Just leave CBI alone

[mustbepresenttowin]

I am a college bowl player. I like playing college bowl. I have played ACF and NAQT tournaments, and have enjoyed that too. It saddens me that my enjoyment of college bowl so irritates those who play ACF and NAQT that they would want to sabotage college bowl. I am referring to Florida State not showing up to the national tournament. This childish and disrespectful move on the part of one school was detrimental to the entire tournament. Not only was game play delayed as Florida State did not inform anyone of their absence, but it kept another team from having the opportunity to compete at this tournament.
I can only imagine that this was done to make a point, that some how college bowl is not worthy of the same sort of respect any other tournament would be given. If a team had planned ahead of time not to show up to NAQT ICT and kept another team from competing by not telling anyone they were not planning on attending, people would probably be upset. In this case, it seems like Florida State is being congratulated for pulling such a stunt.
I am not saying that you have to like college bowl, or even say it’s in the same league as AFC or NAQT. All I’m asking is for a little respect for those who do enjoy it. We don’t intentionally sabotage your tournaments, please don’t sabotage ours.
Thanks

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

But I'm pretty sure that CBI scheduling the Honda regionals on the same day as sectionals is the same thing. Plus, I mean, I don't see ACF suing CBI over the format.
As for FSU, I mean, they and everyone else who qualified for the NCT have the decision to make to go to a national tournament with more teams from better, more prestigious programs that actually crowns a national champion on very good questions, and a shell of a tournament run on crappy questions that hardly achieves any meaningful result. I don't understand where on earth you get off yelling at them aboput this when given the two options of what to play, I think the prefereable choice is pretty clear.

[AKKOLADE]

FSU has the choice of which national tournament tournament to attend - CBI or ACF. Choosing ACF is in no way "sabotaging" CBI; to many people who know of the two formats, ACF is the superior format and as such is the better one to support per Charlie's reasoning above.

Now, if FSU did fail to inform CBI that they weren't attending, that's obviously a mistake and not something they should do.

[Matt Weiner]

Great, another trumpeting pro-College Bowl post that no one is allowed to respond to or contest in any way without being labeled "unwelcoming." I wonder if, by any chance, people who have never before expressed a concern with board decorum, but BY TOTAL COINCIDENCE are College Bowl players, will show up to pass judgment on the propriety of tone in the responses! That sure would be a new thing!

By the way, the anonymous post was from a University of Minnesota IP.

[DumbJaques]

I am a college bowl player. I like playing college bowl. I have played ACF and NAQT tournaments, and have enjoyed that too. It saddens me that my enjoyment of college bowl so irritates those who play ACF and NAQT that they would want to sabotage college bowl. I am referring to Florida State not showing up to the national tournament. This childish and disrespectful move on the part of one school was detrimental to the entire tournament. Not only was game play delayed as Florida State did not inform anyone of their absence, but it kept another team from having the opportunity to compete at this tournament.
I can only imagine that this was done to make a point, that some how college bowl is not worthy of the same sort of respect any other tournament would be given. If a team had planned ahead of time not to show up to NAQT ICT and kept another team from competing by not telling anyone they were not planning on attending, people would probably be upset. In this case, it seems like Florida State is being congratulated for pulling such a stunt.
I am not saying that you have to like college bowl, or even say it’s in the same league as AFC or NAQT. All I’m asking is for a little respect for those who do enjoy it. We don’t intentionally sabotage your tournaments, please don’t sabotage ours.
Thanks

It's not a secret that a lot of active people on this board don't like CBI. A lot of us have made very negative posts in the past about it. As for myself, I regret the vitriol with which I criticized CBI, mainly because it had the unintended consequence of being extended to people who play CBI. So I'll try to diplomatically disagree with most of what you're getting at here.

It's fine if you like playing CBI. I think CBI's format is silly, but really, who cares. I don't feel my deliciously fake championships are cheapened when someone posts about how proud they are of winning CBI, but I think doing so does invite an inherent comparison to the other national titles. I think CBI, as an organization, should not be supported because of numerous ethical issues, bad faith actions, and general negative impact on the quizbowl circuit as a whole, which is pretty tangible and has been discussed many times. I think it's fair to criticize teams for choosing CBI over another tournament when these issues exist, but I don't think anyone is calling you inferior or anything for liking CBI. Certainly I'm not.

I do think you're out of line with calling out FSU. Very out of line, really. I mean, FSU seemed barely able to get a team together anyway as Billy Beyer made a laudable solo trek to ACF nationals. So the idea that they where just sitting around trying to sabotage CBI is pretty baseless, given that
1) FSU attended another national tournament on the same day, as they had every right to do and
2) FSU could find only one person to attend acf, indicating that they had issues with attendance that have beyond nothing to do with personal format preferences.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say FSU didn't tell anyone they weren't coming. If things played out that CBI confirmed their attendance and then FSU just didn't show, that's not cool, but I certainly doubt FSU had any malice in it. However, if it was more along the lines of "CBI just sort of assumed FSU would come and never confirmed or anything like that," I'd say that's on CBI. I mean, NAQT would never just assume someone was coming due to a sectionals victory - these are things an organized company should definitely take care of. Again, if FSU somehow misled the folks at CBI, then your criticism is in a limited way justified. But to declare that FSU was trying to sabotage the event for you and the other people involved is pretty out of bounds.

