Southern Virginia Tournament?

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Zip Zap Rap Pants
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Southern Virginia Tournament?

Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

I just saw listed on NAQT's website a Southern Virginia University college tournament to be held on November 11th. Anybody know anything about this? I don't know how old/new this is since it was the first time I've checked NAQT's site in a while. I was planning on getting W&M Quizbowl to our first tournament ever that weekend, but now we'll have to decide between RC's TrASH and this tournament, if it's happening then.
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Post by Matt Weiner »

I haven't been given any information for the Mid-Atlantic mailing list about it and the tournament hasn't been announced here or on Yahoo. I assume it's one of two things:

-a high school tournament that was mis-coded on NAQT's site
-something along the lines of the "Big South tournament," which is a warmup for College Bowl regionals among schools without quizbowl teams like VMI and Liberty, held on NAQT high school questions. It's sort of an alternate-reality thing, to which only teams aloof from the mainstream circuit are invited.

Suggested course of action: contact the person listed on the NAQT entry and ask what is going on, and report back here. Further suggested course of action: Don't play tournaments against high school teams and/or on high school questions while in college, even if you are permitted to do so by the TD.
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Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

Yeah Matt you were pretty much right about the second possibility, the only teams that go to other tournaments that are showing are Va Tech and Southern Virginia (house team). Anyway, here's part of the email I received on it:

"We currently have five schools attending and eleven teams (Va. Tech 3 teams/ Liberty U. 3 teams/VMI 2 teams/SVU 2 teams/Roanoke 1 team.) Davidson and Hampden-Sydney may come but we have not yet heard a final word.

[email protected] is handling sign-ups for the tournament. I think the fee per team is $65.00 with $10.00 off for a buzzer system and $10.00 off for a reader/scorekeeper (If I'm wrong on this it's only by $5.00 in either direction.)"

To go to TrASH would violate your first cardinal rule of not competing against high school teams, but to go to this one would violate the second cardinal rule of not playing on high school questions. I think I'll choose the lesser of two evils and go compete against some high schoolers who probably watch way more vh1 than I do; after all, trash is supposed to open. I'll feel less guilty (though perhaps more humiliated) getting thumped by them than if we were to go to So. Va. and potentially get a top 3 finish.
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SVU Tournament

Post by hokiehistorian »

It's my understanding that the SVU tournament will not be held using high school questions, but rather NAQT Intramural questions.
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Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

Sorry for not posting on this thread for a while, but yeah I let my team decide on which tournament they wanted to go to, and they felt more like the challenge of competing against college teams, so we'll be at SVU. I wanted to take two teams but a lot of players can't make it, so it looks like only one (and one that'll be missing probably 3 usual starters).

As for questions, according to NAQT's website the tournament will be using IS-62, which is far superior to using an intramural set (which normally has 3 line tossups). Also, some teams, including mine, have already ordered and received this year's intramurals, so let's hope it's not that college set.
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Re: SVU Tournament

Post by Captain Sinico »

hokiehistorian wrote:It's my understanding that the SVU tournament will not be held using high school questions, but rather NAQT Intramural questions.
It's NAQT's understanding that it's being run on IS-62, which is high school questions.

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Re: SVU Tournament

Post by STPickrell »

I don't view the tournmaent being on IS questions as a gigantic crime. Matt's a freshman, and I'm not sure how long it's been since the rest of his team picked up a buzzer, if at all.

I notice the Big South tournament had one player with a score over 30 ppg (granted there migth've been slow readers, too) and team scores probably in the mid 100s. Why would IS questions be inappropriate for that team? So if SVU, Roanoke, et al., all have enjoyable games at their level, what's wrong with that?

Now if W&M "A" wins one of these tournaments averaging 400 points per game then perhaps Matt and/or his team would do well to sit out these tournaments, as he is not really challenging himself and quite possibly discouraging members of the other team from picking up the buzzer.

Ditto for the Va. Tech teams if they dominate maybe their top few players should consider sitting out future iterations.

This is, assuredly, just my opinion.

Watch for Liberty. They might be showing up at other circuit events, at least to D2 Sectionals. They started their team in the past year; their coach played for Ohio State back in the mid 1990s, actually. Their debate team has surged to near the top of the collegiate pile; the team is a point of pride as they prepare lawyers, etc., to fight the good fight. I can see Dr. Falwell latching onto a quizbowl team to help dispel the notion that "fundie Christians are teh dumn!!!one!!!"

