Corporate ACF Nationals

[i never see pigeons in wheeling]

Inspired by a conversation from Will Alston's wall. The ACF board has just decided to open eligibility for ACF Nationals to all corporations, nonprofits, law firms, hospitals, etc. Basically any distinct business entity for tax purposes is eligible to send a team (excluding university faculty, but those faculty may be utilized by corporations who employ them). Who wins?

You may not use my original answer of NAQT.

[ryanrosenberg]

PACE, duh. The CFPB is a close runner-up.

[theMoMA]

Presumably, all of the major quizbowl companies and organizations would be well-positioned: HSAPQ, NAQT, PACE, and ACF itself all have several principals who are among the best active open-eligibility players. I can't think of any non-quizbowl organizations (aside from the CFPB, as Ryan mentions above) that employ multiple top players of recent vintage.

[i never see pigeons in wheeling]

Presumably, all of the major quizbowl companies and organizations would be well-positioned: HSAPQ, NAQT, PACE, and ACF itself all have several principals who are among the best active open-eligibility players. I can't think of any non-quizbowl organizations (aside from the CFPB, as Ryan mentions above) that employ multiple top players of recent vintage.

The intent of the question was not really to refer to companies that employed multiple top former quiz bowl players. We can discard the idea of using former qb players wholesale and put this question more in the vein of the historical world leaders quiz bowl teams. I'm more asking about organizations that could gather four employees who are extremely knowledgeable about diverse areas of the academic canon into the most effective team.

[a Joe]

Maybe a team from a national lab?

[coldstonesteveaustin]

I imagine that the faculties of most universities could become good quizbowl teams.
Edit: Whoops, I can't read the OP.

[Rococo A Go Go]

Depending on the publication, I could see a newspaper or magazine having some great specialists on things like music, art, literature, or current events. Not sure how well they would do at science, but I guess there are probably some publications out there who have top scientists who write for them.

[Bartleby]

The RAND Corporation would certainly place well, I suspect.

[Muriel Axon]

The Institute for Advanced Study might also do well.

[vinteuil]

Depending on the publication, I could see a newspaper or magazine having some great specialists on things like music, art, literature, or current events. Not sure how well they would do at science, but I guess there are probably some publications out there who have top scientists who write for them.

I think there are still a few academic publishers who employ people very knowledgeable in all of those areas.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

I suspect that organizations who employ former quizbowl players will do very well, at least initially. As much as some in the quizbowl community idealize the quizbowl canon as something that is inherently important and reflect what people study/know in the real world, most non-quizbowl people are highly specialized and have no reason to know things outside of their area of expertise.

Some people from a biotech company who have never played quizbowl might do well on ACF Nats-level science questions (or they might overthink them, or be confused by what constitutes an acceptable answer, etc) but there is no reason to expect that they would do well on ACF Nats-level literature. They will get destroyed by top level quizbowl players who for years had a strong incentive to learn things outside of their area of expertise, and learn things deeply and recall them quickly. Faculty members, even more specialized, will also get crushed. They might first-line the tossup about the one thing they study, but will not be able to compete with quizbowl players on anything else.

After a few years, this dynamic might disappear, as corporate ACF teams study the canon the way that college teams do. There are a lot of reasons to suspect they would be better at studying.

But as for the first few years? Look up recent high-scoring ACF players on LinkedIn, write down the names of the entities they work for now, and those are the teams you should be voting for in the poll.

[sonstige]

Incidentally, my Orlando campus of Siemens Energy employs me and two former quiz bowl people (UCF's Ian Braun and MIT's Brian Clouse --- Brian having played many, many years ago...but who did reasonably well at some local open tournaments this past summer).

Given the size of the company and our many regional offices, I wouldn't be shocked to learn that we have at least a few other quiz bowl-experienced folks on the payroll...somewhere. At the very least, I'm sure I could round up a co-worker or two who'd be capable of picking up a buzzer and being competitive (maybe not at the Nats level, but probably regionally).

Also incidentally, a local fast food chicken eatery employs a number of current and former UCF quiz bowl players. I can see it now: Wing Zone 250 - RAND Corporation 155, Corporate ACF Nationals 2016.