OAC Talk

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OAC Talk

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

I appreciate what Fred does and I'll continue to appreciate his rankings. He puts a lot of time and effort into this. This is the one reasons I don't like polls: Someone is always going to call foul because they feel they got shafted. Maybe that school isn't top 100 worthy in the first place, not that it has to do anything with religious affiliation. *facepalm* My team has finished in the top 15% of two out of state NAQT tournaments (4/36 and 4/24) this year, however we aren't even ranked in the top 15 in our own state poll. It has nothing to do with the fact we are Fisher Catholic, its just because we aren't one of Ohio's top 15 teams in the eyes of the pollsters. Does it really matter to me? Not really, because even the #1 team in the polls isn't the #1 team in the state if they end up getting knocked out in round 3 of our OAC regionals tournament in two weeks.

Bottom line: Polls are fun, they are resourceful. No, they are not always truly indicative of a team thats in and one thats out of the poll. The real game is on the buzzer set.
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Re: On-going season rankings

Post by Steeve Ho You Fat »

CavsFan2k10 wrote:Not really, because even the #1 team in the polls isn't the #1 team in the state if they end up getting knocked out in round 3 of our OAC regionals tournament in two weeks.
Erm, I don't think this statement is necessarily true. The state championship already happened.
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Re: On-going season rankings

Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Yeah, OAC sucks and is meaningless.
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Re: On-going season rankings

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:Yeah, OAC sucks and is meaningless.
Better than Chip bowl and TV shows.
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Re: On-going season rankings

Post by Rufous-capped Thornbill »

CavsFan2k10 wrote:
Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:Yeah, OAC sucks and is meaningless.
Better than Chip bowl and TV shows.
Fortunately those don't have their own state championship tournaments.

What's your point? Bad quizbowl is bad quizbowl.
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Re: On-going season rankings

Post by GBRodgers12 »

Inkana7 wrote:
CavsFan2k10 wrote:
Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:Yeah, OAC sucks and is meaningless.
Better than Chip bowl and TV shows.
Fortunately those don't have their own state championship tournaments.

What's your point? Bad quizbowl is bad quizbowl.
OAC when well written is not bad quizbowl though. I very strongly believe that this year's set will be considered the best OAC set ever written and will be a very legitimate quiz bowl state championship to win. If we were comparing this to a set like the NSC set, BATE, etc., my opinion would be slighlty altered, but when compared to the derpiness of NAQT, I think it is a very valid argument. Will have to wait and see what everyone thinks come Regional and State time I suppose.
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Re: On-going season rankings

Post by Rufous-capped Thornbill »

GBRodgers12 wrote:
Inkana7 wrote:
CavsFan2k10 wrote:
Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:Yeah, OAC sucks and is meaningless.
Better than Chip bowl and TV shows.
Fortunately those don't have their own state championship tournaments.

What's your point? Bad quizbowl is bad quizbowl.
OAC when well written is not bad quizbowl though. I very strongly believe that this year's set will be considered the best OAC set ever written and will be a very legitimate quiz bowl state championship to win. If we were comparing this to a set like the NSC set, BATE, etc., my opinion would be slighlty altered, but when compared to the derpiness of NAQT, I think it is a very valid argument. Will have to wait and see what everyone thinks come Regional and State time I suppose.
While OAC is better than many things, any format that allows second guesses and can basically gift any team ~25 points without contest, is not better than NAQT.
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Re: On-going season rankings

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

Inkana7 wrote:
GBRodgers12 wrote:
Inkana7 wrote:
CavsFan2k10 wrote:
Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:Yeah, OAC sucks and is meaningless.
Better than Chip bowl and TV shows.
Fortunately those don't have their own state championship tournaments.

What's your point? Bad quizbowl is bad quizbowl.
OAC when well written is not bad quizbowl though. I very strongly believe that this year's set will be considered the best OAC set ever written and will be a very legitimate quiz bowl state championship to win. If we were comparing this to a set like the NSC set, BATE, etc., my opinion would be slighlty altered, but when compared to the derpiness of NAQT, I think it is a very valid argument. Will have to wait and see what everyone thinks come Regional and State time I suppose.
While OAC is better than many things, any format that allows second guesses and can basically gift any team ~25 points without contest, is not better than NAQT.
Maybe my personal opinion about OAC is slightly biased because my school is one of the biggest OAC thresholds in Ohio, however I think it can be compromised that the main difference between OAC and tu/b is that knowledge of essentially all the subjects is pivotal to winning, where as in tu/b, getting six lit and history questions could suffice enough for a victory depending on your bonus conversion. The lightning round is great for having current events/pop culture/trash and individual entities, such as early novels and battles of wars etc.
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Re: On-going season rankings

Post by Steeve Ho You Fat »

CavsFan2k10 wrote:
Inkana7 wrote:
GBRodgers12 wrote:
Inkana7 wrote:
CavsFan2k10 wrote:
Jeremy Gibbs Freesy Does It wrote:Yeah, OAC sucks and is meaningless.
Better than Chip bowl and TV shows.
Fortunately those don't have their own state championship tournaments.

