SEC tournament?

Old college threads.
Locked
User avatar
jhn31
Wakka
Posts: 178
Joined: Sun Sep 03, 2006 9:18 pm
Location: Starkville, MS

SEC tournament?

Post by jhn31 »

A teammate and I at Mississippi State were just discussing how cool it would be if all of the SEC schools (Alabama, Auburn, Arkansas, Ole Miss, MSU, LSU, Tennessee, Vandy, Kentucky, South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia) had some kind of tournament with just the 12 of us. Is anyone at any of the other schools interested in something like this?
vig180
Wakka
Posts: 190
Joined: Tue Feb 17, 2004 7:59 pm
Location: Athens, GA

Post by vig180 »

Heh, I suggested this idea awhile ago when there was talk of an SEC TV channel that might buy into the idea of an academic alternative to constant sports talk. It probably won't get on TV, but in the interest of conference rivalry and maybe attracting some more media attention it just might be worth it. Does Ole Miss have a program? What about Auburn? If you could get teams from all the schools and market it right, it's got a shot at being successful
User avatar
QuizBowlRonin
Wakka
Posts: 160
Joined: Fri May 30, 2003 2:21 am
Location: San Mateo, CA
Contact:

Post by QuizBowlRonin »

Quizbowl has enough trouble dealing with getting enough teams to tournaments. You want to exclude non-SEC teams?
Jason Paik
retired

WashU, UAB, Stanford
User avatar
Matt Weiner
Sin
Posts: 8145
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2003 8:34 pm
Location: Richmond, VA

Post by Matt Weiner »

NAQT held "conference championships" from 1997 to 1999 and ended the practice because it wasn't viable. People didn't want to travel the distance between Washington State and UCLA, or Mississippi State and South Carolina, to play a regular season tournament, and were resentful when stuff happened along the lines of Boston College being turned away from an Ivy League tournament at Harvard and forced to travel to a Big East tournament at Virginia Tech.
User avatar
grapesmoker
Sin
Posts: 6345
Joined: Sat Oct 25, 2003 5:23 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Post by grapesmoker »

Matt Weiner wrote:Boston College being turned away from an Ivy League tournament at Harvard and forced to travel to a Big East tournament at Virginia Tech.
Did that really happen? Man, that sounds misguided.
User avatar
Matt Weiner
Sin
Posts: 8145
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2003 8:34 pm
Location: Richmond, VA

Post by Matt Weiner »

grapesmoker wrote:Did that really happen? Man, that sounds misguided.
The specific example is made up but similar things did happen.
Awehrman
Wakka
Posts: 150
Joined: Tue Mar 09, 2004 9:08 am
Location: Marietta, OH

Post by Awehrman »

NAQT's conference tournament had nothing little to do with athletic conferences. It was more like ACF Fall. They seem to have been done away with because of the proliferation of other NAQT events. At the 1999 NAQT conference championship my team, Arkansas, played in the Midwestern conference at Iowa State. Kentucky and Vanderbilt played in the "Big 10" conference at Illinois. Maryland, George Washington and California-Los Alamos (?) played in the Northeastern Conference at Yale. Plenty of community colleges played in the Southeastern Conference. The only conference that matched its athletic counterpart was the Southwest conference at Austin, TX owing to the fact that only 3 schools sent teams. I'm not sure where Matt is getting his information on teams being turned away.
User avatar
Matt Weiner
Sin
Posts: 8145
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2003 8:34 pm
Location: Richmond, VA

Post by Matt Weiner »

I thought I remembered some sort of reason for the Conference name at least in one of the years, but perhaps this was a hypothetical rather than actual restriction. I do remember a lot of talk about the above sort of absurdity but I guess it was just a "why this should not happen" discussion and I recalled poorly.
e_steinhauser
Lulu
Posts: 55
Joined: Fri May 05, 2006 3:59 pm
Location: Magnolia, AR

Post by e_steinhauser »

Matt Weiner wrote:I thought I remembered some sort of reason for the Conference name at least in one of the years, but perhaps this was a hypothetical rather than actual restriction. I do remember a lot of talk about the above sort of absurdity but I guess it was just a "why this should not happen" discussion and I recalled poorly.
My recollection is that the only conference that actually acted as a unit for the short-lived NAQT Conference Tournaments was the Big Ten, also including founding member (and still sorta-academic member) Chicago. I think they were able to have a pretty reasonable event with most members for a couple years. Nothing else was even remotely viable, and its last iteration (2000?) was simply billed as NAQT Fall.

