What will NAQT do for their nationals in 2008?

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What will NAQT do for their nationals in 2008?

Post by jrbarry »

1. Cap teams at some number like 160?

2. Limit teams to one per school?

3. Expand the tournament to more than one site in Chicago area?

4. Add an extra day to the tournamernt along with splitting it by site (my #3)?

5. Something else?

6. NOthing?
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Post by ecks »

I'm not really sure if this is a prediction thread or a 'what-SHOULD-naqt-do' thread, but I'll go ahead and say that options #2 and 6 are the only ones they absolutely should not do.
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Post by Byko »

Personally, I think something like the NCAA baseball mentality of having a super-regionals weekend followed by nationals would be to their advantage. Of course, most schools wouldn't have the budget to make potentially two kind of long trips at the end of the year (since Juan Diego Catholic in Utah, for example, would have to travel several hours to get to any theoretical super-regional site), so while it might be good in theory, it would stink in practice.

I have a feeling there might not be many (if any) changes from this year, though after this year, everyone should know what to expect and should reserve their spots EARLY.
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Post by Matthew D »

Byko wrote:Personally, I think something like the NCAA baseball mentality of having a super-regionals weekend followed by nationals would be to their advantage. Of course, most schools wouldn't have the budget to make potentially two kind of long trips at the end of the year (since Juan Diego Catholic in Utah, for example, would have to travel several hours to get to any theoretical super-regional site), so while it might be good in theory, it would stink in practice.
My wife and I have both discussed this option due to the amount of teams that were at the last one and like you said in theory looks good but practice might be a big ole bear
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Post by ieppler »

Maybe the NAQT state championships can become super-regionals in the future. I personally think that the state championships are pretty much meaningless; most nationals-level teams will have already qualified, which makes the "state championship" just another late-season tournament with a diluted field due to geographic restrictions. Making the main NAQT nationals site open to only teams that qualify at a regular season tournament and finish int he top 6 or so at an NAQT state championship would both reduce crowding at the main site and make the state championships useful
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Post by Gonzagapuma1 »

I personally dont think super regionals would work because some regions are stronger than others.
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Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Agreed, unless they do a qualitative, not quantitative, selections of who advances from regionals (a la sectionals, to the best of my understanding).
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Post by jrbarry »

I am pretty sure NAQT will not limit teams in any real way.

A NAQT partner discussed my option #3 with me while I was in Chicago and another one emailed me about it the next week. Makes me believe some of them are at least considering that move. Maybe send 100 teams to one site and 100 teams to site #2 with the top teams in a Sunday playoff at one site. The two sites would most likely NOT be next door and might possibly be 10-20 apart from each other.
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Post by Matthew D »

Gonzagapuma1 wrote:I personally dont think super regionals would work because some regions are stronger than others.
It might come down to something like the Sunday before March Madness with a committee attempting to balance the teams along with balancing the amount of travel time for each team but that would be serious down the road IMO
I did like Rick's #3 option with more than one site in Chicago being used but I really would like to see the national tournament moving around to some different cities besides Chicago if it were all possible. Nashville came to mind when I was thinking about cities. It is a major hub, it has good hotels, and it also has a major college team in the area that I suspect would be willing to help..
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Post by jhn31 »

Perhaps they should take a page from :chip:'s playbook and have multiple sites, and bringing the winners of the early sites to the final site on NAQT's dime for the grand championship?
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Post by Stained Diviner »

I wouldn't want them to change too much.

Forcing teams to do well at a state tournament or super-sectional would be a step backwards. There are too many things that can go wrong at a particular tournament--bad moderators, students not being available, a fluke loss in the first elimination round, none of the weak teams in a region showing up, etc. While I wouldn't mind NAQT tinkering with the qualifications a little bit, some team that wins a 40-team NAQT tournament during the season should be allowed to compete at Nationals. (Keep in mind that the super-sectionals would almost have to be during Prom Season, and there would have to be a lot of teams spending significant extra money on transportation and hotel rooms.)