In the Bible Belt, what percentage of the good-excellent-amazing players are fundamentalist Christians that would be at home at Liberty, or moderate Christians/theists that wouldn't feel 100% uncomfortable there and would gladly take a scholarship to play quizbowl?

In high school, I would've been in the latter class -- I know if someone had dangled a full ride in front of me and the chance to play quizbowl all year long, I'd have been hard-pressed to say no.
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Re: SVU Tournament

Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

StPickrell wrote:I notice the Big South tournament had one player with a score over 30 ppg (granted there migth've been slow readers, too) and team scores probably in the mid 100s. Why would IS questions be inappropriate for that team? So if SVU, Roanoke, et al., all have enjoyable games at their level, what's wrong with that?
I discussed the Big South tournament some on the SEC tournament? thread. I think the Cav Open used the same set, and I believe I scored 43 ppg there and that was only good for about 18th (Joel Knight scored 98 ppg or so). So yeah the Big South teams/Roanoke/others besides SVU & VT who were considering this tournament are at a level right now where they need to be playing on NAQT since they haven't done much besides CBI and could get beaten by a lot of high schools on the same questions, but hopefully they'll eventually get better by branching out to tournaments like Sectionals. Since most of the teams at this SVU tournament are pretty inexperienced I have no problem with using NAQT sets.

We will most certainly not be dominating this tournament though, especially with VT and SVU in the mix. Almost everyone I really hoped could make it couldn't, so that's why we'll only have one team. But to give an idea of the experience level of the club, at this tournament we'll have: a senior who's played College Bowl since getting to W&M, and played for some Minnesota school back in the day when they didn't do anything pyramidal and before R moved there, knows a lot and will buzz in often, but negs a lot as a result (hopefully experience will cure that); a junior who played for a school in Missouri, doesn't buzz enough but he gets some physics, math, and occasionally lit ?'s; a sophomore who captained Atlee VA's VHSL and BoB team, met him at 2005 regionals, knows a lot of social studies and lit, good all around player too; a freshman who played for Marion L Steele in Ohio and rarely buzzes except on trash; and then me. So yeah, this team is inexperienced enough to where NAQT regular IS is certainly at their level (sadly above the level of a couple of them right now). I could probably handle tougher questions, but I'm not sure some of the other recruits could right now, so I don't really have any qualms about us playing in this tournament seeing as it's a new team.
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Re: SVU Tournament

Post by Matt Weiner »

StPickrell wrote:I notice the Big South tournament had one player with a score over 30 ppg (granted there migth've been slow readers, too) and team scores probably in the mid 100s. Why would IS questions be inappropriate for that team? So if SVU, Roanoke, et al., all have enjoyable games at their level, what's wrong with that?
Please get on your Big Wheel and scoot on over to the archives, where you can drink a juice box and familiarize yourself with the 50+ pages of explanation as to why college touranments should not be run on high school questions.
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Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

Generally a sound principle, but would it be preferable for this tournament to be played on inferior (college) intramural questions? As for the notion that it shouldn't be NAQT in the first place, in order to do a non-packet submission tournament it was probably the most viable option at the moment for the hosts, as few question writing groups write for the college level anyway. Granted that IS is meant for high schools, but still it has a track record for juniorbird and undergrad tournaments etc. so it was more than likely an appealing and economic option as compared to packet submission, which would never happen with this kind of field. Of course there's always the better option of house writing, but that can be hell with inexperienced and undedicated writers. So if SVU wants to help encourage local teams to start up full time clubs and expand to more tournaments, and they want to make some money while they're at it, who is the one to blame them?
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Post by Matt Weiner »

They could just host a softball tournament, I'm sure they'd draw a big crowd for that too, but it would be about equally pointless for college quizbowl teams to compete on that as it is for them to compete on high school questions.
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Post by e_steinhauser »

Matt Morrison wrote:Generally a sound principle, but would it be preferable for this tournament to be played on inferior (college) intramural questions?
In this case, an IS is preferable. IS sets are more rigorous and generally of a significantly higher competitive value than the annual IMs. IMs are intended for use as intramural tournaments that could easily accomodate non-quizbowl people and organizations. As such, IMs have a much larger pop culture content and the questions are both shorter and easier.
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Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

e_steinhauser wrote: In this case, an IS is preferable. IS sets are more rigorous and generally of a significantly higher competitive value than the annual IMs. IMs are intended for use as intramural tournaments that could easily accomodate non-quizbowl people and organizations. As such, IMs have a much larger pop culture content and the questions are both shorter and easier.
That's what I'm saying. You shouldn't lower the quality of questions simply because they're labeled as "college" instead of "high school." They could always host this on College Bowl style questions, but what would that accomplish for teams that want to branch out? Anyway I'm pretty sure this will indeed be on IS-62.
Matt Weiner wrote:They could just host a softball tournament, I'm sure they'd draw a big crowd for that too, but it would be about equally pointless for college quizbowl teams to compete on that as it is for them to compete on high school questions.
Isn't the point of quizbowl to have fun? whatever...
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Re: SVU Tournament