What's your point? Bad quizbowl is bad quizbowl.
OAC when well written is not bad quizbowl though. I very strongly believe that this year's set will be considered the best OAC set ever written and will be a very legitimate quiz bowl state championship to win. If we were comparing this to a set like the NSC set, BATE, etc., my opinion would be slighlty altered, but when compared to the derpiness of NAQT, I think it is a very valid argument. Will have to wait and see what everyone thinks come Regional and State time I suppose.
While OAC is better than many things, any format that allows second guesses and can basically gift any team ~25 points without contest, is not better than NAQT.
Maybe my personal opinion about OAC is slightly biased because my school is one of the biggest OAC thresholds in Ohio, however I think it can be compromised that the main difference between OAC and tu/b is that knowledge of essentially all the subjects is pivotal to winning, where as in tu/b, getting six lit and history questions could suffice enough for a victory depending on your bonus conversion. The lightning round is great for having current events/pop culture/trash and individual entities, such as early novels and battles of wars etc.
First of all, I don't know what TU/B you've played that has a 6/6 lit and 6/6 history distribution. The biggest difference between pyramidal TU/B and OAC is that in TU/B every tossup is answered by the team that has deeper knowledge on the subject, and since there are 20 there are enough that a team must have deeper knowledge on at least 10 (assuming very few go dead and there's not an extremely large bonus conversion disparity). Even in well-written OAC, you can pick up up to 45 points in a game (2 * 10 categories + 20 + 5 alphabet) even if you have less knowledge in every single topic than your opponents. Is it possible that this year's OAC set will decide a fair state champion? Yes. Is it guaranteed? Not by any means at all.
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Re: On-going season rankings

Post by Rufous-capped Thornbill »

CavsFan2k10 wrote:
Maybe my personal opinion about OAC is slightly biased because my school is one of the biggest OAC thresholds in Ohio,
Okay. I'm just going to assume that you mean Stronghold.
however I think it can be compromised that the main difference between OAC and tu/b is that knowledge of essentially all the subjects is pivotal to winning, where as in tu/b, getting six lit and history questions could suffice enough for a victory depending on your bonus conversion.
What? So, you do know that unless you get some awesome luck, simply getting 6 TUs and awesome PPB (which, honestly, if you're getting 20+ppb, you should be getting more than 6 tossups) to win, would mean that you are answering bonus questions on a wide variety of subjects, right? TU/B and OAC both have distributions, so I think it's kind of wrong to think that one format favors "knowledge of essentially all the subjects" over another.
The lightning round is great for having current events/pop culture/trash and individual entities, such as early novels and battles of wars etc.
I don't even know what this means. Are you saying that pop culture, current events, novels and single battles don't come up in TU/B? Because I can tell you that they do.

EDIT: Plus what Joe said.
EDIT: This should probably be moved to the Ohio forum or forbidden zoned.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by AKKOLADE »

For what it's worth, I find enough wrong with the OAC format that I find it very hard to put stock into its results.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by Excelsior (smack) »

Joe wrote:First of all, I don't know what TU/B you've played that has a 6/6 lit and 6/6 history distribution.
I would be willing to hazard a guess that at least 6/x lit and 6/y history have appeared in NAQT packets before, for loose definitions of lit and history. Not that this is relevant.
Joe wrote:The biggest difference between pyramidal TU/B and OAC is that in TU/B every tossup is answered by the team that has deeper knowledge on the subject, and since there are 20 there are enough that a team must have deeper knowledge on at least 10 (assuming very few go dead and there's not an extremely large bonus conversion disparity).
This is exactly the same as in OAC. The equivalent of not having a large bonus conversion disparity is not having a large category-team-question / alphabet conversion disparity. At which point, a team must have deeper knowledge on at least half (pointwise) of the category-tossups and lightning round questions.
Joe wrote:Even in well-written OAC, you can pick up up to 45 points in a game (2 * 10 categories + 20 + 5 alphabet) even if you have less knowledge in every single topic than your opponents.
I'm as little a fan of OAC as any of the rest of you, but it's a non-sequitur to claim that this is a major problem. If you have less knowledge in every single topic than your opponents, then you lose the game because of tossups. OAC doesn't use some sort of voodoo mathematics where you win by earning less points.

Suppose you had a round of 20/20 TU/B, followed by a worksheet round for kicks and giggles. Then, West Hicksville C might be able to score points against LASA A, despite knowing strictly less than their opponents. So what? LASA A still maintains the same (or possibly greater) margin of victory. I will gladly concede that this is less-than-ideal, but it's not like this is one of the fundamentally wrong things about OAC. Distributional issues, tournament format issues, the utter gimmickiness of the alphabet round, computational mathematics everywhere, horrible rules on protests and such - these are all major problems. But I am extremely dubious that there are very many OAC games where the winner would have been different if category-team-questions and the alphabet round were eliminated.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by Adm Akbar says It's a Tarp! »

Fred wrote:For what it's worth, I find enough wrong with the OAC format that I find it very hard to put stock into its results.
I played under the OAC format in high school, and when I started coaching, it was the first year the league had switched to NAQT. At first I was lost, because of the vast differences, but all teams in the league were new to NAQT. After the first year my thought changed to "where was NAQT when I was a player!?"

My issues with OAC aren't the questions, per se, any format can run on well-written questions, because that depends on the writers. OAC has improved over the years with their questions, but I think even at its best, because of the format, it can only be a good Middle School format.

"Fair" does not mean each team can have it's guaranteed comfort points that the opposing team can't get. And because of that TU/B does a far better job distinguishing the best teams from the rest of the pack.
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Re: On-going season rankings

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

Inkana7 wrote:
CavsFan2k10 wrote:
Maybe my personal opinion about OAC is slightly biased because my school is one of the biggest OAC thresholds in Ohio,
Okay. I'm just going to assume that you mean Stronghold.
however I think it can be compromised that the main difference between OAC and tu/b is that knowledge of essentially all the subjects is pivotal to winning, where as in tu/b, getting six lit and history questions could suffice enough for a victory depending on your bonus conversion.
What? So, you do know that unless you get some awesome luck, simply getting 6 TUs and awesome PPB (which, honestly, if you're getting 20+ppb, you should be getting more than 6 tossups) to win, would mean that you are answering bonus questions on a wide variety of subjects, right? TU/B and OAC both have distributions, so I think it's kind of wrong to think that one format favors "knowledge of essentially all the subjects" over another.
The lightning round is great for having current events/pop culture/trash and individual entities, such as early novels and battles of wars etc.
I don't even know what this means. Are you saying that pop culture, current events, novels and single battles don't come up in TU/B? Because I can tell you that they do.

