[Mike Bentley]

That's certainly a shame to hear, though entirely understandable. It sounds like you did a herculean amount of work and that's surely not sustainable continually. Considering that CULT was the best national trash tournament ever written by an almost incalculable factor, I'd hate to see it go away (or reduced to a bi-annual thing). Would you consider setting up some kind of rotating editor deal? If someone else could be found to write the next iteration (and there's no reason this person would have to do as much of a one-man job as you did this year), then couldn't CULT simply become an annual tournament in something like the style of CO?

Of course, I have no idea who would (or could) take over something like that - do you have any ideas, based on trash writing that you've seen over the past few years? I was also disappointed by the attendance of this tournament, but I think the quality of the set and the continuity of having already run the year before would significantly change that for next year, whereas having it be just an occasional event would make it hard to build a continuous base the way a national tournament does.

I certainly think there are people capable of producing a trash set of this quality or higher that I'd be happy to have take over the primary writing and editing duties for next year. However, almost all of these people tend to be very involved with writing for academic tournaments, and usually place writing for trash at a much lower priority.

I suppose if I could find a few such volunteers I might consider trying to run the tournament again next year, maybe with a smaller number of total packets.

In regards to the name, I'd be willing to change it to be something more descriptive if it ended up attracting more teams.

[Cheynem]

I would be willing to edit TV/Comic Books/Movies/Baseball in some capacity for future iterations (maybe not next year).

[mujason]

I'd be interested in writing/editing as well.

[stevebahnaman]

Depending on whether I would be able to attend (I just don't get to play that much!) I am more than willing to write if the tourney is somewhere I won't be able to get to. My interests are fairly diverse but my main strengths are probably baseball/basketball/"other sports" besides hockey; TV; video and other games; and music, especially 80s-90s.

[MicroEStudent]

I'd certainly be willing to write again.

[Jamnman23]

Depending on if I was able to attend or not, I could probably write for this in the future. I am fine writing most things about the four major areas of the trash distribution.