I also want to say that there was some idle talk of forming quasi-conferences in other areas based along traditional athletic rivalries and geography, but I could well be wrong about that or merely thinking of some really late night, beer-induced speculation.

Either way, Mr. Paik is right. Why would you want to exclude anyone based on something you're not really affiliated with anyway?
--eps
User avatar
Zip Zap Rap Pants
Yuna
Posts: 780
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2005 12:55 am
Location: Richmond/Williamsburg, VA
Contact:

Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

Conference tournaments would be awesome if you could get media attention and such, and if you were sure most of the teams in that conference would be represented. The Big South now does a conference tournament on NAQT questions, but then again the teams in it don't do much besides CBI (As a side note, for shits and giggles I checked up on the tournament they did last year on the Big South's website, and the top scorer had 38 ppg. I think they were using a question set where I had one of my better all time games, about 43 ppg at the Cav Open, but that was only good for like 18th. On that set, DCC probably came close to outscoring all teams combined from the Big South tourney.) I was thinking one day a CAA tournament would be cool, but right now I think that would only include us (W&M), VCU, GW, Delaware, and possibly Villanova if they're in the CAA after this whole takeover of the A-10 in football. Ahh well, maybe one day when more schools have teams, and when VCU is on the level of us mortals once Matt Weiner's sombrero bursting head is done with its career.
Red-necked Phalarope
Rikku
Posts: 463
Joined: Thu May 05, 2005 1:50 pm
Location: Columbus, OH

Post by Red-necked Phalarope »

I tried to gauge interest for an ACC quiz bowl tournament last winter, but too many random issues came up; it eventually essentially turned into AWET.

I have a feeling that an ACC tournament hosted in the Carolinas would have a decent shot, mostly because we've managed to remain fairly geographically compact (save Miami and BC, alas). Pretty much every school in our conference except for Clemson (?) has a relatively active team, so with some planning and some marketing you might be able to get a pretty good event going.

Any takers?
Snoopy17
Lulu
Posts: 19
Joined: Sun Oct 12, 2003 6:40 pm
Location: Blacksburg/Elkton, VA

Post by Snoopy17 »

Virginia Tech would attend any spring tournament at UNC, barring other commitments and conflicts. We would attend regardless of its being an exclusively ACC event or not. That said, a lot of people in our organization love sports and so that may be an added incentive for those may be not be decided about coming or not.

Sarah Mahood
Academic Competition Organization of Virginia Tech - President
Phil Castagna
Lulu
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri Apr 21, 2006 2:07 pm

NAQT 1997-99

Post by Phil Castagna »

I don't remember any conference-type affiliation then.

At Georgetown, we'd be playing teams like Maryland, GW. and UVA that John Thompson habitually ducked.

We'd have fared better against Cal-State Sacramento, Southern University - New Orleans, St. Leo's, Rider, or any of the other cupcakes JT used to line up.

Phil
User avatar
Important Bird Area
Forums Staff: Administrator
Posts: 6113
Joined: Thu Aug 28, 2003 3:33 pm
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Contact:

Post by Important Bird Area »

California-Los Alamos (?) played in the Northeastern Conference at Yale.
Jeff Stewart playing solo.
User avatar
Zip Zap Rap Pants
Yuna
Posts: 780
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2005 12:55 am
Location: Richmond/Williamsburg, VA
Contact:

Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

Matt Morrison wrote:I was thinking one day a CAA tournament would be cool, but right now I think that would only include us (W&M), VCU, GW, Delaware, and possibly Villanova
Correction so I don't look retarded about my own conference: GW is A-10, not CAA, so my bad. I think Northeastern might have a team though.
miamiqb
Lulu
Posts: 69
Joined: Tue Nov 01, 2005 10:38 pm
Location: Miami
Contact:

Post by miamiqb »

KilroyWasHere wrote:I tried to gauge interest for an ACC quiz bowl tournament last winter, but too many random issues came up; it eventually essentially turned into AWET.