EDIT: Plus what Joe said.
EDIT: This should probably be moved to the Ohio forum or forbidden zoned.
1st quote - yeah I guess.

2nd quote - What are the odds that out of 6 tossups and corresponding bonuses that it's going to fulfill the 10 categories (or however many there are in OAC)? Even without bonus conversion, a theoretical team could win 10-0 in a 20 tossup game with only one tossup answered (doubt this will ever happen, but considering there are some pretty bum teams out there, they'd be very uncompetitive in the tu/b circuit.And when I meant 6 history and lit, I was implying 6 history and lit questions collectively, not 6 history and 6 lit questions.

3rd quote - Yes there are distributions for trash/current events in TU/B, however I would be willing to bet considering how many more questions there are in an OAC packet than a TU/B packet, that the trash/current events distribution would be higher in OAC than TU/B. In the OAC tournaments I've been to, there seems to be more trash/pop culture in the lightning round than in TU/B. Going through the packet archives and looking at the packets the TD's give us after we go to tournaments and pay for them, I seem to find a good number of the distributed trash/current events in the last four questions which are used for tie-breaking purposes (or to cut out comp. math). Here is last year's Regionals/State distribution for OAC last year (Don't know if this has changed): 10 "sets" for regionals, 8 "sets" for states, 4 "sets" of tie-breakers (five lightning round questions/answers in one set). In one set; this is the distribution - Category rounds 10 Categories - 30 questions Alphabet round 20 questions with this distribution: "3-4 Science including math (no math calculation)
o 3-4 History
o 3-4 Literature
o 2-3 Fine Arts
o 2-3 Rel/Myth/Phil, emphasizing myth
o 1-2 Social Science
o 1-2 Geography
o 1-2 Trash/GK

Lightning round 20 questions (don't see the exact distribution for this) If there are 70 questions written in one set, x18 (10 and then 8), that's 1,260 questions in a whole regionals/states set, plus the 20 tiebreakers (defined as 5x4). Considering that the set is supposed to be written roughly the same level as an IS set (if not easier) for the regionals and harder for the states, there has to be a defined set of answerable questions for the field.
OAC Committee wrote: "Team questions should be answered by about 50-60% of the field. Tossups should be answered by 75-90% of teams if read all the way through."
Also from the OAC Committee "The lightning round should follow the same distribution earlier identified for the alphabet round. The average team should be able to answer 15 of the lightning round questions if they played the round against empty chairs.".

There are going to be 94 teams in regionals this year. Considering that there are 1,280 questions written for the whole OAC state-wide tournament, there should be a higher number of trash/single battles/whatever in the OAC lighting/trash then in TU/B (namely NAQT, where as I've already stated, in a normal game you only hear 5/6 of the packet). Because the tournament, (primarily regionals) is looking for a high conversion rate, in theory we should be expecting trash/pop culture questions in the early rounds for teams like (theoretical) Eastern Scioto Valley School for the Slow, who knows who won the 2006 AL MVP, but doesn't have the same knowledge base as the top echelon of Ohio teams, so it should compensate somewhat for not knowing a relatively difficult academia question, such as the lesser known works of Nietzsche.

One additional thought; a good team (that is worthy of being OAC state champion) would not get screwed over in OAC format if they have enough knowledge (or as OAC likes to use, "Specialist") to get 20-30 points out of the category round. Yes, the lack of pyramidality is one con of OAC, but considering that 4/7 of the questions doesn't need to be pyramidal in the first place (team and alphabet round). it shouldn't hurt the good teams at all.
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Re: On-going season rankings

Post by Ras superfamily »

CavsFan2k10 wrote:2nd quote - What are the odds that out of 6 tossups and corresponding bonuses that it's going to fulfill the 10 categories (or however many there are in OAC)? Even without bonus conversion, a theoretical team could win 10-0 in a 20 tossup game with only one tossup answered (doubt this will ever happen, but considering there are some pretty bum teams out there, they'd be very uncompetitive in the tu/b circuit.And when I meant 6 history and lit, I was implying 6 history and lit questions collectively, not 6 history and 6 lit questions.
Okay so this is like saying that a team can win in OAC by only answering one physical science question. Cool.
CavsFan2k10 wrote:3rd quote - Yes there are distributions for trash/current events in TU/B, however I would be willing to bet considering how many more questions there are in an OAC packet than a TU/B packet, that the trash/current events distribution would be higher in OAC than TU/B.
The distribution is described as a part of a 20 question packet for, say, HSAPQ sets. Therefore, a theoretical 80 question packet would have 4 times the trash and current events. The fact that a packet has more questions doesn't mean it necessarily has more trash and current events as a fraction of the total number of questions.

Also, this argument fails because an OAC packet has 70 questions and a TU/B packet has 80 questions (20 tossups + 60 bonuses).
CavsFan2k10 wrote:In the OAC tournaments I've been to, there seems to be more trash/pop culture in the lightning round than in TU/B.
These are just bad questions. If the lightning round has more than 2 trash questions, then the writer didn't even follow the distribution set forth by the committee (I will address this further down).
CavsFan2k10 wrote:Going through the packet archives and looking at the packets the TD's give us after we go to tournaments and pay for them, I seem to find a good number of the distributed trash/current events in the last four questions which are used for tie-breaking purposes (or to cut out comp. math).
The questions are distributed, for the most part, at random throughout the packets in TU/B sets. If you find a good number in the last four questions, you will find an equally good number in the first four, second four, third four, and fourth four questions.
CavsFan2k10 wrote: 1-2 Trash/GK
This is the high trash distribution in OAC? Even doubling this number to account for both the lightning round and alphabet round gives us 2-4 trash questions per packet of 70 questions. Compare this to the 2.1/2.0 distribution of pop culture in an NAQT-IS set per packet of 24 TU/B cycles. The IS sets have more pop culture questions per packet.
CavsFan2k10 wrote: If there are 70 questions written in one set, x18 (10 and then 8), that's 1,260 questions in a whole regionals/states set, plus the 20 tiebreakers (defined as 5x4). Considering that the set is supposed to be written roughly the same level as an IS set (if not easier) for the regionals and harder for the states, there has to be a defined set of answerable questions for the field.
OAC Committee wrote: "Team questions should be answered by about 50-60% of the field. Tossups should be answered by 75-90% of teams if read all the way through."
Also from the OAC Committee "The lightning round should follow the same distribution earlier identified for the alphabet round. The average team should be able to answer 15 of the lightning round questions if they played the round against empty chairs.".