There's nothing major wrong with using two sites on Saturday. That would present some minor logistical issues for teams that fly into O'Hare and use public transportation to get to their hotel, but with that many teams in attendance NAQT could afford to charter a bus or two to go back and forth when necessary.

If a lot of people complain about the small rooms, NAQT could look into having it at a large college or high school. NAQT asked coaches to participate in an online survey, so they should have a decent sense of what, if anything, people are unhappy with.
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Post by wd4gdz »

Perhaps NAQT could make it harder to qualify? If a team averages 36PP20H at HSNCT, then perhaps they shouldn't be at nationals?
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Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

wd4gdz wrote:Perhaps NAQT could make it harder to qualify? If a team averages 36PP20H at HSNCT, then perhaps they shouldn't be at nationals?
Amen, brother.
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Post by NoahMinkCHS »

I think this is one thing Chip Beall gets kinda right, and has for a number of years. Two or three sites that are distant geographically (and perhaps temporally, to minimize graduation conflicts) with top teams advancing at NAQT's cost seems to be the easy and sensible idea.

However, don't do as Chip used to (and perhaps still does -- I haven't checked), by having one site get two of the final four teams, with the other two sites (which, at least in the year I'm thinking about, happened to have much larger fields) sending one each. Given NAQT's sensitivity to unfairness (e.g., opposition to single-elim playoffs), I doubt this will be an issue.
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Post by standrews »

I'll throw out a #5, something else, idea.

Current NAQT automatic qualifiers to the national tournament are based upon the top 15% in any event that uses NAQT questions. As long as a percentage is used the number of teams qualifying for nationals will go inevitably up as more schools with more teams at more NAQT-question tournaments arise. i.e, more participation nationwide means a larger tournament. More participation is a good thing; the size of the national tournament surely has a pratical limit.

In addition, since NAQT rounds up when determining the top 15%, that makes the actual percentage higher. The example NAQT provides is a 15 team tournament which would allow 3 teams (20%) to qualify.

Perhaps tinkering with this formula or prescribing a set number of qualifiers based upon the size of the field is warranted. Simply rounding down might have a profound effect.

Whatever NAQT does, it needs to take action sooner rather than later. This past year should have been an eye-opener for NAQT and they reacted by enlarging the field to solve the problem. This year NAQT needs to be proactive in preventing problems. With wildcard qualifiers it is relatively easy to bring the field up to size, but it is extremely difficult to start denying teams that qualify under the rules simply because they didn't qualify soon enough. Without any changes, I can envision a mad scramble to qualify early for the 08 tourney. The cat and mouse games are just beginning.
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Post by Matthew D »

But maybe if we have enough participation nation-wide then we will hit a "critical mass" situation which would make it a more economically viable situation that would allow for the super-regional and then the winners moving on.
While I am all for not having to play a team that is extremely poor players I also don't want to limit the teams from coming. We still have states that don't have any teams at all represented or even playing for that matter.
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Post by First Chairman »

charlieDfromNKC wrote:
wd4gdz wrote:Perhaps NAQT could make it harder to qualify? If a team averages 36PP20H at HSNCT, then perhaps they shouldn't be at nationals?
Amen, brother.
Agreed: I would want to know how a team that averages less than 100 points per 20 qualifies for the HSNCT.
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Post by Stained Diviner »

Eliminating the bad teams isn't as simple as people make it out to be. Some regions are pretty weak, and some tournament fields are even weaker. NAQT wants teams that do well at their tournaments to qualify for HSNCT because it is a selling point for their local tournaments and because that is how you get a tournament with teams from over 30 states.

They currently define doing well as top 15%, and maybe they'll adjust that somehow. They need to be careful in making the adjustment, however, because a team like Whitman that is very strong and plays against very strong competition barely made it in this year. Perhaps they will lower the percentage on A Sets, or tournaments during the first half of the year, to 5 or 10%. Perhaps they'll just plan on having more than 200 teams next year and not adjust their standards.

With power matching, the weak teams don't change the tournament experience of strong teams--if you are good, then you won't see any of them after the first of ten preliminary matches, and there's a good chance that you won't see them even then.