I have a feeling that an ACC tournament hosted in the Carolinas would have a decent shot, mostly because we've managed to remain fairly geographically compact (save Miami and BC, alas). Pretty much every school in our conference except for Clemson (?) has a relatively active team, so with some planning and some marketing you might be able to get a pretty good event going.
Any takers?
if the date was right (i.e. not right before an exam) I am sure miami would be sending a team of at least one :grin:
An ACC "championship" would be an awesome idea...the school might even fund a team and have a few real practices to prepare.
I like to eat peanut butter
User avatar
jhn31
Wakka
Posts: 178
Joined: Sun Sep 03, 2006 9:18 pm
Location: Starkville, MS

Post by jhn31 »

As far as the SEC goes, every school has at least a somewhat active team with the exception of Ole Miss, and I know some people there who would probably attend for something like this.

The only questions are...could we find a date all 12 teams could come (it would be considerably less cool without 100% participation); who would host it (it would need to be someone in the middle geographically--although we here at MSU would almost certainly not be capable of hosting at this point in time), and what format would it be (that's something we could work out on our own).
User avatar
First Chairman
Auron
Posts: 3651
Joined: Sat Apr 19, 2003 8:21 pm
Location: Fairfax VA
Contact:

Post by First Chairman »

Geography would also act as a major impediment because getting everyone to a nice convenient location would be horrible.
User avatar
Zip Zap Rap Pants
Yuna
Posts: 780
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2005 12:55 am
Location: Richmond/Williamsburg, VA
Contact:

Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

Hey I just realized every Ivy League school has a team (right?), so why don't they do a conference tournament so as to get publicity? It makes more sense than an ACC or SEC tournament because of geographic compactness, and because in the ACC/SEC potential backers for TV/other promotion might say "hell, boy, we don't want nuthin if it ain't gawt futbawl in't, now go pick me some soybeans," whereas the Ivy League is already viewed as being more academic. Just a thought...
User avatar
First Chairman
Auron
Posts: 3651
Joined: Sat Apr 19, 2003 8:21 pm
Location: Fairfax VA
Contact:

Post by First Chairman »

One of the reasons why it didn't work when we had the Ivy League conference championships in the late 90's is because we couldn't really leave out MIT even if it weren't a non-Ivy. You also had issues where there are a lot of good teams within the New England area that wouldn't be allowed to participate under strict guidelines (Boston U, Amherst, Bryn Mawr, Rutgers).

In my view, I don't think a conference championship would work without actual organization on the part of the administrators of those schools who would think "it would be cool to do this." As such, I don't think having an academic quiz bowl league among the Ivy schools is something they find they need for publicity for their schools.
User avatar
grapesmoker
Sin
Posts: 6345
Joined: Sat Oct 25, 2003 5:23 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Post by grapesmoker »

E.T. Chuck wrote:One of the reasons why it didn't work when we had the Ivy League conference championships in the late 90's is because we couldn't really leave out MIT even if it weren't a non-Ivy. You also had issues where there are a lot of good teams within the New England area that wouldn't be allowed to participate under strict guidelines (Boston U, Amherst, Bryn Mawr, Rutgers).
This, pretty much.

Also, depending on where you place the tournament, it's questionable whether Columbia/Princeton or Dartmouth/Harvard would make the trip, as many teams don't have the transportation to make even a 200 mile trip. Just look at the field for Yale's BoB, which is about halfway between the various Ivies; only Brown and Harvard are listed as attending so far, even though New Haven is eminently accessible from NYC and it's not even that far for Princeton to go. Cornell also seems to have died out as a club, although I did hear from them earlier this year.
Kyle
Auron
Posts: 1127
Joined: Tue Jun 15, 2004 1:16 pm
Location: Seattle

Post by Kyle »

grapesmoker wrote:Many teams don't have the transportation to make even a 200 mile trip. Just look at the field for Yale's BoB, which is about halfway between the various Ivies; only Brown and Harvard are listed as attending so far.
Sadly, to make your point better: our transportation fell through for Yale. I still want to go, but I absolutely can't get there. People don't bring cars when they come to college in the middle of a city and we can't rent a car because no one on our team is 21. Harvard makes provisions for discount car rentals, but our team is too young to take advantage of them. I'd love to attend Dartmouth's tournament in March as well, but it's going to take some serious creativity to get to Hanover. ACF Fall at Brown was within our range only because of the relatively new commuter rail. Simply put, tournaments that hope to draw teams from a large geographic area have to contend with an awful lot of problems that aren't easily solved.
vandyhawk
Tidus
Posts: 555
Joined: Sat Dec 13, 2003 3:42 am
Location: Seattle

Post by vandyhawk »