Post by Captain Sinico »

StPickrell wrote:I don't view the tournmaent being on IS questions as a gigantic crime.
Woah! Take that, straw!
But seriously, I didn't see anyone calling a "tournmaent" on IS questions a crime of any kind. I just saw people noting that they're high school questions because they... are high school questions. This is bad for various reasons, as has been noted.

MaS

PS: What good players have there ever been from "the Bible Belt," Pickrell? I recall exactly none. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an R-rated movie to watch on campus.
Last edited by Captain Sinico on Thu Nov 09, 2006 1:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Matt Weiner »

Matt Morrison wrote:Isn't the point of quizbowl to have fun? whatever...
To have fun while playing collegiate quizbowl tournaments, yes. I'm not going to tell you that playing on high school questions isn't fun, or softball isn't fun, or watching Perfect Strangers isn't fun. I'm just going to tell you that there is no reason for collegiate quizbowl teams to use their limited resources to facilitate those admittedly fun things instead of doing what collegiate quizbowl teams should be doing, which is playing on collegiate quizbowl questions.
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Post by Captain Sinico »

Also, to follow-up since some of us seem to have missed the trolley here, what clearly ought to happen is this. If NAQT wants to produce questions for college invitational tournaments (hence, not intramurals which are for... intramurals...) that's well and good; let them do so. Right now, that's not what's happening; what's happening is that NAQT is selling its high school questions for that purpose and hosts, rather than demanding better as they ought, eat it up on the premise that nothing else is available (which isn't quite true, but fine.) As has been noted, this is bad for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that playing on such questions leaves teams woefully unprepared for college questions (even NAQT college questions, incidentally.)
It may seem far-fetched, but it used to happen that new teams held new packet submission tournaments with packets written by new teams in situations exactly like this. Frankly, I don't see what's changed other than the willingness of teams to play on high school questions (which, incidentally, have always been available for the right price) and the facility with which such may be acquired. Now you may say "But Mike, you asshole; these people have never played before! They put-up 30 PPG on CBI! They can't write questions." I answer: yes, true; however, so long as they restrict their involvement to tournaments like these, they're going to keep putting-up 30 PPG on CBI and not being able to write. If they venture out into the circuit at large... well... you know how the rest of this goes.
Also, the incessant attempts to reduce this issue to "OTHER QUESTIONS ARE TOO HARD!" is obfuscatory and, really, insulting. Time and again it has been established for anyone who cares to look that the format, academic rigor, and age-appropriateness of questions has, at best, a very weak correlation to their actual difficulty (measured by percentage of points converted.)
To prove this, follow me around my laboratory (of thoughts) for the following thought experiment! Let's, you and I, take an IS set, cross-off every question with an obviously asnine answer (so most but not all of the trash, most but not all of the current events, all of the NAQTarded stuff like "geology" and "establishing the lottery," etc.) and then add an extra sentence with two lead-in clues to the front of each remaining question. I claim that you will then reliably have about half of an NAQT-style packet(*) that is solidly appropriate for a low- to mid-level college tournament, yet this packet is almost by definition no more difficult than the unaltered packet. So, in light of that, someone please explain to me why anyone needs to run a college tournament on high school questions and shouldn't, instead, demand actual college questions.
Now, I understand that one can't just retroactively make it so that NAQT has written such college questions. Fine. What one can and ought do is request and demand that they do so and explore other alternatives if (when?) they refuse. I'm curious as to whether anyone has actually ever tried.

MaS

(*) If you actually produce such a object as I have, you'll almost invariably find that it contains disgustingly inordinate amounts of geography, even relative to normal NAQT. So let's say for the purpose of argument that NAQT eventually decides to include some visual art and philosophy in their sets to balance this out somewhat.
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Post by No Rules Westbrook »

If you actually produce such a object as I have, you'll almost invariably find that it contains disgustingly inordinate amounts of geography, even relative to normal NAQT.
Are you sure you're using the vacuum filter correctly? Also, please restrict your experiments to the fume hood.
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Post by Scipio »

What good players have there ever been from "the Bible Belt," Pickrell? I recall exactly none.
Note that I am certainly not Pickrell, nor am I entirely sure what this nebulous "Bible Belt" is, but I'm fairly sure that Harding is a very, very religious school and they fielded a fine team at ACF Fall at Vanderbilt, most but by no means all of which the contributions of Jason Loy, who impressed me a great deal. Would he qualify?