If somebody organizes some matches in Alaska or Wyoming, those matches are low scoring because the coaches and players have no idea what they are getting into, and one of the best teams from those matches wants to come to HSNCT, then NAQT should let them. It makes HSNCT look better to have more states represented, and one possible outcome is that the teams will see what good quizbowl is about and spread the word in their region.

There are some very weak teams at HSNCT, but I don't know if there are any cures that are better than the disease.
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Post by First Chairman »

Well, not necessarily. Qualifying for the Boston Marathon (as an example), you have to qualify for the track events by hitting some benchmark time. One possibility is to have an automatic qualifier (winner) but also have other qualifiers have a certain statistical team benchmark, such as PPG or bonus conversion. The downside is that one can have variability in the team, but it should behoove people to qualify at early events with the "best team" before scrambling the roster. Now whether this is reasonable or feasible is another question altogether.
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Post by Byko »

Tom Chuck raises an interesting point, though I could see some teams screaming that it's unfair for some reason (even if that may not be the case).

Tom Egan raises another point that I think can affect the performance of teams: the A sets. NAQT started producing the A sets only in the last couple of years, but it seems like they are getting used more often than the regular full-strength sets. Don't get me wrong: A sets are a good idea for less experienced regions and programs and are a good lead-in to the season. But if I saw correctly, there were at least 1 or 2 state championships run this year on A sets as well as a lot more tournaments than I personally think should have been. Teams that play only on A sets are going to be in for a real shock when they get to HSNCT and just simply will not have a chance to be competitive. Again, I don't know what the solution is, but perhaps in some more experienced areas of the country, there need to be fewer A sets (even though A sets cost less than the regular sets, a big reason why, I think, a lot of tournaments are using them).
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Post by First Chairman »

The change of difficulty between A sets and standard sets will complicate the "statistical qualification" route since "easier" question sets may augment borderline teams over those who have to compete under standard sets. This doesn't mean one cannot otherwise establish different standards for qualification, but I am always wary of arbitrary standards that do not come with contextual data.

Again, not everyone can run the Boston marathon (or the Olympics marathon) simply by finishing in the top 10. You have to meet their minimum test time under stipulated conditions (wind-aided, humidity, etc.), but performance should count for something aside from simple win-loss or ppg ordinal rank at an event.
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Post by Mike Bentley »

From a business perspective, I see NAQT doing everything they can to expand the tournament next year.

I suspect that the tournament itself doesn't make much money for them (or even loses money for NAQT), but by having such a large tournament and attracting as many teams as possible NAQT is able to establish itself as the definitive high school quizbowl authority in many areas. Making it reasonably easy to qualify for tournaments (and to qualify multiple teams) encourages schools to attend more NAQT regular season tournaments, where I assume they make most of their money. Borderline teams are probably more likely to buy NAQT practice questions, another big money maker, if they know they have a chance of making nationals.
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Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

I don't think they'll go with multiple sites and pay for teams to travel to the playoff site, that would lose them too much money for a tournament that probably only returns marginal profits already. In another thread a month or so ago we talked about how they could cap it at 256 -128 play on Saturday and 128 play on Sunday, with the combined double elimination playoffs of roughly 96 happening on Memorial Day (and for staffing issues, offer some discount to teams that agree to moderate on the prelim day they don't play in). Actually to bring up the College World Series again, they could instead run separate 48-ish playoff brackets (for the corresponding prelim bracket teams) and have the two winners play in a best of three series, although that means a more exciting final at the expense of teams from the two brackets not playing each other until the finals or placement games as well as greater importance placed on the fairness/balance between the two prelim brackets.

The only other possible thing I think would be to make teams qualify for states first during the regular season, and then at states the top 15% plus the top small schools would qualify for nationals. Beyond that NAQT could accept a lot of wildcard bids from teams in states without an NAQT state tournament or teams which could not make it to states but demonstrated their strength otherwise. For states themselves NAQT could possibly also allow TD's to let in some number of teams which couldn't make it to many tournaments and therefore didn't have a reasonable chance at qualifying (maybe this number could be 8 or "no more than one quarter of the entire field" or something). NAQT could then use the room left in the HSNCT field to allow in even more teams from states on a qualitative basis like sectionals. I don't like the idea of making the entire process like sectionals though because if teams start thinking that NAQT thinks their state is crappy and only 1 team will get in, then they'll be far more apathetic.