I'm pretty certain that Enterprise, and maybe other companies, allow 18-20 to rent, for an additional fee even greater than the one charged to 21-24 year olds. Granted it's probably like $30 or $40/day, but could be worth it. I think the laws vary by state, though, so perhaps this is pointless b/c Mass. says 21+.
User avatar
grapesmoker
Sin
Posts: 6345
Joined: Sat Oct 25, 2003 5:23 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Post by grapesmoker »

Kyle wrote:Sadly, to make your point better: our transportation fell through for Yale. I still want to go, but I absolutely can't get there.
If you're interested, I'm sure we can work something out where some Harvard folks come down to Providence the night before and then we rent some cars or something. I'll think about how we can do this and email you.
Chris Frankel
Wakka
Posts: 209
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2003 12:52 pm
Location: Houston, TX

Post by Chris Frankel »

This, pretty much.

Also, depending on where you place the tournament, it's questionable whether Columbia/Princeton or Dartmouth/Harvard would make the trip, as many teams don't have the transportation to make even a 200 mile trip. Just look at the field for Yale's BoB, which is about halfway between the various Ivies; only Brown and Harvard are listed as attending so far, even though New Haven is eminently accessible from NYC and it's not even that far for Princeton to go. Cornell also seems to have died out as a club, although I did hear from them earlier this year.
Jerry, I'll let you in a secret. While the 2003 Yale tournament was actually decently edited and a fairly enjoyable tournament, the last two incarnations of it have, quite frankly, sucked ass. The last time I personally went to Yale's tournament, we were treated to a round so bad that Freeburg and our team (who were playing each other at time) spent the game making CBI comparisons and a round where the packets were so poorly edited that we had to throw out tossups and bonuses because ones I had written were somehow tossed into a packet that Harvard and ourselves were playing a decisive match on (Gee, thanks for making us ineligible to buzz in on a tossup on the Toltecs on the basis that I had written it for the round). I even sent an e-mail expressing my concerns to the tournament editor that year and was not even acknowledged with a response. As the free market holds that potential customers will boycott inferior products, we chose not to waste our limited entry fee budget (Dan B. had to plead with our administrators to allow us to afford ACF Nationals 2006) and travel dollars driving through the snow to attend a tournament that had significantly disappointed us on a prior occasion. And as luck would have it, Yale 2005 was not substantially better by any means, becoming a point of mockery in the quizbowl chatroom shortly after its packets became available.

I'm not posting this just to rip on Yale (who has some relatively new members that expressed an admirable interest in the game) or be a negative nancy, but to make the point that the lack of quality product has just as much to do with the lack of participation that is viewed as problematic. Now that nearly every Ivy League school has an active team that does want to play, I will pledge that if anyone wants to run a tournament that doesn't involve Yale non-editing poorly written questions sent to it or Jerry writing on absurdly esoteric answers that are clearly out of reach of any sensible academic quiz bowl player (Master Of Ballantrae, what the fuck are you smoking, dude?), I will be happy to bust my ass off and provide a quality packet for it in spite of my 60+/hr week job.
"They sometimes get fooled by the direction a question is going to take, and that's intentional," said Reid. "The players on these teams are so good that 90 percent of the time they could interrupt the question and give the correct answer if the questions didn't take those kinds of turns. That wouldn't be fun to watch, so every now and then as I design these suckers, I say to myself, 'Watch this!' and wait 'til we're on camera. I got a lot of dirty looks this last tournament."
User avatar
grapesmoker
Sin
Posts: 6345
Joined: Sat Oct 25, 2003 5:23 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Post by grapesmoker »

