The Quizbowl Resource Center

So what does everyone think of top upcoming teams and/or players next year?

The usual suspects with Walton in 5A being a mystery. Mrs. Martin is retiring but will teach half-time and Matt will take over HC of that team.

Chattahoochee, Norcross, Heritage, Central Gwinnett have strong coaching which means they will have at least competitive teams. I heard a rumor that Parkview was losing their coaches. I am not sure about that, though.

I am hoping Central-Macon returns to the SE circuit as they were "awol" from most tournaments this past year.

I also expect my own team, Brookwood, to be competitive. If my social gadlfy seniors "show up" in 2007-2008 we could even be good. :-)

Brookwood is the team to beat in Georgia 5A. They always have good players, they improve more than most other teams during the season, and they've won the last two JV state championships. They should be the 800 pound gorilla in state.

Chattahoochee and Brookwood might switch roles from the just completed season. Chattahoochee was the best in the state over the course of the year, but Brookwood slowly improved and caught them with a good round at state. Chattahoochee has the talent to play the stalker role this time around.

Central needs to rebuild. They have a good program, but they lose seven of their top eight.

Parkview also loses almost all their scoring. It's tough to project Walton, but you have to think they will bounce back with a strong season.

Grayson has at least one really good player coming back, and they also add the best middle school player I've ever seen (assuming he didn't move). It's tough for a 9th grader to break the starting lineup with a program as good as Grayson's, but this kid looked like he has the talent to do it. That's at least two really good players to build on.

Norcross lost three good seniors, but they could also be a factor by the end of the year.

Chad:

The kid from McConnell Middle will NOT be attending Grayson High School or so Billy told me. He is going to the magnet school as are 207 of our strongest students in next year's freshmen class of Gwinnett County.

Can you begin to imagine what kind of team this magnet school could have if it draws many of our strongest kids for all 15 high schools? And their goal by 2009-2010 is to draw the 350 strongest students instead of 200 a year. The magnet school will eventually have 1500 kids 9-12.

jrbarry wrote:Can you begin to imagine what kind of team this magnet school could have if it draws many of our strongest kids for all 15 high schools? And their goal by 2009-2010 is to draw the 350 strongest students instead of 200 a year. The magnet school will eventually have 1500 kids 9-12.

Depends--who will be the coach? You can have great students, but if you don't have a dedicated coach, most of the time, you've got nothing, especially when it comes to building a consistently strong program year after year. Never underestimate the power of a good coach.

(I know, I'm preaching to the choir here--sorry.)

I know who the "coach" will be for 07-08. Nice man and a parent of a fotmer BHS Academic Team member. He will only have freshmen for 07-08 though.

The principal, my close pal, wants me to come there and set up a program in the fall of 2009 when that school has juniors. At that point, I will have been at Brookwood 23 years and I do not really know how I will feel about leaving at that point.

In most cases I have known, you are right about the importance of coaching.


The magnet school stuff has been split to here.

Management

I know this is old news that Georgia is probably going to do 5 people states. Is that confirmed for sure? And are any of the other tourney's planning to do so?

I seriousoly doubt anyone will make an invitational for 5-person teams this year in GA. Brookwood will stick with 4-person teams for 2007-2008.

Both State Middle School tournaments are 5-person teams and have been for some time. We'll experiment with 5-person teams at State JV and State Vartsity for the next 2 year and decide for good at that time.

I realize this is trivial, but why is our state's forum so dead?

Despite a very active circuit in Georgia, we have few active posters on this board, which can be good or bad depending on your perspective. While this tends to lead to a Mid-Atlantic/Illinois bias on these boards, at least we've largely been spared the flameouts occasionally associated with members from other states...

(Hey, kCobain911, what school are you from?)

Noah, is athens GA like Cedar Shoals or have you graduated already?

HS: Central (Macon), graduated 2004
College: UGA, graduating 2008 (that's where Athens comes in)

If you have not already done so, please sign up to come to the Walton Academic Challenge on October the 13th.

Here is a link to the actual announcement.

http://www.hsquizbowl.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4044

this is a quick link to the registration and invitation forms.

http://waltonhigh.org/students.cfm?subpage=120275

Gwinnett County Tournament results for anyone interested:

Varsity:
Brookwood
Norcross
Grayson
Duluth

JV:
Brookwood
Parkview
Duluth
Norcross

Does this mean Norcross gets to play on High Q? Brookwood (as defensing champion) already won its first game on High Q, a game taped on September 25.