A big problem with using states or even any kind of regional thing like sectionals is that NAQT tournaments after that lose a lot of meaning, especially in states where the state tournament happens before April. But then again the end of the regular season already lacks a lot of meaning in terms of nationals qualification (which is why I applaud Dr. Chuck for the Patriot Games concept for a spring tournament); it's more about bragging rights and experience.
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Post by jrbarry »

I can assure everyone that, at almost $500 per team, NAQT does indeed make a profit on their high school nationals.

Back in the day when it was 30 teams and $300 a team, not much was made of anything. But that was 1999 and this is 2007 and 130+ teams later. And they well deserve any profit they make.
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Post by Mike Bentley »

jrbarry wrote:I can assure everyone that, at almost $500 per team, NAQT does indeed make a profit on their high school nationals.

Back in the day when it was 30 teams and $300 a team, not much was made of anything. But that was 1999 and this is 2007 and 130+ teams later. And they well deserve any profit they make.
I dunno.

It costs them up to $300 to fly each moderator out, they have to pay for moderator rooms for two nights, they pay for moderator food on Saturday, and on top of that they need to pay to reserve the scores of conference rooms and hotel rooms. Then there's the actual cost of printing out all of the questions, distributing T-Shirts and other things to teams, and paying question writers and editors (in time at least) to compile more than twenty rounds of questions.

Even if they do make money in the end, I think it really is quite small compared to what they make by selling questions for practice and tournaments.
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Post by Matt Weiner »

The idea that anyone qualifies for the tournament on JV-level questions is news to me and is also somewhat unpalatable. Ending that avenue, and thus forcing teams from the Wyoming circuits of the world to qualify only through state championships run on regular HS questions, would be a better idea then trying to implement a statistical cutoff. Since teams are supposed to qualify and reserve their spots early, there can't be any precise statistic tied to the field size, and furthermore if there is some declaration about PPG or BC needed to qualify, then teams are going to start playing for points rather than wins, which is never good.

I think the three-day tournament with half the field playing prelims on Saturday and half on Sunday, with the top X from each advancing to playoffs on Monday, makes the most logistical sense out of the various options for changing the stucture of the HSNCT itself.
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Post by swwFCqb »

I think the three-day tournament with half the field playing prelims on Saturday and half on Sunday, with the top X from each advancing to playoffs on Monday, makes the most logistical sense out of the various options for changing the stucture of the HSNCT itself.
I think this is a good idea not only because of logistics but also because it gives teams a whole day to explore the surrounding sites and city where the competition is held that year.
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Post by jbarnes112358 »

The three day tournament plan seems like a good option. But, would you rather play your prelims on Saturday or Sunday? Why? I see pros and cons both ways.
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Post by Howard »

Matt Weiner wrote:The idea that anyone qualifies for the tournament on JV-level questions is news to me and is also somewhat unpalatable.
If we're going to the benchmark scores proposition, then this makes sense. Either that or having different benchmarks for the "A" sets.

But if these are open tournaments, the teams finishing at the top of an A set are likely to be the same teams at the top of a regular set. In this case, I don't particularly see what difference it makes which set is used.
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Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Even more than A sets, why are teams playing NAQT's one liners qualifying? Although, A sets shouldn't be qualifiers either. And for small schools, I think they should have a tournament's top small school qualify only if they hit a certain benchmark.
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Post by NoahMinkCHS »

Howard wrote:
Matt Weiner wrote:The idea that anyone qualifies for the tournament on JV-level questions is news to me and is also somewhat unpalatable.
If we're going to the benchmark scores proposition, then this makes sense. Either that or having different benchmarks for the "A" sets.

But if these are open tournaments, the teams finishing at the top of an A set are likely to be the same teams at the top of a regular set. In this case, I don't particularly see what difference it makes which set is used.
Likely but not necessarily. Also, if I were a coach of a good team with a limited budget and solid nearby circuit, I would probably send fewer or no teams to an A-set tournament than to a regular tournament because it would be less fun/challenging. That would change the dynamics of that tournament.