If there's going to be respect here, it really does have to be mutual. There are plenty of people who play CBI who respect and are respected by people who, on principle, do not. There are issues with CBI demonstrating a threshold of respect for quizbowl in general, and there are issues of people on this board demonstrating a threshold of respect for CBI players. Throwing out comments like "FSU is trying to sabotage CBI" is not going to help this situation, for anyone. If you'd like to discuss this issue, then we'd invite you to identify yourself (per new board rules) and hopefully engage in a substantive debate. I can promise that the moderators in this thread are not going to let it turn into a series of personal attacks, but if you're unwilling to discuss the issue beyond an anonymous post that seems to have little base, it doesn't do much to help breed mutual respect between the two sides.

[Vootie]

Now, if FSU did fail to inform CBI that they weren't attending, that's obviously a mistake and not something they should do.

That is exactly what happened.

Skipping CBI for ACF is their legitimate choice to make. Representing over the phone on Friday night that the
team had arrived into town, was staying at a nearby hotel, and would be at the CBI venue soon, when in fact
they weren't within several hundred miles of the place... that's not so legitimate.

[Matt Weiner]

TWO anonymous posters making their debut in this thread! We sure do have a lot of mystery-shrouded people who want to talk about ethics and proper conduct...at least on the part of everyone but College Bowl.

[Vootie]

TWO anonymous posters making their debut in this thread! We sure do have a lot of mystery-shrouded people who want to talk about ethics and proper conduct...at least on the part of everyone but College Bowl.

I am not interested in being a guest on "The O'Weiner Factor."

It just wasn't clear what FSU had actually done to deserve such a posting. Well, now you know.

[AKKOLADE]

I am not interested in being a guest on "The O'Weiner Factor."

It just wasn't clear what FSU had actually done to deserve such a posting. Well, now you know.

It is a forum rule that you need to identify yourself when you post.

[Matt Weiner]

So, anonymous people march onto the board, express their crazy preferences, start issuing demands about what actual quizbowl players are allowed to do and say, take umbrage if anyone disputes them, then get huffy at the very idea of identifying themselves or engaging in a two-way dialogue.

The people who object to this behavior are, of course, the ones being unreasonable and stifling participation in a community of adult peers.

Sounds like every College Bowl thread we've ever had!

[Wall of Ham]

I thought I heard that Billy Beyer was planning to go ACF while the rest of his FSU teammates wanted to go to CBI, thus, the team split up. I don't know what happened to the CBI team. Can someone confirm/deny?

[ChopinManiac]

I was on the UGA team that finished second to Florida State at the Southeast CBI Regional Tournament. I don't particularly enjoy CBI, though, of course, any quizbowl is better than no quizbowl, but there are a couple of members of the UGA team who were seniors this year and really wanted to qualify for nationals, so I went along to try and help.

Immediately after FSU beat us in the finals, they told me, and our team, that they would not be attending the CBI national tournament. They said that a different team filled with students from FSU would represent the school.

Now, I agree with the fact that it was perfectly legitimate for Florida State to not attend CBI Nationals in lieu of ACF Nationals. Had we the funding, I myself would have been making the very same trip up to Brandeis, and even though one of my CBI-loving teammates did question the mentality behind accepting a bid to a national tournament knowing full well that not one member of the team used to qualify for that bid would be attending said tourney, I am under the opinion that FSU was perfectly within their rights to bring the best team they could field, regardless of whether they knew they would not be attending the national tournament were they to qualify.

However, if this

Now, if FSU did fail to inform CBI that they weren't attending, that's obviously a mistake and not something they should do.

That is exactly what happened.

Skipping CBI for ACF is their legitimate choice to make. Representing over the phone on Friday night that the
team had arrived into town, was staying at a nearby hotel, and would be at the CBI venue soon, when in fact
they weren't within several hundred miles of the place... that's not so legitimate.

did, in fact, take place, then we need to put down the the torch and pitchfork battle between ACF and CBI, and look after the quizbowl community as a whole.

There is no excuse, no excuse whatsoever, as to why any team should purposefully misrepresent their intentions toward attending a tournament.

Anyone who has hosted a tournament before knows that it must be expected for there to be some last-minute dropouts or no-shows, but leading the tournament director astray as to your team's whereabouts not only is sure to have a negative effect on the the tournament as a whole (unecessary delays, bye rounds where they could have been avoided), but is also just plain dishonest.

While my opinions regarding this matter are clearly contingent on the situation having taken place as displayed in this thread, I would like to think that there are certain quizbowl imperatives that belay the CBI/ACF feud, and that representing your team in an honest fashion is one of them.

I sincerely hope that nothing like this happens again. Really, it should not have in the first place.

Jonathan Okon
UGA Quizbowl

[Council of Trent Reznor]

Not to accuse people of shooting in the dark here, but is anyone from FSU on these boards to explain themselves, or is there some way for people who want to find out what happened to contact the FSU players and find out what happened? It's entirely possible that FSU was prevented from attending owing to circumstances beyond their control, and there might actually be a perfectly good reason for FSU's not showing up. Granted, if they did in fact mislead people into believing they were in town the night beforehand and then not show up, that is in fact inexcusable no matter what tournament you're attending, but they should be given a chance to defend themselves.