Gwinnett County champions are listed as a team in December, I think, toward the bottom of the HIgh Q bracket. I know Brookwood won't get two teams on HIgh Q, so I am assuming Norcross will get that second Gwinnett berth.

Yes. We received our Hi Q information after the trophy presentation. I don't have the bracket. Where are the Gwinnett teams in relation to each other and to Chattahoochee?

Here is the information for Hi-Q.

http://www.wsbtv.com/download/2007/0927/14220952.pdf

Chad: Looks like Norcross has the unenviable task of playing Walton in the very first match. And Chattahoochee is in the same quarterfinaol bracket as both Norcross and Walton.

When does High Q air and on what channel?

bigtrain wrote:When does High Q air and on what channel?

WSB (ABC, channel 2) on Sundays at 7 am. Back in my day, it used to air at a reasonable time on Saturday mornings, but I guess it just didn't get good enough ratings.

I didn't get a chance to watch, but who won today's High Q match?

Defending champions Brookwood beat Habersham Central pretty badly. Brookwood will play in the Round of 16 in January.

Until Norcross played a match in the Walton trophy room yesterday, I didn't realize how much money Hi-Q pays to finalists. I don't think they have any idea how much 4K means to a quiz bowl program.

That makes their haphazard bracket even more ridiculous. It wouldn't take much to get GATA to sugget four or eight teams to seed and place everyone else randomly around them. You don't even have to seed one through eight, just place the suggested teams in the bracket so they don't meet until the quarters.

Chad: the High Q money goes directly to the colleges of the players, to be used against tuition. NONE of that money is ever seen by the school/team or even the actual players who "win" it. The winning coach gets to decide how much of it goes toward which kid's tution.

(from the UGA tourney results thread)

CloudsDiffered wrote:The Georgia state tournament will be an interesting competition after all!

I’ll agree that this year’s state tournament is shaping up to be more competitive than last year.

Chattahoochee has already lost to both Norcross and Walton so far this year… although I think I should note that the Norcross game was on the slightly screwy (not trying to sound hostile here, but this discussion has been made) questions at the Walton tournament. However, they have been solid at other tourneys as well.

As for Walton, congrats to them for yesterday… they did indeed play a smart game, as Clouds noted (incidentally… who are you?). To be honest, I did see some noticeable knowledge gaps from their side, but to their credit, they capitalized on our mistakes and came up with the win. Plus, they were very fast on the things that they did know. If they continue learning information for the rest of the year they’ll make a very strong showing at state.

Brookwood once again did not have their full team at the UGA tourney yesterday, and they still performed well.

Looking forward to more matches against all of these teams.

Byko's Ratings(http://ratings.aiquizbowl.com/state.php?state=GA) have the following top 10 for Georgia:
1. Chattahoochee A
2. Brookwood A
3. Walton A
4. Norcross A
5. Chattahoochee B
6. Walton B
7. Calhoun A
8. Pepperell A
9. Alpharetta A
10. Pepperell B

Also, Chattahoochee, Brookwood, and Walton are rated 13, 15, and 18, respectively, in the national rankings.

What does everyone think about this?

AlphaQuizBowler wrote:
Also, Chattahoochee, Brookwood, and Walton are rated 13, 15, and 18, respectively, in the national rankings.

What does everyone think about this?

No offense to Chattahoochee, Brookwood, Walton, or Norcross, but I think those rankings are skewed because to me, it seems the teams up North or in the midAtlantic states play a larger number of good teams.

Chattahoochee: Very strong team. They've got great knowledge in Lit and Science and Adam was one of the best players at ACE. With tons of knowledge and lots of experience, they have the potential to take down almost any team in the southeast in not the country. When they lose, it's usually only through bad mistakes or incredibly difficult questions that the other team just so happens to know...

Brookwood: I havn't seen a lot from them since the Gwinnett County Tournament in September. Their JV dream team from last year has moved up to fill Julie's vacuum, so they have comparatively less experience, but it's only slight. Given what I saw, they're a great team with huge potential but aren't quite at the level of Chattahoochee.

Walton: Walton is a bit of an enigma. When I played them at Brookwood, I was impressed. I did not expect them to be so good since last year seems to have been a rebuilding year for Walton after Bobby left. Seems like they rebuilt. I was not as impressed with their knowledge as I was with their speed. Don't get me wrong, they've got great knowledge too. However, they're not like Dorman whom I wish would extend the courtesy of letting the other team know the question has started before they buzz in. Probably need to see them more before I pass further judgment, but right now I suspect they're still weaker than Chattahoochee.