I'm sure it helps NAQT's bottom line to allow qualifying on A sets, but it means opening the door to less competitive teams, and at least this year, at the expense of better teams. It makes the tournament field less credible when teams can qualify at sub-varsity level tournaments, and it increases the likelihood of teams being overwhelmed by the difficulty jump.
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Post by ieppler »

Teams are actually qualifying on Speed Checks? I didn't even realize that those are used in tournaments. That would be like qualifying for NAQT through It's Ac or another local TV show.

I remember hearing that some members of my school's debate team went to a "novice national championship." Maybe something like that can take place in March or so for teams that qualify on A-sets, with the top finishers earning entry into the HSNCT in late May (perhaps with the registration fee waived.)
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Post by theMoMA »

Who, exactly, is harmed by having bad teams in the tournament? The Swiss pairing separates them from the competitive field pretty quickly. Your time's better spent worrying about your own team learning things.
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Post by wd4gdz »

theMoMA wrote:Who, exactly, is harmed by having bad teams in the tournament? The Swiss pairing separates them from the competitive field pretty quickly. Your time's better spent worrying about your own team learning things.
Currently: every single team, since they have 4 bye rounds
Future: the demand will likely increase, so therefore, some decent teams might not be able to qualify in time before Dixie County takes there place
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Post by AKKOLADE »

theMoMA wrote:Who, exactly, is harmed by having bad teams in the tournament?
When it's a field with finite space, better teams who are interested and wish to play? Teams who want to play better opposition? To a far lesser extent, NAQT's reputation as a national tournament with a top-tier field?
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Post by Matt Weiner »

theMoMA wrote:Who, exactly, is harmed by having bad teams in the tournament? The Swiss pairing separates them from the competitive field pretty quickly. Your time's better spent worrying about your own team learning things.
Yeah, this is true if the field size keeps expanding indefinitely (and let's keep in mind that as long as it doesn't cost them more to bring in 2 staffers than they charge to 1 team, the field very well may keep expanding indefinitely). But when it gets to the point that teams are turned away, which it will be unless the format is changed, you have to ask what solutions will be considered. Excluding people who can't make it to some national qualifying day tournament, or excluding B teams who are in the top 10 or 15 nationally, is far more unfair than excluding teams who never actually did all that well on varsity-level questions in the first place.
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Post by Captain Sinico »

Frankly, I don't see why NAQT needs to do much of anything, when the problem so-defined with their tournament is that there's too much demand for it. Was there a huge furore about HSNCT about something other than the lack of field space? If so, I missed it.
Anyway, if I were NAQT, I would consult my high school economics book, then either raise prices somewhat (since demand greatly exceeds supply, apparently) or seek a bigger venue (to increase supply.) I don't think expanding supply by having multiple sites is feasible for many reasons, the chief of which is that HSNCT requires a high concentration of people with comparatively rare skills, many of whom NAQT consequently pays to transport in. That cost doesn't scale well with an increase in site number.

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Post by theMoMA »

What I mean is that it's not such a big deal that we need to look backwards and say that Team X was clearly not worthy of a 200x HSNCT bid, as Charlie Dees seems so fond of doing.

PS-Sorice is right as is usually the case in non-Wallace-Stevens-related situations.
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Post by Sir Thopas »

ImmaculateDeception wrote:Anyway, if I were NAQT, I would consult my high school economics book, then either raise prices somewhat (since demand greatly exceeds supply, apparently)
Umm, I completely disagree with raising the price. Sure, there may be teams willing to pay the greater price, but many competitive teams, especially those in less established regions (*cough*), are pretty strapped for cash, and what with travel and all, a higher price is extremely unappealing. If NAQT wants the best competition, putting any restriction on the field, even if it's driven by economics, is counterproductive, and would be very frustrating indeed.
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Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

But imagine if any of those crappy teams who qualify for HSNCT on speed check or A-sets or whatever without actually being good subsequently cause a top tier team to not be allowed to register. That's part of the problem here.