Credit where credit is due, and all.
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Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

I think Jason Loy is from Maryland or Virginia. Seth Samelson and Kannan seem to have talked about playing against him in high school, at least.
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Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

Matt Weiner wrote: To have fun while playing collegiate quizbowl tournaments, yes. I'm not going to tell you that playing on high school questions isn't fun, or softball isn't fun, or watching Perfect Strangers isn't fun. I'm just going to tell you that there is no reason for collegiate quizbowl teams to use their limited resources to facilitate those admittedly fun things instead of doing what collegiate quizbowl teams should be doing, which is playing on collegiate quizbowl questions.
I mean, I'd be up for a game of softball... But what am I going to do, go to no tournament this weekend when I have the money, time, and personnel to do so?

Another point I'd like to make is, it's gotten to the point where IS sets are used by enough novice type tournaments and such that they can't accurately be labeled, and aren't really labeled by NAQT, as being solely high school questions. That doesn't mean they should be played more often but it's more of a sad reality.
ImmaculateDeception wrote:What one can and ought do is request and demand that they do so and explore other alternatives if (when?) they refuse. I'm curious as to whether anyone has actually ever tried.
Petitiononline.com to the rescue? I could draft something in the next few days and see what everyone thinks, get signatures, then give it to NAQT.

As I see the paltry number of potential hosts for SCT's, perhaps included in the petition could be some statement about how, if NAQT wrote college level invitational questions, they could consider a handful of teams that finish well at multiple pre-ICT invitationals for bids to the ICT if they can't make it to an SCT. I'm not advocating anything like the high school qualification system with a fixed # of spots that qualify, just suggesting a solution to the low-SCT host problem if it becomes a long term trend and prevents many teams far from hosts from attending.
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Post by Chris Frankel »

Bruce wrote:I think Jason Loy is from Maryland or Virginia. Seth Samelson and Kannan seem to have talked about playing against him in high school, at least.
You know, it took five minutes to look up some old HSNCT results (http://www.naqt.com/hsnct/2004/2004-hsnct-results.html) and confirm that Jason played for Cutter Morningstar High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Just as in college, national tournaments make it so people from all over the country get to play each other, so just his having played people from the Mid-Atlantic doesn't really suggest that he's from there.
"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."
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Post by AKKOLADE »

Matt Morrison wrote:I mean, I'd be up for a game of softball... But what am I going to do, go to no tournament this weekend when I have the money, time, and personnel to do so?
Save your money and wait for another tournament?
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Post by Mr. Kwalter »

word.
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Re: SVU Tournament

Post by STPickrell »

The Bible Belt I'd define as the Confederacy, plus OK, MO, KY and WV.

My theorizing, of course, is what percentage of good to legendary high school players are inclinded to go to highly religious schools. Then, if the Dr Rev Falwell decided to give some love to his quizbowl team like he does his debate team, would this translate into some quality recruits and quality play?

Harding is supported by the Churches of Christ. The youth minister at my church is an alumnus. IIRC, Harding's fielded some decent teams without Jason, as well. If Harding can field a good team then certainly David Lipscomb and Pepperdine could field OK to good teams as well.

For newer teams to hold packet-submission tournaments, there should be the start of a question-writing culture in high school, along with experienced writers/editors helping out. A similar process should be done for beginning college teams, as well.

I like Mike's idea of taking two IS packets and creating a CS (Collegiate Series) packet for low and mid level college tournaments. (Doesn't NAQT already do this somewhat with their IS-A packets?) Presumably the SCT is an OK to good tournament (depending on the year) for all but the highest tier of college players and is better than the IS.

I disagree on the "inappropriateness" of trash and current events -- certainly I wouldn't want to see their combined weight exceed 15% of a match, though.

NAQT could produce three CS tournaments a year and market them to community colleges and four-year colleges that wish to hold tournaments.

They could also sell their editing services to people who wish to set up a packet-submission tournament.
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Re: SVU Tournament

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StPickrell wrote:The Bible Belt I'd define as the Confederacy, plus OK, MO, KY and WV.