Norcross: Probably the most unknown of all these teams, only recently has Norcross realized buzzers light up if you press them. We've got some pretty broad knowledge since most of us have been playing at least 5 years. However, we need more depth and especially speed to beat the best teams. It seems like I'm constantly going "*explicative!* I was thinking that....why didn't I buzz in?" We've got very strong players, but senioritis seems to be a bigger battle than Dorman A. The motivation to improve is not there for Norcross, so as the year moves on we could slowly fall far behind from the top three. Right now however, I see us at the edge of the spectrum. I believe we're 28(?) right now in the rankings, but given our very close matches against Brookwood and NKC, I would place us slightly higher.

Chattahoochee has the greatest scoring power of all the teams, but is still very susceptible to the other three teams depending on the question set. The three other teams, Walton, Brookwood, and Norcross are about even. Chattahoochee B would probably be the stronger over Walton B given what I saw at Walton and Brookwood, but the prelim questions were almost JV level so it's hard to judge how they would do on NAQT or harder. Beyond that, I would say Grayson, Duluth, Parkview, and Central Gwinnett would be the strongest teams, probably followed by Alpharetta, Kennesaw Mountain, and Cedar Shoals. Chamblee used to have a strong team but seem to have disappeared from the map.

ragnarok2012 wrote:

AlphaQuizBowler wrote:
Also, Chattahoochee, Brookwood, and Walton are rated 13, 15, and 18, respectively, in the national rankings.

What does everyone think about this?

No offense to Chattahoochee, Brookwood, Walton, or Norcross, but I think those rankings are skewed because to me, it seems the teams up North or in the midAtlantic states play a larger number of good teams.

In the southeast we regularly see teams like (not including the aforementioned teams), MLK, Dorman A/B, James Island, Brindlee Mountain, Dunbar, Indian Springs, Ezell Harding, and Danville. There is no dearth of great teams in the Southeast. I think the mid-atlantic needs to get over its god mentality of quiz bowl and realize there are great teams in the south as well. Frankly, if you like playing great teams so much then please get Dorman to attend your tournaments more. I'm tired of seeing them in the south and I'm sure they'll be happy to take some mid-atlantic trophies home.

Ben, you may have phrased that a bit too harshly. That region of the country has certainly historically proven to be the strongest overall (and may very well be again this year), so he has a point. At the same time, I agree when you say that it’s not as if the teams down here aren’t good. Dorman has been beating up on all of us, but then they went up north and also beat several of the other teams generally regarded as being among the top in the country. Our team went up to Virginia twice last year and I think we handled ourselves fine against some of those teams. I had hoped maybe we could make a return to Gov’s tournament this year, but we had to move our own tourney to the same date. With regards to the Byko rankings, though, doesn’t the system attempt to correct what ragnarok is referring to? It’s not like the 10-0 team who went to one tournament is the top-ranked at the end of the year.

AlphaQuizBowler wrote:Current rankings in state.

I think I pretty much agree with these rankings, at least at this point in the year. Brookwood hasn’t had their full team at many tournaments, but I know that at U of A at the beginning of the year they did, and they were very good.

I’m not trying to make an excuse for our losses, but for the record, I think our team hasn’t been at full scoring capacity for some of the tournaments either. Although the A team isn’t set in stone, we were missing two of our “usual startersâ€

Ben_Dodson wrote:In the southeast we regularly see teams like (not including the aforementioned teams), MLK, Dorman A/B, James Island, Brindlee Mountain, Dunbar, Indian Springs, Ezell Harding, and Danville. There is no dearth of great teams in the Southeast. I think the mid-atlantic needs to get over its god mentality of quiz bowl and realize there are great teams in the south as well. Frankly, if you like playing great teams so much then please get Dorman to attend your tournaments more. I'm tired of seeing them in the south and I'm sure they'll be happy to take some mid-atlantic trophies home.

Quoted for truth. I feel certain, after this weekend, that Dorman would win most tournaments they played no matter where. I imagine most of those other teams listed would be competitive in any region, as well. I guess we'll see in May, if not sooner.

I think Norcross at #4 is accurate.

Chattahoochee returned strong players from a team that had a great record in state last season, and they've played well so far. As Adam's mentioned, the question set was a big factor in the match with Norcross.

Brookwood has already beaten Norcross twice and placed ahead of us at a couple of events.

Walton defeated Norcross decisively in the Round of 16 at Brookwood. I was extremely impressed with their play and growth from last season.