There are going to be 94 teams in regionals this year.
This doesn't really have anything to do with the distribution of trash in OAC packets.
CavsFan2k10 wrote:Considering that there are 1,280 questions written for the whole OAC state-wide tournament, there should be a higher number of trash/single battles/whatever in the OAC lighting/trash then in TU/B (namely NAQT, where as I've already stated, in a normal game you only hear 5/6 of the packet). Because the tournament, (primarily regionals) is looking for a high conversion rate, in theory we should be expecting trash/pop culture questions in the early rounds for teams like (theoretical) Eastern Scioto Valley School for the Slow, who knows who won the 2006 AL MVP, but doesn't have the same knowledge base as the top echelon of Ohio teams, so it should compensate somewhat for not knowing a relatively difficult academia question, such as the lesser known works of Nietzsche.
So, based on the aggregate number of questions in the OAC regionals set, you are claiming that the number of trash questions will be larger than in a set with fewer questions? That is equivalent to saying that a 50 packet tournament has more trash than an OAC tournament. It has nothing to do with distributions per packet.

Also, the desire for what you consider a "high" conversion rate does not and cannot change the distribution of the set as stated by the OAC rules that you posted. If a writer changed the distribution, he/she did not follow the specific guidelines set forth by the committee.
CavsFan2k10 wrote:One additional thought; a good team (that is worthy of being OAC state champion) would not get screwed over in OAC format if they have enough knowledge (or as OAC likes to use, "Specialist") to get 20-30 points out of the category round. Yes, the lack of pyramidality is one con of OAC, but considering that 4/7 of the questions doesn't need to be pyramidal in the first place (team and alphabet round). it shouldn't hurt the good teams at all.
Actually, since both teams do not have an equal shot at the same questions, one team can simply have easier team questions and have an unfair advantage. This hurts teams.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by InspectorHound »

I propose establishing a format with only sports and "single battle" questions.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by Broad-tailed Grassbird »

CavsFan2k10 wrote:I appreciate what Fred does and I'll continue to appreciate his rankings. He puts a lot of time and effort into this. This is the one reasons I don't like polls: Someone is always going to call foul because they feel they got shafted. Maybe that school isn't top 100 worthy in the first place, not that it has to do anything with religious affiliation. *facepalm* My team has finished in the top 15% of two out of state NAQT tournaments (4/36 and 4/24) this year, however we aren't even ranked in the top 15 in our own state poll. It has nothing to do with the fact we are Fisher Catholic, its just because we aren't one of Ohio's top 15 teams in the eyes of the pollsters. Does it really matter to me? Not really, because even the #1 team in the polls isn't the #1 team in the state if they end up getting knocked out in round 3 of our OAC regionals tournament in two weeks.

Bottom line: Polls are fun, they are resourceful. No, they are not always truly indicative of a team thats in and one thats out of the poll. The real game is on the buzzer set.

You expect the coaches to know to take into account your out-of-state tournaments in a state poll? Other than that, you provided no evidence that you should be ranked.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by Nine-Tenths Ideas »

I think the real question here is, what is it that makes the Rhode Island Quiz League so much better than tossup/bonus formats?
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

nalin wrote:
CavsFan2k10 wrote:I appreciate what Fred does and I'll continue to appreciate his rankings. He puts a lot of time and effort into this. This is the one reasons I don't like polls: Someone is always going to call foul because they feel they got shafted. Maybe that school isn't top 100 worthy in the first place, not that it has to do anything with religious affiliation. *facepalm* My team has finished in the top 15% of two out of state NAQT tournaments (4/36 and 4/24) this year, however we aren't even ranked in the top 15 in our own state poll. It has nothing to do with the fact we are Fisher Catholic, its just because we aren't one of Ohio's top 15 teams in the eyes of the pollsters. Does it really matter to me? Not really, because even the #1 team in the polls isn't the #1 team in the state if they end up getting knocked out in round 3 of our OAC regionals tournament in two weeks.

Bottom line: Polls are fun, they are resourceful. No, they are not always truly indicative of a team thats in and one thats out of the poll. The real game is on the buzzer set.

You expect the coaches to know to take into account your out-of-state tournaments in a state poll? Other than that, you provided no evidence that you should be ranked.
In case it's not clear, I already established we are by no means a top 15 team in the state of Ohio. Would we be a top 15 team in a state like PA or West Virginia, where these two tournaments took place? I think so, but thats irrelevant. I am not saying we should be ranked in the top 15 in the state of Ohio. Let me establish that for the 3rd time. This is way out of left field anyways, but, the purpose of my post was to debunk the "Catholic bias" the poster from Cistercian was J'accusing on the board. We're not a bad team. The pollsters are free to rank us whereever they want. Polls are fun and can really only evaluate how good the top teams are.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

Isaacbh wrote:I think the real question here is, what is it that makes the Rhode Island Quiz League so much better than tossup/bonus formats?
Where did I say OAC was better than TU/B?
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by InspectorHound »

Isaacbh wrote:I think the real question here is, what is it that makes the Rhode Island Quiz League so much better than tossup/bonus formats?
112 is the best number?
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by Unicolored Jay »