My theorizing, of course, is what percentage of good to legendary high school players are inclinded to go to highly religious schools. Then, if the Dr Rev Falwell decided to give some love to his quizbowl team like he does his debate team, would this translate into some quality recruits and quality play?
If Falwell ever funded a quizbowl team, I assemble a team to fly out an administer a beatdown purely out of spite.
I like Mike's idea of taking two IS packets and creating a CS (Collegiate Series) packet for low and mid level college tournaments. (Doesn't NAQT already do this somewhat with their IS-A packets?) Presumably the SCT is an OK to good tournament (depending on the year) for all but the highest tier of college players and is better than the IS.

NAQT could produce three CS tournaments a year and market them to community colleges and four-year colleges that wish to hold tournaments.
NAQT will do no such thing for the obvious reason that if they already have enough trouble producing an SCT or ICT set that is considered acceptable by most of the better players. Since most teams just don't care that much about question quality, they continue to play on IS sets, and NAQT continues to produce them because producing an IS set is way easier than producing a decent college-level set. To do the latter, NAQT would have to considerably change its writing philosophy, and I don't see that happening. Why change when you can just market your high-school level questions to people who don't care?
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Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

leftsaidfred wrote:
Matt Morrison wrote:I mean, I'd be up for a game of softball... But what am I going to do, go to no tournament this weekend when I have the money, time, and personnel to do so?
Save your money and wait for another tournament?
Negative, captain.

1. It's closer than most other tournaments

2. It's far cheaper than most other tournaments

3. It's been hell trying to get the club members to write for our house tournament which I've cancelled due to sub-par results from my efforts to get them to write over the past month and a half, so I can't expect them to write more difficult questions (or many at all) on a regular basis this year, therefore I'd like to avoid packet submission when possible. So this was an opportunity to compete without having to write.

4. We have enough drivers this weekend

5. We have enough interested players this weekend

6. I don't know how often the last two conditions will occur this year

7. Though I personally would prefer tougher questions, as an easier tournament I figured it would be something that wouldn't scare off the inexperienced folk (though we have some more experienced players in the club, but they couldn't make it to any tournament this weekend).

8. In order to receive more publicity (and, hopefully, more funding) within the school, I figured this tournament would be good because we'd be opposed by 5 good Virginia institutions of higher learning, and still have a chance to finish well amongst them given the relative inexperience of most of the programs, so as to impress others within the College. Normally I wouldn't care about something like this but given that we're a new club that hasn't gone to a tournament, we could definitely use more recognition, funding, and recruits, so this part is appealing.

So, given these conditions I would have to be pretty thick to pass up this tournament simply for the sake of keeping in line with "quizbowl aesthetics" as defined by others.
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Post by grapesmoker »

Matt (Morrison), you're not wrong to go to this tournament. Just don't make the mistake of thinking that IS sets represent quality quizbowl or that you're going to learn anything substantive from them. Playing is better than not playing, after all.
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Post by Skepticism and Animal Feed »

grapesmoker wrote:Matt (Morrison), you're not wrong to go to this tournament. Just don't make the mistake of thinking that IS sets represent quality quizbowl or that you're going to learn anything substantive from them. Playing is better than not playing, after all.
The voice of reason speaks.
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Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

grapesmoker wrote:Matt (Morrison), you're not wrong to go to this tournament. Just don't make the mistake of thinking that IS sets represent quality quizbowl or that you're going to learn anything substantive from them. Playing is better than not playing, after all.
That's how I feel about it. If there was a tournament roughly the same distance away and within $50 of the same registration price and on the same weekend, but with harder, standard collegiate questions, I would go to it in a heartbeat. Amen.
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Post by AKKOLADE »

Matt Morrison wrote:So, given these conditions I would have to be pretty thick to pass up this tournament simply for the sake of keeping in line with "quizbowl aesthetics" as defined by others.
You're undoubtedly correct; I was being facetious to a degree. Going to an IS-tourney is better than no tourney. I think the major arguments against them are that they are lower quality tournaments than the likes of ACF Fall and other "lower"-level events and that teams that devote their finances to competing on them are cheating themselves. Going to one doesn't make you a quiz bowl murderer.

So, basically, what Jerry says:
grapesmoker wrote:Matt (Morrison), you're not wrong to go to this tournament. Just don't make the mistake of thinking that IS sets represent quality quizbowl or that you're going to learn anything substantive from them. Playing is better than not playing, after all.
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Post by STPickrell »

grapesmoker wrote:Matt (Morrison), you're not wrong to go to this tournament. Just don't make the mistake of thinking that IS sets represent quality quizbowl or that you're going to learn anything substantive from them. Playing is better than not playing, after all.
Agreed 100%. I think that some of Matt's newer/rustier players may learn something but the veterans should begin focusing ASAP on questions that will challenge them and improve the W&M program's top team.