Chris Frankel wrote:Jerry, I'll let you in a secret. While the 2003 Yale tournament was actually decently edited and a fairly enjoyable tournament, the last two incarnations of it have, quite frankly, sucked ass. The last time I personally went to Yale's tournament, we were treated to a round so bad that Freeburg and our team (who were playing each other at time) spent the game making CBI comparisons and a round where the packets were so poorly edited that we had to throw out tossups and bonuses because ones I had written were somehow tossed into a packet that Harvard and ourselves were playing a decisive match on (Gee, thanks for making us ineligible to buzz in on a tossup on the Toltecs on the basis that I had written it for the round). I even sent an e-mail expressing my concerns to the tournament editor that year and was not even acknowledged with a response. As the free market holds that potential customers will boycott inferior products, we chose not to waste our limited entry fee budget (Dan B. had to plead with our administrators to allow us to afford ACF Nationals 2006) and travel dollars driving through the snow to attend a tournament that had significantly disappointed us on a prior occasion. And as luck would have it, Yale 2005 was not substantially better by any means, becoming a point of mockery in the quizbowl chatroom shortly after its packets became available.
I read some questions from the 2005 edition of BoB in practice last night, and while they weren't paragons of brilliant writing, the majority of the questions were just fine and I didn't have much problems with them. Also, doesn't Princeton hold a gigantic high school tournament every year that brings in a ton of money? Maybe that's not the case anymore, but you certainly had one in 2005, which drew over 30 teams, if I'm not mistaken. That hardly sounds like a poor club that needs to plead for money from the administration, unless you have some kind of crazy overhead.
I'm not posting this just to rip on Yale (who has some relatively new members that expressed an admirable interest in the game) or be a negative nancy, but to make the point that the lack of quality product has just as much to do with the lack of participation that is viewed as problematic. Now that nearly every Ivy League school has an active team that does want to play, I will pledge that if anyone wants to run a tournament that doesn't involve Yale non-editing poorly written questions sent to it or Jerry writing on absurdly esoteric answers that are clearly out of reach of any sensible academic quiz bowl player (Master Of Ballantrae, what the fuck are you smoking, dude?), I will be happy to bust my ass off and provide a quality packet for it in spite of my 60+/hr week job.
Oh, gee, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that a poor tossup choice on my part was what was preventing you from attending tournaments :roll: Especially since I'm sure you knew in 2005 what obscure answers I would select for WIT in 2006. You know what, I spent the three weeks prior to Illinois Open writing a singles event (which, by the way, was full of esoterica; sorry if I offended your sense of quizbowl aesthetics) and in the days between my getting back from Chicago and the weekend of WIT I had to write a packet for WIT and a packet for BoB. The tossup in question was already written, so due to a time crunch, I used it; while the question was hard, I don't feel the need to apologize for it, nor do I feel that it is "out of reach of any sensible academic quiz bowl player."

Despite my complaints about shitty questions, I also do my best to motivate my team to attend tournaments that are within reasonable driving distance. We went to PARFAIT this year, even though it's quite a drive for us, and we'll go to Dartmouth if that tournament happens, and to Penn Bowl, and to whatever else takes place in our vicinity. I don't always expect those questions to be great, or even good necessarily, but it takes a really awful tournament for me to say that I'm never coming back. Yale's previous two incarnations of BoB are nowhere near that level, though of course I hope they'll avoid the problems that apparently came up in previous years.
User avatar
Dartmouth College Bowl
Lulu
Posts: 61
Joined: Sun Oct 29, 2006 11:24 am
Location: Hanover, NH

Post by Dartmouth College Bowl »

Since Dartmouth is basically in the middle of nowhere, we pretty much have to drive a minimum of 2 hours to any tournament we go to. We are willing essentially to go as far as 4-5 hours to get to a tournament. The only reason we aren't attending BoB is because we finish Finals on the 6th so all of us will be at home pn the 9th.

Kyle, with regards to the tournament at Dartmouth, there is a bus that runs from South Station to Hanover that runs every two hours.

<http://www.concordtrailways.com/dartmouth_coach.htm>

Finally, I was wondering what the deal was with the bid in the Northeast for NAQT Sectionals because we really want to go to ICT and would prefer not to have to travel a ridiculous distance to do so.
User avatar
grapesmoker
Sin
Posts: 6345
Joined: Sat Oct 25, 2003 5:23 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Post by grapesmoker »

Dartmouth College Bowl wrote:Finally, I was wondering what the deal was with the bid in the Northeast for NAQT Sectionals because we really want to go to ICT and would prefer not to have to travel a ridiculous distance to do so.
Kyle and I are currently trying to work out a proposal for a joint Harvard/Brown SCT, to take place at either campus (probably Harvard is more likely). There are some technical issues that we need to resolve with R., and if they are resolved to everyone's satisfaction, we'll be announcing something very soon.
Chris Frankel
Wakka
Posts: 209
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2003 12:52 pm
Location: Houston, TX