CavsFan2k10 wrote:
3rd quote - Yes there are distributions for trash/current events in TU/B, however I would be willing to bet considering how many more questions there are in an OAC packet than a TU/B packet, that the trash/current events distribution would be higher in OAC than TU/B. In the OAC tournaments I've been to, there seems to be more trash/pop culture in the lightning round than in TU/B. Going through the packet archives and looking at the packets the TD's give us after we go to tournaments and pay for them, I seem to find a good number of the distributed trash/current events in the last four questions which are used for tie-breaking purposes (or to cut out comp. math). Here is last year's Regionals/State distribution for OAC last year (Don't know if this has changed): 10 "sets" for regionals, 8 "sets" for states, 4 "sets" of tie-breakers (five lightning round questions/answers in one set). In one set; this is the distribution - Category rounds 10 Categories - 30 questions Alphabet round 20 questions with this distribution: "3-4 Science including math (no math calculation)
o 3-4 History
o 3-4 Literature
o 2-3 Fine Arts
o 2-3 Rel/Myth/Phil, emphasizing myth
o 1-2 Social Science
o 1-2 Geography
o 1-2 Trash/GK


For the record, the OAC Regionals/States set will NOT have any sort of trash in it. And yes, the writers followed a strict distribution for the alphabet and lightning rounds (I forget what it is, but it's pretty much the same as any TU/B format out there other than the no trash part). And no, no part of RMP is emphasized in any way.

Also, you forget that in NAQT trash bonuses exist. There may be multiple within a single packet. Don't those count?

Also from the OAC Committee "The lightning round should follow the same distribution earlier identified for the alphabet round. The average team should be able to answer 15 of the lightning round questions if they played the round against empty chairs.".

There are going to be 94 teams in regionals this year. Considering that there are 1,280 questions written for the whole OAC state-wide tournament, there should be a higher number of trash/single battles/whatever in the OAC lighting/trash then in TU/B (namely NAQT, where as I've already stated, in a normal game you only hear 5/6 of the packet). Because the tournament, (primarily regionals) is looking for a high conversion rate, in theory we should be expecting trash/pop culture questions in the early rounds for teams like (theoretical) Eastern Scioto Valley School for the Slow, who knows who won the 2006 AL MVP, but doesn't have the same knowledge base as the top echelon of Ohio teams, so it should compensate somewhat for not knowing a relatively difficult academia question, such as the lesser known works of Nietzsche.


The purpose of quizbowl is to reward (academic) knowledge. This idea doesn't help and just screws the better team out of a few points. Oh, and there's no trash in the set. And, uh, there's no way to distinguish good/bad trash teams from how good they are on academia, so that's another pitfall.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by OFallsJC »

I obviously don't like OAC, but I think it does have a couple merits.... I really like the fact that you can confer the entire time, which makes it more of a team game then TU/B is. Obviously TU/B has the bonuses, but being able to confer during the tossups is useful. Plus we can make fun of the questions if they suck.

A good thing about OAC states is that it's actually a statewide tournament that includes basically every team except for the ones who don't show up at regionals. Like Tom said, there are 90-some teams going to regionals, and the large majority of those teams won something involving 8 teams. There were 17 schools at NAQT states. Most of the top schools were there, but I would assume well over half the teams in the state don't even know it existed. Theoretically, the best team in the state could be some school from the NW that no one has heard of, but if they're the best team, they'll win OAC states. The other side of this is that the field at the actual state tournament gets really diluted by the regional rounds. I would argue that for NE teams it will be as easy to make the semifinals at states as it will be to make it to states. Easier if Northmont and Walnut aren't in the same bracket. So the final rounds get watered down but the OAC winner still has to prove that their team is better than basically every other team in the state (ignoring the obvious problems with the OAC format and the teams that don't play at regionals).

I'm also going to add that I would've made a comment saying that OAC was better than the Rhode Island format because the max score is higher, but I realized I don't know the OAC scoring rules at all.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

Judy Sucks a Lemon for Breakfast wrote:
CavsFan2k10 wrote:
3rd quote - Yes there are distributions for trash/current events in TU/B, however I would be willing to bet considering how many more questions there are in an OAC packet than a TU/B packet, that the trash/current events distribution would be higher in OAC than TU/B. In the OAC tournaments I've been to, there seems to be more trash/pop culture in the lightning round than in TU/B. Going through the packet archives and looking at the packets the TD's give us after we go to tournaments and pay for them, I seem to find a good number of the distributed trash/current events in the last four questions which are used for tie-breaking purposes (or to cut out comp. math). Here is last year's Regionals/State distribution for OAC last year (Don't know if this has changed): 10 "sets" for regionals, 8 "sets" for states, 4 "sets" of tie-breakers (five lightning round questions/answers in one set). In one set; this is the distribution - Category rounds 10 Categories - 30 questions Alphabet round 20 questions with this distribution: "3-4 Science including math (no math calculation)
o 3-4 History
o 3-4 Literature
o 2-3 Fine Arts
o 2-3 Rel/Myth/Phil, emphasizing myth
o 1-2 Social Science
o 1-2 Geography
o 1-2 Trash/GK


For the record, the OAC Regionals/States set will NOT have any sort of trash in it. And yes, the writers followed a strict distribution for the alphabet and lightning rounds (I forget what it is, but it's pretty much the same as any TU/B format out there other than the no trash part). And no, no part of RMP is emphasized in any way.

Also, you forget that in NAQT trash bonuses exist. There may be multiple within a single packet. Don't those count?

Also from the OAC Committee "The lightning round should follow the same distribution earlier identified for the alphabet round. The average team should be able to answer 15 of the lightning round questions if they played the round against empty chairs.".