Matt, good luck Saturday. Be sure to defeat the boys of Hampden-Sydney, and to do so mightily.
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Post by Captain Sinico »

Matt Morrison wrote:...[IS sets] can't accurately be labeled, and aren't really labeled by NAQT, as being solely high school questions.
The first part of that, that "IS sets aren't actually high school questions," is simply wrong. IS sets are high school questions. They are produced and always have been produced for use in high school tournaments, are predominately used for high school tournaments, and are in all senses appropriate for high school and not college (they are fundamentally unlike anything else used in college, including other NAQT questions.) Tearing the feathers off that chicken doesn't make it human, my friend, and no matter how many old people love Maurice Sendak, he's still children's lit.
The second part is, of course, right because if NAQT called them high school questions, which is what they are, people might feel worse about using them for college, which they should. Thus it doesn't seem to be in NAQT's interest to call IS sets what they are as that would diminish their ability to dump those questions on the college circuit (which, as far as they're concerned, is free money and advertisement.)

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Re: SVU Tournament

Post by Captain Sinico »

StPickrell wrote:The Bible Belt I'd define as the Confederacy, plus OK, MO, KY and WV.

My theorizing, of course, is what percentage of good to legendary high school players are inclinded to go to highly religious schools. Then, if the Dr Rev Falwell decided to give some love to his quizbowl team like he does his debate team, would this translate into some quality recruits and quality play?
Hey, so the entire South. Well, there you go. Have fun with that. I look forward to administering beat-downs in the name of Zurvan for years to come. A more apropos question, I think, is "what percentage of good to legendary high school players from the Bible Belt are ever any good?"
StPickrell wrote:I disagree on the "inappropriateness" of trash and current events -- certainly I wouldn't want to see their combined weight exceed 15% of a match, though.
Hence "some but not all." Who or what are you quoting? You can disagree all you want about the distribution (such as it is.) The fact is that there are simply some answers in IS sets that really won't support good questions at the collegiate level. The point of the exercise is to acknowledge that (which, if you don't, please explain why) and remove those.

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Re: SVU Tournament

Post by STPickrell »

Hey Mike,

Well not the entire South, more like the subset of good Southern players who are Protestant and conservative enough to want to go to Liberty (or moderate enough to tolerate it if they are dangled a full ride.)

I simply don't know if the good players in GA, AL, AR, TX, etc., are particularly religious, or as you say, are particularly any good compared to their peers in VA/DC/MD, IL or CA.

And yes I do agree some things are simply not doable as pyramidal tossups. So they should be removed if possible. They may lend themselves decently to being bonus parts or directed questions.

I've scrapped several "easy" answers whilst writing VHSL questions simply because there's no "supporting" clues to the giveaway. I get around some of this by exempting math, foreign language and grammar from the "pyramidal" thing.
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Post by NotBhan »

ImmaculateDeception wrote: The first part of that, that "IS sets aren't actually high school questions," is simply wrong. IS sets are high school questions. They are produced and always have been produced for use in high school tournaments, are predominately used for high school tournaments, and are in all senses appropriate for high school and not college (they are fundamentally unlike anything else used in college, including other NAQT questions.)
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Cool -- can I borrow this for the next time I need to teach 16-year-olds what circular reasoning is? zzzzzZING!
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Post by Captain Sinico »

NotBhan wrote:
ImmaculateDeception wrote: The first part of that, that "IS sets aren't actually high school questions," is simply wrong. IS sets are high school questions. They are produced and always have been produced for use in high school tournaments, are predominately used for high school tournaments, and are in all senses appropriate for high school and not college (they are fundamentally unlike anything else used in college, including other NAQT questions.)
MaS
Cool -- can I borrow this for the next time I need to teach 16-year-olds what circular reasoning is? zzzzzZING!
If you need to teach them to mis-identify fallacies as you do, by all means go right ahead. Zing?
My reasoning isn't circular. If questions that are produced with the intent that they be used for high school tournaments (as IS sets are as a matter of fact) and that are predominantly used in high school tournaments (as IS sets are as a matter of fact) aren't high school questions, well, then on behalf of common sense, I surrender. Do there exist high school questions, in your learned opinion? How would you define the term?