Post by Chris Frankel »

grapesmoker wrote:Also, doesn't Princeton hold a gigantic high school tournament every year that brings in a ton of money? Maybe that's not the case anymore, but you certainly had one in 2005, which drew over 30 teams, if I'm not mistaken. That hardly sounds like a poor club that needs to plead for money from the administration, unless you have some kind of crazy overhead.
I wasn't trying to start a pityfest about the poverty of Princeton's club. Typically, the high school tournament grosses enough for us to cover our local tournament schedule and fully pay travel costs for national tournaments, with the leftover funds being used to tide us over during the next fall before the next high school tournament. When the tournament happens (i.e. is not cancelled by snow like one sad year), we do well. However, we had a lot more expenses in the 2005-2006 year because we had significantly more interest from freshmen players than usual, and thus had to pay increased overnight travel costs and exhorbitant entry fees to get three teams, instead of just one, to ICT. We also had a big chunk of our budget eaten up by a blizzard that forced the three teams who went to SCT 2006 to stay overnight (three hotel rooms plus additional daily costs for the rental cars used). Add that to the cost of ACF Nationals and the usual schedule, and you can see how we drained our budget very quickly this past year.

Anyway, I wasn't making executive decisions last year, but the progression of the quality of BoB basically went as follows: 2003 was enjoyable and featured a good field, spring 2004 was one of the worst-run tournaments we ever attended, winter 2004 I didn't go, but my team went and generally felt the tournament wasn't run well (e.g. questions didn't improve much, no stats or results were posted), and 2005 we didn't go, and after the questions hit the trading scene, it turned out the editing was still lacking significantly. The point is that teams only have a finite amount of money, and it doesn't make sense to use it to support tournaments that have been consistent disappointments in the past. You don't give Michigan a hard time for not attending Deep Bench, right? The same principle is at work here: maybe things will get better this year and give more area teams motivation to go for future incarnations.
Oh, gee, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that a poor tossup choice on my part was what was preventing you from attending tournaments...
Well, my not being an active circuit player anymore is doing a better job of preventing me from attending tournaments :cool:. Anyway, I wasn't trying to insult you so much as toss out as a playful barb in your direction; I've seen you get (and dish out) much harsher criticism on this board and take it well without batting an eye, so I didn't mean for you to get upset by my comment. I don't think you would be offended to hear me to say that I think you're generally a skilled, capable, and hard-working writer/editor, who just has a tendency to get caught up in the grind of mass amounts of question writing and produce the occasional question on answers that are overly hard or obscure respective to the field's expected difficulty level. That's the only real criticism your question writing gets from people here, and I have to imagine this is something you are fairly used to hearing.
Despite my complaints about shitty questions, I also do my best to motivate my team to attend tournaments that are within reasonable driving distance.
I think every team does this, but as I said above, there are limited funds available, and it's only reasonable to decide how to allocate these funds based on the expected quality of tournaments in the area. Yeah, I don't expect every odd circuit tournament to have the impeccable editing and wide-ranging accessibility as Ryan Westbrook's MLK or Andrew/Seth/Selene's JS Mill tournaments, but what I'm saying is that having something of that quality in the backyard of the eastern circuit wouldn't hurt as far as getting more teams to come. Perhaps we will see something to this effect when Matt Weiner edits Penn Bowl this year.
"They sometimes get fooled by the direction a question is going to take, and that's intentional," said Reid. "The players on these teams are so good that 90 percent of the time they could interrupt the question and give the correct answer if the questions didn't take those kinds of turns. That wouldn't be fun to watch, so every now and then as I design these suckers, I say to myself, 'Watch this!' and wait 'til we're on camera. I got a lot of dirty looks this last tournament."
MikeWormdog
Lulu
Posts: 61
Joined: Tue Apr 13, 2004 4:09 pm
Location: Yale University

Post by MikeWormdog »

I'm sorry Chris doesn't like BoB. Sorry Robert never responded to your email three years back. Maybe that's why Princeton isn't coming this year.

I don't think that's why tournaments in the northeast aren't well attended, though. There are several reasons not to come to New Haven for our tournament, and the two biggest are transportation issues (like Harvard and Dartmouth mentioned) and the fact that this is a packet submission tournament (it's work to write a packet, and some teams don't think it's worth their time). The date for BoB sometimes is bad, too...finals, sometimes it snows (which I think resulted in the bad tournament at the last one Chris went to in 03-04; perhaps it should have been cancelled that year).

That said, it's the only one in the area that is played on packets submitted mainly by teams actually playing at the tournament and not just some mirror of a tournament elsewhere or ACF. Hopefully Brown's packet sub tournament will become an annual thing, giving the region another one. Also, teams that submit packets will have their packets used in one form or another, which I think encourages teams to write. This can result in uneven packets, but suggesting that the packets the last two years have been unedited isn't accurate.