There are going to be 94 teams in regionals this year. Considering that there are 1,280 questions written for the whole OAC state-wide tournament, there should be a higher number of trash/single battles/whatever in the OAC lighting/trash then in TU/B (namely NAQT, where as I've already stated, in a normal game you only hear 5/6 of the packet). Because the tournament, (primarily regionals) is looking for a high conversion rate, in theory we should be expecting trash/pop culture questions in the early rounds for teams like (theoretical) Eastern Scioto Valley School for the Slow, who knows who won the 2006 AL MVP, but doesn't have the same knowledge base as the top echelon of Ohio teams, so it should compensate somewhat for not knowing a relatively difficult academia question, such as the lesser known works of Nietzsche.


The purpose of quizbowl is to reward (academic) knowledge. This idea doesn't help and just screws the better team out of a few points. Oh, and there's no trash in the set. And, uh, there's no way to distinguish good/bad trash teams from how good they are on academia, so that's another pitfall.

http://www.createphpbb.com/oac/viewtopi ... mforum=oac

That's the post from last year. I didn't know at all if they took trash out of the regionals set this year (boo), it's a stupid idea to take all of it out but it's a step towards academia. Personally, if trash is such a bad idea in quiz bowl (or in the OAC's eyes), then why is it in their in the first place, as well in NAQT/HSAPQ?
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by Rufous-capped Thornbill »

Jasper wrote for the Regionals/State set, so I'd trust him on this matter.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by Excelsior (smack) »

There wasn't any trash in last year's regional/state set either.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by Unicolored Jay »

I don't know what the committee said about it this year. The post you linked me to seemed to say that their distribution was just more of a guideline. From what former writers have mentioned (i.e. Bob Kilner) it seems that way too.

edit: clarification
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by GBRodgers12 »

CavsFan2k10 wrote:
Judy Sucks a Lemon for Breakfast wrote:
CavsFan2k10 wrote:
3rd quote - Yes there are distributions for trash/current events in TU/B, however I would be willing to bet considering how many more questions there are in an OAC packet than a TU/B packet, that the trash/current events distribution would be higher in OAC than TU/B. In the OAC tournaments I've been to, there seems to be more trash/pop culture in the lightning round than in TU/B. Going through the packet archives and looking at the packets the TD's give us after we go to tournaments and pay for them, I seem to find a good number of the distributed trash/current events in the last four questions which are used for tie-breaking purposes (or to cut out comp. math). Here is last year's Regionals/State distribution for OAC last year (Don't know if this has changed): 10 "sets" for regionals, 8 "sets" for states, 4 "sets" of tie-breakers (five lightning round questions/answers in one set). In one set; this is the distribution - Category rounds 10 Categories - 30 questions Alphabet round 20 questions with this distribution: "3-4 Science including math (no math calculation)
o 3-4 History
o 3-4 Literature
o 2-3 Fine Arts
o 2-3 Rel/Myth/Phil, emphasizing myth
o 1-2 Social Science
o 1-2 Geography
o 1-2 Trash/GK


For the record, the OAC Regionals/States set will NOT have any sort of trash in it. And yes, the writers followed a strict distribution for the alphabet and lightning rounds (I forget what it is, but it's pretty much the same as any TU/B format out there other than the no trash part). And no, no part of RMP is emphasized in any way.

Also, you forget that in NAQT trash bonuses exist. There may be multiple within a single packet. Don't those count?

Also from the OAC Committee "The lightning round should follow the same distribution earlier identified for the alphabet round. The average team should be able to answer 15 of the lightning round questions if they played the round against empty chairs.".

There are going to be 94 teams in regionals this year. Considering that there are 1,280 questions written for the whole OAC state-wide tournament, there should be a higher number of trash/single battles/whatever in the OAC lighting/trash then in TU/B (namely NAQT, where as I've already stated, in a normal game you only hear 5/6 of the packet). Because the tournament, (primarily regionals) is looking for a high conversion rate, in theory we should be expecting trash/pop culture questions in the early rounds for teams like (theoretical) Eastern Scioto Valley School for the Slow, who knows who won the 2006 AL MVP, but doesn't have the same knowledge base as the top echelon of Ohio teams, so it should compensate somewhat for not knowing a relatively difficult academia question, such as the lesser known works of Nietzsche.


The purpose of quizbowl is to reward (academic) knowledge. This idea doesn't help and just screws the better team out of a few points. Oh, and there's no trash in the set. And, uh, there's no way to distinguish good/bad trash teams from how good they are on academia, so that's another pitfall.

http://www.createphpbb.com/oac/viewtopi ... mforum=oac

That's the post from last year. I didn't know at all if they took trash out of the regionals set this year (boo), it's a stupid idea to take all of it out but it's a step towards academia. Personally, if trash is such a bad idea in quiz bowl (or in the OAC's eyes), then why is it in their in the first place, as well in NAQT/HSAPQ?


Trash in any form, as well as computational math, are just bad quiz bowl when extra questions could be added in Lit, Histtory, Science, RMP, Soc Sci, and Fine Arts. And this comes from someone who made what little playing career he had on two things - sports and comp math.

Like Jasper said, thankfully there is no trash in this year's regional/state set.

On the issue of uncontested points earlier in this thread, this argument holds no ground imo because if the other team does know more, they will get more points (or at the very least as many) as the other team in said rounds (barring there being poor question writing, which is feasible in any format but has been rampant in OAC in previous years).

Don't get me wrong, I strongly prefer a well written tossup/bonus set that focuses on academics. However, OAC is moving in a very positive direction, and I feel like some of my fellow tossup/bonus proponents in the state still can not get behind it because it is OAC still. Rules within the format have had flaws - that have for the most part been fixed. And the question writing has been a major flaw but has taken leaps and bounds as of late. OAC as a format imo is not a bad one, and I also feel like it is a disservice to the state of Ohio's quiz bowl circuit to make an argument that it is. The transition for most of the state to good quiz bowl is a long one and well-written OAC has to be a large part of the cornerstone to convert teams that do not play tournaments on weekends regularly.