The other reason I dislike seeing the bad teams at nationals is that it simply waters down the quality competition, and while the card system magically whisks the good teams into their own separate playing area, imagine if the field were of a quality where a mediocre team is going 2-8 instead. Like, not scoring less than 100 ppg. When you are going with a team that bad, it is a waste of time, money, and can be a real downer for the team. Something tells me that Sand Rock wasn't inspired to get better by coming here, considering they skipped out on their last 2 games.
Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08
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"At one TJ tournament the neg prize was the Hampshire College ultimate frisbee team (nude) calender featuring one Evan Silberman. In retrospect that could have been a disaster." - Harry White
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Matthew D
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Post by Matthew D »

I am not defending Sandrock's skipping their last matches but we have no idea what happened to them to cause them to leave early and they are really not that bad of team IF it was the same team I saw early in the year. I doubt Sandrock happened to be the worst team at the national tournament. Also, to give you an idea about Sandrock, they are a very rural K-12 school which as a ranking of 2A in Alabama (about 182 students 10-12) total enrollment of 890 kids. So cut them a bit of slack there Charlie not everyone gets to have 300 or 400 kids to pick a team from all of them can't be a Brindlee Mountain, which encase you didn't know is about the same size...
But you do bring up a point that in certain teams that the beating you might get at nationals might out way coming but unless you have been around after your team has had its collective head handed to them, then you have NO way of knowing what will happen.
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Post by jrbarry »

I like having "bad" teams at nationals. I like having teams from all over the country at nationals. I wish my A team could have played even one "bad" team at nationals.

But, many of y'all are elitists and I am a populist. If a Bad" team form Wyoming or Utah or Idaho or wherever, wins a competition in that area indicating they are one the best in that area (if not the best), then I would rather see them at nationals than Brookwood-B-C-D or 16 teams from one state (like Georgia).

But, like Montaigne, what do I know?
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Post by Duke Togo »

jrbarry wrote:...TWICE... we wanted to pursue charter status.
jrbarry wrote:I have a simple rule. Never have more people on your team than you have buzzers available for every practice.
jrbarry wrote:...I am a populist.
...
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Post by Matthew D »

Rick,
I knew we had some things in common :grin:
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Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)
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Post by Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) »

Duke Togo wrote:
jrbarry wrote:...TWICE... we wanted to pursue charter status.
jrbarry wrote:I have a simple rule. Never have more people on your team than you have buzzers available for every practice.
jrbarry wrote:...I am a populist.
...
lol pwnt
Charlie Dees, North Kansas City HS '08
"I won't say more because I know some of you parse everything I say." - Jeremy Gibbs

"At one TJ tournament the neg prize was the Hampshire College ultimate frisbee team (nude) calender featuring one Evan Silberman. In retrospect that could have been a disaster." - Harry White
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Post by First Chairman »

jrbarry wrote:I like having "bad" teams at nationals. I like having teams from all over the country at nationals. I wish my A team could have played even one "bad" team at nationals.

But, many of y'all are elitists and I am a populist. If a Bad" team form Wyoming or Utah or Idaho or wherever, wins a competition in that area indicating they are one the best in that area (if not the best), then I would rather see them at nationals than Brookwood-B-C-D or 16 teams from one state (like Georgia).

But, like Montaigne, what do I know?
Unless those bad teams beat your team.
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Post by e_steinhauser »

ImmaculateDeception wrote:I don't think expanding supply by having multiple sites is feasible for many reasons, the chief of which is that HSNCT requires a high concentration of people with comparatively rare skills, many of whom NAQT consequently pays to transport in. That cost doesn't scale well with an increase in site number.
I think that's the primary limiting factor to expanding the HSNCT by very much at this point. Not only do you have to pay to bring in a slew of experienced, skilled staff, but you need to do so in sufficient numbers. It's one thing for :chip: and his crew to to dedicate three weekends to their NAC; it's quite another to get some 100+ volunteers for 2-3 weekends/sites.
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Post by MahoningQuizBowler »

Warning: long post with lots of numbers.