Most teams that come seem to enjoy playing on the questions (including Princeton two years ago according to comments on this board). The distribution is a little different from ACF tournaments. It's not as beholden to strict category confinement, has a bit more trash, etc., which appeals to many of us at Yale. If attending teams want some things to change in the coming years, they're free to let us know.
User avatar
QuizbowlPostmodernist
Wakka
Posts: 115
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2003 12:22 am

Post by QuizbowlPostmodernist »

MikeWormdog wrote:I don't think that's why tournaments in the northeast aren't well attended, though. There are several reasons not to come to New Haven for our tournament, and the two biggest are transportation issues (like Harvard and Dartmouth mentioned) and the fact that this is a packet submission tournament (it's work to write a packet, and some teams don't think it's worth their time).
Historically, transportation has been a problem in New England. The Boston schools especially had a reputation for rarely leaving the city except for national tournaments. I vaguely recall some sort of disastrous result when NAQT first tried to run a New England SCT outside of Boston. I don't know how much this trend has changed in recent years.
User avatar
grapesmoker
Sin
Posts: 6345
Joined: Sat Oct 25, 2003 5:23 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Post by grapesmoker »

QuizbowlPostmodernist wrote:
MikeWormdog wrote:I don't think that's why tournaments in the northeast aren't well attended, though. There are several reasons not to come to New Haven for our tournament, and the two biggest are transportation issues (like Harvard and Dartmouth mentioned) and the fact that this is a packet submission tournament (it's work to write a packet, and some teams don't think it's worth their time).
Historically, transportation has been a problem in New England. The Boston schools especially had a reputation for rarely leaving the city except for national tournaments. I vaguely recall some sort of disastrous result when NAQT first tried to run a New England SCT outside of Boston. I don't know how much this trend has changed in recent years.
Not that I want to be hard on Boston schools necessarily, but there are regions like the West and Southwest where attending any tournament not in your immediate vicinity requires a good 5-hour drive. New England is quite compact in this respect; the farthest I can think of that we'd have to drive would be 5 hours away. Also, it's quite possible to get to most colleges around here by bus or other mass transit. It's less convenient than having a car, but still quite doable.

Incidentally, this is one of the many reasons why grad students are useful in quizbowl: they have cars. My advice to schools that have transportation problems is to recruit grad students.
User avatar
QuizbowlPostmodernist
Wakka
Posts: 115
Joined: Wed Aug 13, 2003 12:22 am

Post by QuizbowlPostmodernist »

grapesmoker wrote:
QuizbowlPostmodernist wrote:
MikeWormdog wrote:I don't think that's why tournaments in the northeast aren't well attended, though. There are several reasons not to come to New Haven for our tournament, and the two biggest are transportation issues (like Harvard and Dartmouth mentioned) and the fact that this is a packet submission tournament (it's work to write a packet, and some teams don't think it's worth their time).
Historically, transportation has been a problem in New England. The Boston schools especially had a reputation for rarely leaving the city except for national tournaments. I vaguely recall some sort of disastrous result when NAQT first tried to run a New England SCT outside of Boston. I don't know how much this trend has changed in recent years.
Not that I want to be hard on Boston schools necessarily, but there are regions like the West and Southwest where attending any tournament not in your immediate vicinity requires a good 5-hour drive. New England is quite compact in this respect; the farthest I can think of that we'd have to drive would be 5 hours away. Also, it's quite possible to get to most colleges around here by bus or other mass transit. It's less convenient than having a car, but still quite doable.

Incidentally, this is one of the many reasons why grad students are useful in quizbowl: they have cars. My advice to schools that have transportation problems is to recruit grad students.
The Northeast is fairly strange about cars. Looking back, I think that most of the people I have known who entered their 20s without a driver's license came from that region.
User avatar
grapesmoker
Sin
Posts: 6345
Joined: Sat Oct 25, 2003 5:23 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Post by grapesmoker »

QuizbowlPostmodernist wrote: The Northeast is fairly strange about cars. Looking back, I think that most of the people I have known who entered their 20s without a driver's license came from that region.
This certainly explains why everyone on the roads in this part of the country is such an idiot. Apparently the twin gifts of civilized driving and obeying the rules haven't quite arrived here yet.
Locked