Rather than simply alluding to it in this post, I will also say that as I have become simply disenchanted with NAQT over the years, I find it ironic that people give OAC such a bad rap and use NAQT as their comparison stick. Poor written OAC has unbalanced team questions and bad distributions. NAQT's distribution is not ideal and due to certain sectors of that distribution, their bonus variability is quite large imho. Not too different when I look at them...

Just my two cents.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by InspectorHound »

In the immortal words of Jacob Durst: "even a finely-honed OAC packet by the ACF cabal itself would not meet modern standards of acceptability in the quizbowl community."
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by BobGHHS »

Having looked over the set last month, I can confirm that just like the 2010 set, there are no trash questions. It will be a good regional/state tournament based on what I saw.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by Steeve Ho You Fat »

Adm Akbar says It's a Tarp! wrote:"Fair" does not mean each team can have it's guaranteed comfort points that the opposing team can't get. And because of that TU/B does a far better job distinguishing the best teams from the rest of the pack.
Right, it seems like playing OAC is like that "quality rating" thing they had at NGCSU, in that it allows worse teams to score points on things they don't know as much about as better teams.
CavsFan2k10 wrote:
Isaacbh wrote:I think the real question here is, what is it that makes the Rhode Island Quiz League so much better than tossup/bonus formats?
Where did I say OAC was better than TU/B?
If you think it's inferior, why are you defending it?
I didn't know at all if they took trash out of the regionals set this year (boo), it's a stupid idea to take all of it out but it's a step towards academia. Personally, if trash is such a bad idea in quiz bowl (or in the OAC's eyes), then why is it in their in the first place, as well in NAQT/HSAPQ?
Well, a lot people think it doesn't belong in there. Asking why it is in there now is like asking why there's a 5 point bonus in the alphabet round: not necessarily because it's a good idea, but because that's how the committee, in its infinite wisdom, has decided it should be. ACF Nationals and the PACE NSC, as well as housewrites like this year's HFT, are increasingly removing trash as they come to the simple realization that no event can bill itself accurately as an academic championship when its games can be decided based on knowledge of Yankees players.
OFallsJC wrote:Plus we can make fun of the questions if they suck.
You don't do this in TU/B?
A good thing about OAC states is that it's actually a statewide tournament that includes basically every team except for the ones who don't show up at regionals.
But what's to stop having a statewide tournament in TU/B? Illinois (not that they're an example of good quizbowl overall) has some thing where it mirrors the same NAQT set at multiple locations across the state on the same day, why can't we replace regionals with this? I agree that it's better for teams to play OAC than play nothing, but I don't see why that implies that they can't play TU/B.
The other side of this is that the field at the actual state tournament gets really diluted by the regional rounds. I would argue that for NE teams it will be as easy to make the semifinals at states as it will be to make it to states. Easier if Northmont and Walnut aren't in the same bracket. So the final rounds get watered down but the OAC winner still has to prove that their team is better than basically every other team in the state (ignoring the obvious problems with the OAC format and the teams that don't play at regionals).
This is another problem (although more a problem with the regionals/state system than the format). Four of the top 10 teams in the last poll were from the Northeast; how can something call itself a state championship when it by definition excludes at least two of them? Then, at the state championship, the random seeding will make sure that the two teams from the northeast are in different brackets at least, but whichever has Northmont in it will be way harder than the other one.
I'm also going to add that I would've made a comment saying that OAC was better than the Rhode Island format because the max score is higher, but I realized I don't know the OAC scoring rules at all.
The max score would be 2 * 10 + 2 * 10 + 10 + 25 + 20 = 95.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by GBRodgers12 »

Joe N wrote:
The other side of this is that the field at the actual state tournament gets really diluted by the regional rounds. I would argue that for NE teams it will be as easy to make the semifinals at states as it will be to make it to states. Easier if Northmont and Walnut aren't in the same bracket. So the final rounds get watered down but the OAC winner still has to prove that their team is better than basically every other team in the state (ignoring the obvious problems with the OAC format and the teams that don't play at regionals).
This is another problem (although more a problem with the regionals/state system than the format). Four of the top 10 teams in the last poll were from the Northeast; how can something call itself a state championship when it by definition excludes at least two of them? Then, at the state championship, the random seeding will make sure that the two teams from the northeast are in different brackets at least, but whichever has Northmont in it will be way harder than the other one.
I do not have a problem with the way OAC Regionals/State is setup at all. I know this is a constant point of criticism by some coaches and players though. When looking at Ohio high school sports (I can only speak for Ohio - and more specifically, geared towards football, I do not know how other states do things), this is how we do things. The argument one can make for quiz bowl and the strength of the northeast in Ohio can be made about football and the Cincinnati region (and also the Cleveland region but to a slightly lesser extent). It is the nature of things. While maybe not ideal, if you go out and win games, then you advance. Yes, the northeast is the hardest region by far, but if you win the games in which you play, then you will win the state championship.

Plus, we do not have the problem like in some activities, for instance football, in which a certain number of teams from each part of the state can make the regional/state round. If 20 teams qualify for the 16 team NE regional, then 4 are moved to another regional and still given a chance to compete. Whereas, the 12th ranked team in football's Region 1 (Cincinnati) most years would likely be in if they were in either of the other non Cincy/Cleveland regions rather than not really in the playoff picture at all.

The point being that when it comes to regionals, everyone gets their shot. If you win games, you advance. Some teams may have an easier road to get there, but that is just the way it is. Plus if they do have a harder road, they may get an easier shake at state in some instances (see the NE team that makes it out and does not have to play Northmont (and feasibly also Walnut) in the round robin portion of State).
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by Rufous-capped Thornbill »

And yet, two teams will come from the NW and only two of Copley, Olmsted Falls, Solon and St. Ignatius will make it to state.

EDIT: Plus I really disagree that "that's just the way things are" are a good excuse for anything.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by GBRodgers12 »

Inkana7 wrote:And yet, two teams will come from the NW and only two of Copley, Olmsted Falls, Solon and St. Ignatius will make it to state.

