Big Ten Invitational [MRNA II, Online, Mar 25 2023]

[L.H.O.O.Q.]

I am pleased to announce the Big Ten Invitational, an online tournament on March 25, 2023, specifically and exclusively for teams within the Big Ten collegiate sports conference. The tournament will be directed and hosted independently by me, Sarah Benner. The question set will be MRNA II, a 2-dot (“Medium” difficulty) packet set. For more information on MRNA II, click here.

Basic Information
The tournament will be hosted using Zoom and BuzzIn Live rooms, connected via a Google sheet. To accommodate the spread in time zones, all times in this announcement will be in central time. The tournament will start with a staff meeting at 8:30am and a player meeting at 8:45am, leading into rounds starting at 9:00am. Because online tournaments suck, I will do my best to create a fair schedule of no more than 10 rounds.

Eligibility
Only closed teams of students enrolled at Big Ten schools may participate. Students must be enrolled and taking at least one credit hour during the spring semester. More than one team may represent the same school.

Staffing
Please understand that I am a single person, and that I myself do not plan to read any games (other than maybe a final), since I need to handle the back-end of the tournament. For that reason, I will strongly suggest that teams send at least one staffer for every two teams they submit, rounded up. To be clear, this means that if you send 1 or 2 teams, you should send at least 1 staffer, if you send 3 or 4 teams, you should send at least 2 staffers, and so on. Failure to meet this ratio will result in your team being charged a fee.

In addition, if you are not affiliated with a specific team and want to volunteer to staff, you will be paid a portion of the proceeds from the tournament, such that all non-team-affiliated staffers (including myself) receive the same amount. This rate will vary heavily depending on the number of teams and ratio of volunteer to non-volunteer staffers, and I do not know if I can reliably give a ballpark figure. I would prefer to pay independent staffers using PayPal, Venmo, or CashApp, but I can probably work with other payment methods.

Fees and Payment
Admission: $85 per team
Too Few Staffers: $30 fee (one-time)
Surplus Staffers: $15 discount per extra staffer (one-time)
The minimum entry fee for this tournament is $55 per team.
Payment may be made out via cash, check, PayPal, Venmo, or CashApp. Since this often requires my private information, I will work with teams independently on payment information.

Registration
The deadline to register for this tournament is March 22, 2023.

To register a team for the tournament, please use this Google form.

To register to staff the tournament, please use this Google form.

Note that I will be levying fees and discounts based on the staffers registration form, so if your staffers do not fill out the form or fill it out incorrectly, you may be charged incorrectly. I will send out emails double-checking your staffers and rosters before the tournament.

General Disclaimer
I am not affiliated with the NCAA or the Big Ten. I do not represent the MRNA II writing/editing team.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the Big Ten Invitational, you can reach me at sarah_benner [AT] outlook [DOT] com.

[Cheynem]

To be clear, you are referring to the 13 schools who play Big Ten football and Northwestern, correct?

[L.H.O.O.Q.]

This post will be periodically updated with field and staff information.

Field (teams/staffers)
Indiana (1/0)
Iowa (1/0)
Rutgers (1/0)
Purdue (2/2)

Independent Staffers: 4

Current field size: 5
Current staff count: 7
Current field capacity: 15

[L.H.O.O.Q.]

Bumping this thread now that the spring semester is actually starting up. No signups yet, as of a couple days ago.

[L.H.O.O.Q.]

Bumping this thread for the second and final time now that ACF Regionals and SCT have passed. There are still no signups as of February 7th.

[L.H.O.O.Q.]

Bumping this thread for the second and final time

We do a little lying. There are precious few days left to sign up! I would love to net a 6th team!

[L.H.O.O.Q.]

The Big Ten Invitational proceeded with 4 teams today, and Purdue A ran the table, clearing the field by 5 games. Congrats to the winning players: Nolan Jones, Stan Melkumian, Matt Schiavone, and Pranav Veluri. Additionally, congratulations to the tournament's overall top scorer, Roan Dowling of Iowa!

Here are the complete statistics: https://hsquizbowl.org/db/tournaments/7 ... /complete/