MaS

PS: This argument is now retarded. Thanks for that.
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Post by NotBhan »

ImmaculateDeception wrote: If you need to teach them to mis-identify fallacies as you do, by all means go right ahead. Zing?
My reasoning isn't circular. If questions that are produced with the intent that they be used for high school tournaments (as IS sets are as a matter of fact) and that are predominantly used in high school tournaments (as IS sets are as a matter of fact) aren't high school questions, well, then on behalf of common sense, I surrender. Do there exist high school questions, in your learned opinion? How would you define the term?

MaS

PS: This argument is now retarded. Thanks for that.
You're welcome. My apologies if NAQT has stated that the questions are specifically and exclusively intended for HS tournaments, but I don't believe that's the case. And my apologies if I assigned the wrong logical fallacy to your argument.

The central contention (oft repeated on this board) is that IS questions are completely inappropriate for all collegiate tournaments. That just ain't true. Would I use IS questions for a collegiate tournament in a region like the Upper Midwest or Mid-Atlantic where many players played 10+ tournaments a year in high school? No. But do they work well for collegiate tournaments among less experienced players? Sure. They're fine for CC and Novice tournaments, and in some regions with a limited HS circuit, they're fine for general collegiate play. In terms of the long-term survival of a circuit in such areas, my hope is that those tournaments continue to go ahead despite the internet bullying.

I don't really want to be involved in this shit ... I regret speaking up in the first place, but I can't edit or delete my initial message. Later --

--RD
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Post by Zip Zap Rap Pants »

11 teams from 6 schools show. Quick results in case anyone cares to know:

1. SVU A (9-1)
2. William & Mary (8-2)*
3. VT A (8-2)
4. Liberty A (7-3)

SVU A lost to Liberty A, W&M lost to SVU A and Liberty B*, VT A lost to W&M and SVU A, and I'm not sure about Liberty A's losses.

*We had a fluke loss to Liberty B in overtime. Before the tournament, I emailed the TD asking whether they would count ties or do the NAQT procedure of a 3 tossup overtime, the reply I got was basically "thanks for the suggestion, we'll do the latter." I wasn't actually suggesting anything, just asking, and I actually prefer counting ties in any case. So if I hadn't mentioned it to the TD, they would have just counted ties and we'd be 8-1-1. Oh well, the game didn't make any difference because everything went by head-to-head, so even at 9-1 SVU would have the title. At 8-2 we had the head-to-head against VT for second.

SVU A played extremely well against us. They dominated the first half of the game and then we came back some in the second half. But in the end they closed it out and we lost by I think 130. They're really an impressive team. I look forward to seeing them (and many of the other teams at this tournament) at Sectionals, if not elsewhere as well. It was a great tournament and we had a lot of fun, plus our players gained valuable experience. We look forward to playing in harder, long tossup tournaments in the future, too.
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Post by QuizbowlPostmodernist »

ImmaculateDeception wrote: It may seem far-fetched, but it used to happen that new teams held new packet submission tournaments with packets written by new teams in situations exactly like this.
It feels like something changed where established programs became less inclined to show up to new submission tournaments with unexperienced editors and packets by relatively novice teams as a form of supporting a local circuit. I don't know if that's true, whether or not there really are that many teams who would choose to spend an overnight and even fly for a longer, higher quality tournament rather than make a day trip to pummel vastly inferior teams on vastly inferior questions, but I get the impression that some teams have little interest in going to a tournament run by a new program that they know will probably suck (according to today's higher standards), even if the tournament, even if the host is just on the other side of town.
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Re: SVU Tournament

Post by Matt Weiner »

StPickrell wrote:Watch for Liberty. They might be showing up at other circuit events, at least to D2 Sectionals. They started their team in the past year; their coach played for Ohio State back in the mid 1990s, actually. Their debate team has surged to near the top of the collegiate pile; the team is a point of pride as they prepare lawyers, etc., to fight the good fight. I can see Dr. Falwell latching onto a quizbowl team to help dispel the notion that "fundie Christians are teh dumn!!!one!!!"
According to one of my teammates who is in the know about the debate scene, Liberty is not really all that good, and they just take advantage of loopholes in the ranking system that reward frequent attendance at competitions. Essentially, they have bought their way into the rankings by flying to every event under the sun.