Given this, I can't think of a single reason to alter the top four spots. I would add that Heritage is often overlooked because they play at AAAA, but they are a historically strong program that is definitely among the best in Georgia.

As for the top of the Southeast relative to northern teams, we'll have a better idea when we see what Dorman A and B do this weekend. Maybe the VA/DC powers will live up to their reputation and show everybody in GA and SC how it is done.

Adam, you are right. That did come out a little too harsh and for that I apologize. However, I still believe there is no foundation in saying southeast teams don't play as many good teams as the mid-atlantic does.

I personally did not go to UGA due to a conflict with SAT II's; it was my last desperate attempt at an 800. That saturday also had a big math tournament that many of our top players were attending. Many others were working on IB projects or had some sort of conflict. Even if I had gone, I probably would have been playing solo. Hopefully we'll see each other at Savannah Day or Dorman though Adam. You can exact your revenge there. =)

I still think there is not enough difference between the rank 2-4 teams to say one is significantly better than the other. Chattahoochee has a noticeable lead, but Brookwood, Walton, and Norcross can't really be distinguished. All three teams have had impressive matches and shown strong capability. Furthermore, the top four at Norcross has not played together since the County Tournament. I think Norcross has a weaker seed in prelims usually, although that's usually my fault. I often tend to play all teams like they are Chattahoochee or Dorman and neg a lot. Granted, I've seen a sparse amount of playing from all three teams and a lot of time has passed since I last saw Brookwood. But, based on what I've heard, seen from stats, and etc., I don't think anyone can accurately rank those three teams.

Thanks Gunnells for mentioning Heritage. I had forgotten about them before. They are definitely a strong #5 in Georgia. However, their captain Cameron told me at Brookwood she had been kicked off the team. I don't know whether this is permanent or not, but if it is, then this would naturally influence their future performance. Nonetheless, they'll continue to play strong throughout the season.

AdamL wrote:With regards to the Byko rankings, though, doesn’t the system attempt to correct what ragnarok is referring to? It’s not like the 10-0 team who went to one tournament is the top-ranked at the end of the year.

This is true; strength of schedule is a factor, and sometimes counts more than win ratio in the rankings, as evidenced by LAMP A, with a record of 7-6-1, being ahead of us (Alpharetta), who have a record of 2-1. Playing more teams and playing harder teams helps you rating, therefore, the rankings should not be skewed to those playing weaker schedules.

Ben_Dodson wrote:I think the mid-atlantic needs to get over its god mentality of quiz bowl and realize there are great teams in the south as well. Frankly, if you like playing great teams so much then please get Dorman to attend your tournaments more.

Why would you write this in response to a comment from another Georgia high school person?

Also, you know Dorman does, in fact, go to tournaments that feature a large number of the good mid-Atlantic teams with considerable frequency given how far away they are, right? And at this point I don't think many teams in the mid-Atlantic who are good have any question who Dorman is and know that they and MLK are both very good Southern teams.

Matt Weiner wrote:Why would you write this in response to a comment from another Georgia high school person?

Hah, on first glance, I definitely assumed it was a player from Virginia or whatever as well… people should have some sort of identifier .

It’s obviously difficult to compare teams from different regions… stats can be misleading, even if they were from the same question set, since you’d have to take into account exactly who the opponents were. Given the generally lackluster performance of Georgia teams at NAQT Nats (i.e. one of the rare occasions where these teams mixed it up) last year, I can’t say I’d blame anybody for having preconceived notions of the [lesser] quality of teams down here. I can only say that I think several of the teams that have been mentioned in this thread would at the very least be competitive against the northern teams.

Dorman A and B are definitely good representatives of the Southeast, so I hope they do well at Maggie Walker. In the Southeast I would say that Dorman A is obviously at the top, and below them is some mixture of Dorman B, CHS A, and MLK A. I think we are 2-1 against Dorman B but pretty much each of those games wasn’t a very good one (i.e. one or both teams were having flukish, bad games), so given their recent stronger finishes/performances at tournaments, I’d have to place them above us. MLK hasn’t performed extraordinarily well at several tournaments in the southeast, and I’m not sure what happened there… although it’s my understanding that Dallas is better-suited to longer, more difficult questions (and indeed, when we played them it did seem like we mostly beat them because of speed). I did leave out Dunbar and Brindlee (both are teams that we have lost to this year) because I haven’t seen them compete that much against teams I can evaluate like Brookwood, Walton, Norcross, etc., but they should probably be included in a discussion of the best teams in the SE.