I"ve compiled a rating and ranking list, by state, of how teams/states have done over the past 4 NCTs. A preliminary round win earns 1 point; a small school playoff win earns 1 point; a main playoff win earns 2 points. Points are divided by the number of representatives for that state to give the state average. Each of the 4 yearly averages are added to make the final rating. Each state is assigned a number of qualifying places based on their ranking, with one spot reserved for a team from DC and one for an International participant for a total of 192 spots. (This is modeled off the UEFA Coefficients for their club tournaments, such as the Champions' League.)

First the rankings...
NAQT Coefficients, 2004-2007 aggregate

1. Virginia, 43.2619
2. Pennsylvania, 40.5
3. South Carolina, 38.3333

4. Maryland, 36.0833
5. Georgia, 35.2183
6. Delaware, 31.5
7. Kentucky, 30.325
8. Ohio, 28.625

9. Michigan, 27.9277
10. New Jersey, 24.25
11. Texas, 23.4286
12. Arkansas, 23.3333
13. Alabama, 22.9167
14. California, 22.6529
15. Illinois, 20.3333
16. Mississippi, 18.5
17. Wisconsin, 18
18. Washington, 18
19. Minnesota, 15.6357
20. Oklahoma, 15.5778
21. Florida, 15.4167

22. Louisiana, 15.3333
23. Iowa, 13.65
24. South Dakota, 13
25. Tennessee, 12.333
26. New York, 12
27. Missouri, 9.6667
28. North Carolina, 9.5
29. Connecticut, 9.5
30. Kansas, 8.5
31. Vermont, 7
32. Utah, 7
33. New Hampshire, 4
34. Oregon, 4
35. Indiana, 3.5
36. New Mexico, 2
37-50. AK, AZ, CO, HI, ID, MA, ME, MT, ND, NE, NV, RI, WV, WY -- 0

Now, the allocation...

States in positions 1-3 have 7 spots for the next NCT.
Positions 4-8 have 6 spots.
Positions 9-21 have 4 spots.
Positions 22-50 have 3 spots.
One spot for DC, one for International.
192 spots total.

Some caveats...

Ties in overall ranking are broken by most recent years' coefficient.
State Champions at NAQT State Tournaments are assured a spot (not new)
From a date that would be set by NAQT, any state (see particularly 37-50) that chooses not to hold a championship would forfeit its spots to the wildcard pool.
B and C teams would have to wait for wildcard spots to open before registering.
Wildcards would be selected by NAQT using a process that took into account previous NCT performance, among other things.

If anyone wants the year by year breakdown for each state, let me know.
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Post by ieppler »

Why are you not giving DC a ranking? Given that no teams from DC finished in 21st or higher, I think that DC has been shown to be an area of tremendous quizbowl strength that certainly deserves more opportunities to attend a national championship than say, New Mexico (did they even send any teams this year?) I'd love to see where DC fits into your numerical ranking?

Also, will teams from new states forfeit their opportunity to attend nationals under this system? It almost seems to be a catch-22. "You can't attend nationals until your state demonstrates success at nationals, but you can't attend nationals to demonstrate success because you haven't attended nationals yet." That doesn't seem very welcoming to new quizbowl regions.
Ian Eppler from Brown University
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Post by quizbowllee »

My A and B teams are virtually equal in strength. In fact, the B team beat the A team at NAQT and ranked higher at PACE. I'm going to have a BIG problem if NAQT limits us to one team at the HSNCT. In fact, that might be a deal breaker for us. I have too many seniors on the team this year to have to tell half of them that they can't play. There are several other teams that have such competitive B teams that deserve to play at nationals. I sincerely hope NAQT doesn't consider limiting B teams in any way. If they can qualify along the same criteria as other schools' A teams, then they deserve to be there.

Imagine a situation like the following:

An NAQT tournament is held with the following results:

1st Place - Fake High School A (10-0; 505 ppg)
2nd Place - Fake High School B (9-1; 435 ppg)
3rd Place - Misc. High School A (7-3; 285 ppg)


Some of you would advocate that Misc. High School A attend over Fake High School B simply because you are against B teams in general. Think about that... Who really deserves to be at Nationals more?
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