The Future of College History Bowl

[Cheynem]

I'm sure Dave will have much more to say about this after National History Bee and Bowl is done.

I have decided that I do not wish to be part of this project next year, for a variety of reasons that do not really need explicating here. Thus, I will not edit, write, or work on anything related to College History Bowl for next year. I am aware that this may contradict some statements I may have previously made on the boards. Rest assured I never (nor have I have ever, really) signed any contract or made any explicit promise regarding my role for next year. Thus, consider this my official statement: I'm out.

I have 80/170 written for the set. This is basically one half of all the needed bonuses, and about 25% or so of the tossups. Assuming Dave will pay me for them, I have no inherent problem simply turning them over to him and whatever editors/writers he finds for next year. If this is a problem or unworkable, I'll take the questions back and do something else with them, since very few people have seen them.

If you are interested in working on the project, I would urge you to contact Dave or I guess post here. This is effectively my "resignation" (I'm stressing that I never actually worked for Dave) from the project.

[Tees-Exe Line]

I have a basic question: is there an appetite out there for a tournament whose purpose is to decide the best history team of currently-constituted university quizbowl teams? Because I'd be friendly to the idea of co-head-editing a version of College History Bowl, but it seems to me like it's basically an accident of quizbowl history that the notion exists. Is there any kind of similar desire to hold a literature or science tournament for college teams?

[grapesmoker]

I have a basic question: is there an appetite out there for a tournament whose purpose is to decide the best history team of currently-constituted university quizbowl teams? Because I'd be friendly to the idea of co-head-editing a version of College History Bowl, but it seems to me like it's basically an accident of quizbowl history that the notion exists. Is there any kind of similar desire to hold a literature or science tournament for college teams?

As far as I can tell, CHB only really exists because it's part of Dave Madden's History Empire (TM). Since there's no corresponding Literature Kingdom or Science Sultanate, I doubt we'll see any national tournaments for either of those subjects.

[naan/steak-holding toll]

Regardless of the circumstances of its origins, I heartily endorse its continued existence.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

There are very few people who can write the large amounts of hard history questions that this tournament requires. Those same people are almost to a person busy with much higher priorities writing for other events such as ACF Nationals, ICT, collegiate sets throughout the year, high school sets throughout the year, or (perhaps) future incarnations of the high school National History Bee and Bowl, and are also often busy doing other logistical/organizational tasks for the game. Even if demand is high, we need to be much more conscious of getting our priorities right and ensuring that all the basics of a fulfilling collegiate season are covered before adding this event, which is effectively a bell/whistle.

We can live without CHB; as such, it seems prudent that we should live without CHB.

[Rococo A Go Go]

This might be an unpopular view, but I've always kind of felt that College History Bowl was basically a side event with stricter eligibility rules. It's nice in theory to determine who the best history team in the country is, but I'm not sure it's really necessary to the game; the main appeal of CHB was because it's fun to play a bunch of history questions, not trying to decide a major title. I'm all in favor of having side events throughout the end of the season, but I see no reason for anything other than ICT or Nats to have the scope of CHB. If we want to play fun history questions there are other methods of doing that which do not require the effort CHB does in its current formation. For those reasons I do not think it is a good reason to continue an official College History Bowl, but I would certainly be happy to see an event of smaller scale replace it.

tl;dr: College History Bowl is dead, long live College History Bowl!

[Sima Guang Hater]

I think originally Matt Weiner conceived of CHB as something that could be directly marketed to college history departments in addition to (or instead of?) quizbowl teams; this is, on its face, a laudable goal. However, seeing as the set only happened twice in the four years it was supposed to be run and presumably the concomitant outreach to history departments never happened, I think this is a project that quizbowl can't really afford to take on right now, given all the other commitments we have.

[Mike Bentley]

I personally enjoyed writing for this tournament and reading for the two iterations of it. I wouldn't mind seeing it continue, but it does feel more like a bonus than a necessity given that it hasn't attracted non-Quizbowl teams.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

Things that are being written in the spring that are unquestionably higher priorities than CHB:

- ACF Nationals: there's generally just one person writing/editing most of the history thought
- ICT (I have no clue how many people split history question duties for this)
- HSNCT/SSNCT/MSNCT (see above)
- all of NHBB Nationals (this is a lot of questions - it took like two dozen writers this year!)
- possibly some other NHBB sets
- NSC, I think? (last time I wrote for this, lots of people were writing history)
- NASAT, I think? (lots of people write history for this, at least last time I was involved)
- probably some lesser NAQT/HSAPQ sets that I'm not well informed about

Could we find a small to medium sized group of qualified writers/editors to work on CHB who are not also committed to all of the above? Probably - but it would be a very close call, and one shock to the system (a single guy quitting, etc.) would probably send it over the edge into emergency territory.

OTOH, I agree that "let's find out which group of people who happen to attend the same college is the best at history" is an answer to a question that nobody asked. Maybe this would work better as a bee or something. Or maybe Madden wants to annex the CO History Doubles, which (in my biased view) was once a housewritten fish swimming comfortably in the sea, but is now a packet submission fish-on-land, spending 3 pages every spring flopping back and forth between different proposed formats, none of which really work the way that being thrown back into the water by an editor would.

[Great Bustard]

Mike, I'd be happy to pay you for those questions, and use them for whatever purposes it makes sense to do so. As for College History Bowl, this was largely started at Matt Weiner's desire, and though I was happy to support the project, it was never something that I had much time to devote to. I, like many other people, am far more invested in many other more pressing projects at the moment, and would like to put CHB on indefinite hold status.
I do think there is a place for it - the one time I attended it (the first iteration), it was reasonably well-attended, a good time for those who competed, and served a good purpose. For those reasons, and also since I continue to get asked by seniors in high school if they can keep playing in college, I support the eventual resurrection of CHB. But that probably won't happen for the coming year. It might by 2016-17, and I would certainly hope that it can happen by 2017-18 at the latest. We already have enough projects going on for now, though, and I'd prefer to devote my time, attention, and resources to the success of those events than CHB for the time being.