Ben, as of right now we’re planning to attend both Savannah Country Day and Dorman, AFAIK. Should be fun. I haven’t seen Heritage play this year – I only know that they lost to CHS B at Walton, but they are usually a strong team year after year. Cameron is a good player, from what I remember. I wonder what happened there?

Yes, my removal from Heritage's quiz bowl team is permanent. I would not return to the team if I was asked, because I would not play for that coach again after my experience with him this year.

Matt Weiner wrote: Why would you write this in response to a comment from another Georgia high school person?

I didn't realize that person was from Georgia. At the time, I unfortunately did not think to recognize the unmistakably Southern name of Ragnarok and associate that with Georgia.

My opinion of MLK is that it's largely hit or miss. You have Dallas who is essentially the main bulk of their scoring. If he gets a bad set of questions then he has no support to fall back on. On the other hand, if he gets a favorable set of questions, he can beat teams like Maggie Walker A from last year. This is largely speculation since I have only seen stats of MLK, but it seems to make sense.

Adam,good to hear your guys are going to Savannah. Savannah Day is new to me, but I hear it's a good tournament. Regardless though, we'll probably play each other sometime in the next few months given the huge amount of tournaments coming up. Looking forward to it. =)

Charlie, by large frequency....do you mean the 1 tournament Dorman has attended in the mid-Atlantic so far? By contrast....what would be a small number? Just curious. I'm glad you told me though that that teams in the mid-Atlantic think highly of Dorman. I was thinking despite their 4th place finish at Nats, 1st place ranking, and huge array of trophies that DC teams still had not heard of that obscure little team from South Carolina.

Well, you know, they went to Maggie Walker's tournament in Virginia, Gonzaga's tournament in Washington DC, the spring tournament at the University of Virginia, and the Virginia Commonwealth PACE-format tournament last year, and considering the high retention of players they have on their A-team I would say all of those count. (Especially since everyone knows they returned and are good). So yeah, I do actually know what I'm talking about here.

DC teams still had not heard of that obscure little team from South Carolina

Except for Keith, everyone knows who Dorman is. Historically it's been one of the very top programs, easily in the class of DCC, State College, TJ, Gov, and RM. It's not a regional thing as much as it is the simple fact that people who don't play each other don't have facts about each other. I think it goes for all regions, but might be colored by the Mid-Atlantic's success recently. When I was just starting to play in high school, it seemed to me that the Mid-Atlantic often had to fight for recognition among a lot of Southern/Midwestern minds. Bottom line, there will be plenty of chances for people to see how things turn out (I know Dorman is coming to weekend of quizbowl, probably with two teams, and I believe CHS indicated they would like to), even before nationals.

Charlie, I was talking about tournaments they've attended so far this year, as in fall semester. As far as I know, it's only been one so far; the point being that Southern teams have to play Dorman far more often. Seriously, that's great you know the schedule of Dorman for the past 12 months. I'm also glad you know what you're talking about when you informed me that Dorman was a good team and people didn't actually think they were a small obscure southern town. Thanks for the enlightenment. The point is, I want Dorman to go to DC more often, not so they can inform the world of their greatness, but because I'm tired seeing them at every tournament I go to. Don't get me wrong, I like the Dorman guys. They're good people. I just wish they'd go to a few more DC tournaments where they can bring some trophies south for a change. This weekend's Chattahoochee may be the most exciting for Georgia yet since the majority of the strong teams are Georgia teams. As a result, no one really knows who will win it. When Dorman attends, you're almost shooting for 2nd at best. That takes away a lot of excitement in a tournament.

You could always, ya know, get better...

(Which I say only half-sarcastically. Dorman was really good when I played too, although maybe not at the level they're at now. Still, I believe just about any team can be beaten, and actually believing that is the first step.)

AlphaQuizBowler wrote:This is true; strength of schedule is a factor, and sometimes counts more than win ratio in the rankings, as evidenced by LAMP A, with a record of 7-6-1, being ahead of us (Alpharetta), who have a record of 2-1. Playing more teams and playing harder teams helps you rating, therefore, the rankings should not be skewed to those playing weaker schedules.

You should record your scores and report them after each event. You have a good team and gave Norcross a very good match at Walton.

I don't see the variable in this discussion about the who has the best team in the country being the teams themselves. I see the variable being the kinds of questions those teams are most often using and/or the formats in which they are most often playing.

For example, the now defunct ASCN at Lake Forest College in Chicago used to bring teams from all over the country (including the mid-Atlantic and northeast), and several teams from the south consistently won or performed very well there. (My senior year the 2 teams in the National Championship were from Georgia and South Carolina; the 2 other Semifinalists were from South Carolina too.) That tournament, however, had a very different format and used different kinds of questions than what you will see at either NAQT or PACE.