EDIT: Plus I really disagree that "that's just the way things are" are a good excuse for anything.
The point being in no way does the current format inhibit the best team from winning. If you are the best team, you will win the games you need to on this question set and end up hoisting the state championship trophy.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by dtaylor4 »

GBRodgers12 wrote:
Inkana7 wrote:And yet, two teams will come from the NW and only two of Copley, Olmsted Falls, Solon and St. Ignatius will make it to state.

EDIT: Plus I really disagree that "that's just the way things are" are a good excuse for anything.
The point being in no way does the current format inhibit the best team from winning. If you are the best team, you will win the games you need to on this question set and end up hoisting the state championship trophy.
I'm not buying this. So, the team that deserves to be the champion will do so? That defense is cack. That same defense has been used within Illinois by the state athletic association.

It's old news that tournaments run by state athletic associations blow most of the time, Virginia excepted.

Also, Joe N: what you're thinking of is Kickoffs, of which there were four last fall in various parts of the state.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by OFallsJC »

The OAC system doesn't keep the best team from winning. Whoever wins has to go through everyone else. It can just keep the third best team from getting third and so on, and it makes the actual state tournament somewhat anticlimactic, for lack of a better word.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by jgalea84 »

This is another problem (although more a problem with the regionals/state system than the format). Four of the top 10 teams in the last poll were from the Northeast; how can something call itself a state championship when it by definition excludes at least two of them? Then, at the state championship, the random seeding will make sure that the two teams from the northeast are in different brackets at least, but whichever has Northmont in it will be way harder than the other one.
This, as far as I can tell, is a tried and true feature of almost any kind of team-based competition that awards a championship of some sort.

Maybe I am bandying semantics, but to me, there is a difference between unfair, which assumes that certain teams have no legitimate chance to compete for the title (example would be in college football, if a MAC or Sun Belt team goes unbeaten, they aren't playing for a BCS title) and imbalanced, which means that some teams are going to have a harder path to get to a championship, but still have a path to get there (example would be NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, their college counterparts, several sports in this country and others whose championship formats I am unfamiliar with but are undoubtedly similar, etc.) OAC is imbalanced, not unfair. But I could be applying a law school definition of "fair" and not a real world definition of it, so your milage may vary.

I do wonder if some of OAC's regional distribution problems could be solved by consolidating to four regions. I'd be interested to see the population distribution of the six existing regions.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by Sniper, No Sniping! »

jgalea84 wrote:
I do wonder if some of OAC's regional distribution problems could be solved by consolidating to four regions. I'd be interested to see the population distribution of the six existing regions.
If it consolidated to four regions, we might actually see less applications considering there might be longer travel distances for some teams.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by jgalea84 »

CavsFan2k10 wrote:
jgalea84 wrote:
I do wonder if some of OAC's regional distribution problems could be solved by consolidating to four regions. I'd be interested to see the population distribution of the six existing regions.
If it consolidated to four regions, we might actually see less applications considering there might be longer travel distances for some teams.
Good point.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by dxdtdemon »

There were four regions until my junior year of high school. At the time, a similar number of teams participated as today, but with no limit of how many teams could attend a certain regional, there were so many byes that one year, my team noticed that our baseball team was playing at Northmont (which was the site of the SW Regionals then), and got to see most of Justin Masterson's complete game shutout between the time we won the winners bracket and the time we got to play the winner of the losers bracket. The problem I see with the current regionals geographical distribution is that most western suburbs of Cleveland (including ones further east than Olmsted Falls) get to go to Bowling Green, but the better western Cleveland area teams go to Copley. There should be a consistent geographical boundary that would allow in most years a better field at the OAC State tournament.
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Re: OAC Talk

Post by MahoningQuizBowler »

There need to be 8 regions; double up on the Northeast (Inland, Coastal) and for capybara's sake put one in Columbus. I don't know who originally started the trend of putting Regional sites in the extrema of the state (see Northeast Region, Bindis-era, at EAST LIVERPOOL), but it's silly. Then we can have 16 teams, including (theoretically) 2 more from the region that is currently the best in the state. Also, moving the Columbus teams from Portsmouth to Columbus will open up spots for, potentially, more wild-card bids from one portion of the state that could do with seeing the questions being used now for Regionals and State.
Greg Bossick
Director, Mahoning Quizbowl League (2004-2011, 2013-present)
Director, NAQT Ohio Small School State Championship (2018-present)
Executive Director, Ohio Academic Competition (2013-2016)
OFallsJC
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Joined: Sun Mar 07, 2010 6:24 pm
Location: Olmsted Falls, OH

Re: OAC Talk

Post by OFallsJC »

Would it make sense to have a Cleveland regional and an Akron regional? There would probably be a good balance between the strength of the teams in each area. The biggest problem I can think of with that plan would be too many East Central teams getting pulled to the Akron one.
quantumfootball wrote: The problem I see with the current regionals geographical distribution is that most western suburbs of Cleveland (including ones further east than Olmsted Falls) get to go to Bowling Green, but the better western Cleveland area teams go to Copley. There should be a consistent geographical boundary that would allow in most years a better field at the OAC State tournament.
I don't think this is a big issue this year since (I think) the only teams from the western suburbs are us, North Olmsted, and Lake Ridge Academy, and Lake Ridge is definitely west of us and North Olmsted. A consistent boundary would probably be useful though, unless it made it too hard to balance the numbers in each region.

Just as an interesting thought..... Based on this map from last year: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8& ... 6a&t=h&z=7 , if say, Brush, Beachwood, and St. Ed's had signed up for regionals this year, it would've been reasonable to send Madison Comprehensive to the NW and Copley and Green to the EC, since Copley isn't hosting anymore. That would be more balanced.
Jim Coury
Olmsted Falls 2011
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