I don't think there is any prospect of Liberty becoming a competitive force on the quizbowl circuit. First of all, the kind of person who would go to Liberty is indeed quite intellectually deficient, Internet parody-speak notwithstanding. Furthermore, no reputable tournament is going to let a team answer every question on science, mythology, and non-Protestant religion with "THE DEVIL!" and get points for a correct answer, as Liberty's team would surely wish to do. And of course, the large amount of Jews, homosexuals, nonwhites, and even Mohammedans and Papists on the collegiate quizbowl circuit would surely lead to Liberty's team failing to hear most of the questions in each match as they doused themselves in holy water and furiously prayed to be protected from the poisoned touch of the damned.

So, I predict that Liberty will continue to attend 2 tournaments a year, one of which is College Bowl and one of which is a high school tournament, and have absolutely nothing to do with the reasonably non-retarded people on the actual quizbowl circuit, and this will be a mutually satisfactory arrangement for both Liberty and the non-retards.
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Re: SVU Tournament

Post by grapesmoker »

Matt Weiner wrote:
StPickrell wrote:Watch for Liberty. They might be showing up at other circuit events, at least to D2 Sectionals. They started their team in the past year; their coach played for Ohio State back in the mid 1990s, actually. Their debate team has surged to near the top of the collegiate pile; the team is a point of pride as they prepare lawyers, etc., to fight the good fight. I can see Dr. Falwell latching onto a quizbowl team to help dispel the notion that "fundie Christians are teh dumn!!!one!!!"
According to one of my teammates who is in the know about the debate scene, Liberty is not really all that good, and they just take advantage of loopholes in the ranking system that reward frequent attendance at competitions. Essentially, they have bought their way into the rankings by flying to every event under the sun.
Liberty has never had more than a middle-of-the-pack finish at any tournament which included serious competitors for the national title (Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, etc.). The notion that they would be successful at quizbowl is laughable for the very reasons Matt cites; the only thing they could possibly have anything resembling success in would be CBI, which is akin to no success at all.
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Re: SVU Tournament

Post by Rothlover »

F5 for soccer posts wrote:
Matt Weiner wrote:
StPickrell wrote:Watch for Liberty. They might be showing up at other circuit events, at least to D2 Sectionals. They started their team in the past year; their coach played for Ohio State back in the mid 1990s, actually. Their debate team has surged to near the top of the collegiate pile; the team is a point of pride as they prepare lawyers, etc., to fight the good fight. I can see Dr. Falwell latching onto a quizbowl team to help dispel the notion that "fundie Christians are teh dumn!!!one!!!"
According to one of my teammates who is in the know about the debate scene, Liberty is not really all that good, and they just take advantage of loopholes in the ranking system that reward frequent attendance at competitions. Essentially, they have bought their way into the rankings by flying to every event under the sun.


Liberty has never had more than a middle-of-the-pack finish at any tournament which included serious competitors for the national title (Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, etc.). The notion that they would be successful at quizbowl is laughable for the very reasons Matt cites; the only thing they could possibly have anything resembling success in would be CBI, which is akin to no success at all.
Sadly, if they had some success at CBI though, it would probably get them media attention for being "smart, dedicated and successful," like it got wrt their debate team last year, even though their most of their teams could've been beaten by solid newbies (hell, my test rounds were higher than what their B team pulls at most events.) All a school needs is the illusion of competance through a format that someone will believe capable of bestowing a label of competance and then they can push their image of "smartness" to the media until dumbfucks buy it. If they placed top 5 at CBI nats, we'd hear about it. Liberty is stupid, but the media that buys stories and the people who watch those stories are, by turns, stupider.
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Re: SVU Tournament

Post by STPickrell »

Thanks for the background on Liberty debate. Would the loophole they exploit will be closed before too long?

A school that gets a player in the top 100 (or even the second or third 100s) will do somewhat better than a school who gets a few players from Random High Schools A, B and C, none of whom ever made it out of Districts.

OTOH, a player in the top 200-300 will usually be getting offers from the Ivies, and even full rides to second-tier liberal arts schools like Hampden-Sydney and Randolph-Macon. Said player's tolerance for Christian fundamentalism would have to be high, too, in order to entertain an offer from Liberty. (And if they don't offer scholarships to play QB, forget about it.)

Unless that happens, I suspect Matt's scenario is the correct one with the possible exception of going to NAQT Sectionals and maybe one other tournament a year.
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Re: SVU Tournament

Post by grapesmoker »

StPickrell wrote:Thanks for the background on Liberty debate. Would the loophole they exploit will be closed before too long?
As I understand it, it's not so much a loophole as it is that the rankings mean next to nothing. I believe there are Nationals for debate, and at the end of the year, all that matters is how you place there, so no one really pays any attention to the rankings.
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