For whatever reason, teams from the mid-Atlantic and northeast do very well on NAQT questions. Maybe its because they play on those kinds of questions and use that kind of format more than teams elsewhere in the country.

That does not make NAQT's National tournament unfair for those teams, but it does provide an interesting side-note to any "who's the best team in the country discussion." Are the teams that win NAQT the best, most knowledgeable teams in the country, or are they the best at NAQT's particular brand of questions and format? Unfortunately, we don't have a single, definitive National Championship format to determine the answer to this question.

I guess at the moment, if a team were to win NAQT, PACE, and QU, then maybe we would have to say definitively that they were indeed the best team in the country. However, that hasn't happened recently, if ever.

Of course that's just my opinion...I could be wrong.

Another possibility for putting this "who is the best team in the country" discussion to rest would be for more teams from the mid-Atlantic and northeast to come down to play in some of the biggest, best tournaments in the south like those at Vanderbilt, Brookwood, Dorman, etc.

And, conversely, for more southern schools go up to the biggest, best mid-Atlantic and northeastern tournaments like those at Harvard, Yale, TJ, GASC, UVA, etc. If we had more cross-pollination of teams playing out of their local regions against new teams on different kinds of questions and in different kinds of formats, then maybe we would have a more accurate picture of where the best teams are and just who they are.

Again, that's just my opinion...I could be wrong.

I would like to point out that if a team wins NAQT and PACE, then I think they can by that alone be called the "best team in the country" by virtue of the immensely superior formats used by NAQT and PACE for rewarding the most knowledgeable team. As it is, I don't think NAC should really have any kind of bearing on discussions of who the best team is by virtue of their 1) weak field, 2) heavily corroborated evidence of game rigging, and 3) questions that often do not reward the most knowledgeable team (and through the frequent hoses, often work contrary to this), not to mention the obscene levels of trash, meta, and vague questions about things like toasters.

Charles, you are absolutely correct...almost. However, winning both tournaments has been very difficult to accomplish; I realize that it happened just this past year. That has not, however, been the m.o. of all the National Champions over the past 10 years at NAQT and PACE.

With that being said, I threw NAC into the mix for the fun of it - to see what kind of inane responses I would get. You won! Just kidding Charles. I agree with you that QU does not have the same caliber of questions as NAQT or PACE. Nor are they as academic as I would like (see your 3rd point). I will not delve into the other 2 points you mention because I do not personally know the validity of your claims. Perhaps we should consider the Knowledge Master to be a valid 3rd valid National "Tournament?"

However, I am most intrigued by your "immensely superior" comment about those other 2 formats. Did you play on ASCN questions? Have you ever seen their questions? Have you been to all of those other tournaments that I mentioned: Yale, Harvard, Dorman, Brookwood, UVA, GSAC, etc? If you have, then you know that none of those tournaments has the same exact format as NAQT and/or PACE. You would also know that those tournaments are very prestigious to win. For those teams that do win, they should be mentioned in any "who's the best team in the country" discussion regardless of how they do at NAQT or PACE Nationals.

I have seen really old ASCN sets, but that's immaterial to the point I was making htat, right now, I see (of the 3 "national championships") 2 that are superior than the other. ASCN, since it isn't happening anymore, doesn't really factor in to that.
All I was saying by calling NAQT and PACE "immensely superior" is that, through their questions, which are written in a way that tries to reward the most knowledgeable teams, and their fields that attract what are generally considered the strongest teams in the nation, they have more validity in producing the true "national champion" than the QU NAC. While, as it is, there are still disparities between the formats, and in many years 2 different teams have won, those 2 teams have much stronger claims to the title than the team that wins NAC (although I admit, there is always the small chance that the NAC champion is in fact the best team, although that is unlikely).
As for the other, regular season tournaments, I have not been to them all due to a number of reasons (the biggest being that Missouri bans us from going to them) but I do realize that all of those tournaments are considered prestigious, and I have seen the questions from a large number of them. While they are different (often they use some kind of mACF format) the general philosophy is still the same - reward the teams with the deepest knowledge, which is ultimately the most important part of the game, I feel. And yes, some years there is such parity between teams that winners of those regular season events are equally good as the "national champions." That said, I think any team with the skill to win NAQT or PACE deserves that honor, and should be just as highly regarded as the other teams that may have been "better" since they actually won.