The Quizbowl Resource Center

The Academic Team at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will be hosting the ACF Fall Mid-South Tournament on November 9, 2008. Yes, that's the 9th, which is Sunday -- 107,000+ football fans will be in the way of us doing it on Saturday.

Fees

The ACF Fee Structure applies:
Base fee: $120
Buzzer systems: -$5 each
Staffers: -$10 each
Laptop: -$10 each (max 1 per team)
Travel: -$10 for every 200 miles traveled
International: -$20
Teams new to ACF: -$25
Teams new to quizbowl: -$75

Packet Submission

See the ACF Fall global announcement for packet submission details.
For this tournament, send packets to Andrew Hart at limozeen at gmail.com.

When/Where/How

The tournament will be held in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) building on the UT campus. Registration begins at 8:30 AM in room 123 on the second floor; announcements will be at 9, with play as soon as possible thereafter.

Directions:

A map of the UT campus can be found at http://www.utk.edu/maps/campus/ --
the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) building is near the center of the map, in section 7. Parking is available in the S9 lot at the end of the HSS building and the C8 lot across the street. Directions to UT are at http://www.utk.edu/maps/directions.shtml and take you to the Campus Information Center, which is adjacent to the C8 lot. (Even if you've been here before, check the directions if you're coming from the east, as I-40 is currently closed right in the middle of town.)

Food and Lodging:

Everything you could possibly want to eat is available on the Cumberland Ave. Strip -- it's the large east-west street near the top of the map linked above. As for lodging, if you're coming from the west or south, most major hotel chains have a location in the Cedar Bluff area of west Knoxville; if you're coming from the north or east, there are several hotels in the Merchants Drive area. If you need more info about anything, just send me an email.

Please let us know if you're planning to attend, and how many teams you'll be bringing, by emailing me at silverleaf22 at yahoo dot com.

Thanks,
--Scotti Whitmire
<*>

I haven't gotten as many responses as I'd expect at this point... if you're planning to come, please let me know at silverleaf22 at yahoo dot com ASAP.

Clemson should be there with one team.

I can probably staff this, although it depends on when I'm getting back from Nashville (where I'll be for the Florida vs. Vandy game).

Centre will be there with at least one team, possibly two depending on how our next recruitment push goes.

Jack told me yesterday that he was planning to get in touch with you soon about Vandy coming, seemingly with a couple teams.

The USC team unfortunately won't make it to the UTK site due to the event being on Sunday; the fall event at Shorter on Sunday last year was a blast, but it was hard on folks on our team who had Monday classes or jobs, so we decided no more Sunday tournaments. We'll likely be going to UF or VCU instead. Of course, I suppose it would be pretty impossible to have a UTK tournament that Saturday given the zoo that Knoxville becomes on gamedays, even when the Vols are horrible. Knoxville tournaments are always very well run events, so I'm sure the turnout will be good.

Ok, so at the moment I have:

Clemson
Centre
Ga Tech
UTK (1 or 2 depending on staffing)

Plus a maybe from a new team at Cincinnati... I haven't heard any confirmation from Vandy beyond what's in this thread, so if you're out there, please email me.

We'd really like to have some more teams... if you're thinking about coming, please let me know ASAP!

Unless there is much more interest in this tournament from other teams, Clemson will not be attending. This said because their is minimal interest among the Clemson club and I've heard that GT will, in fact, not be attending.

Yes, I've just heard from Ga Tech that they won't be coming, unfortunately.
However, I've also just heard from Louisville that they will be coming.
I still haven't heard from anyone at Vandy.
We'll be happy to make sure that enough rounds are played to make it worthwhile to come, even if that means it's a double round robin. However, if the number of teams drops below what we currently have, we may reach the point where we can't hold the tournament -- we don't want to have so few teams that we spend more copying the packets than we take in, and already two of the teams coming will be receiving $100 new team discounts. So we'd appreciate it if you can make it, and again, if anyone else is out there and interested, please let me know ASAP.

Thanks!
--Scotti
<*>

silverleaf22 wrote: we don't want to have so few teams that we spend more copying the packets than we take in

As a reminder, ACF sites are required to offer laptop discounts for precisely this reason. You should not have to spend any money on providing questions to moderators.

Matt Weiner wrote:

silverleaf22 wrote: we don't want to have so few teams that we spend more copying the packets than we take in

As a reminder, ACF sites are required to offer laptop discounts for precisely this reason. You should not have to spend any money on providing questions to moderators.

Oh, I didn't think about actually reading the questions off of laptops. I suppose that's a viable thing to do (and explains the laptop discount... I was thinking it was just for stats, which didn't make sense).

Scotti, I sent you an email yesterday about Vandy sending two teams, did you not get it?

I think the first one must have gotten lost in my spam folder, but I got the second one and replied. Also, it now appears that a Ga Tech team will be coming, so our field size is looking up. :)

Hi, just to clarify, at this point GT is NOT coming as far as I know (Scotti, I sent you an email regarding this matter as well, just wanted to make sure people weren't like... banking on that or something because of this thread)

Ok, after a lot of confusion, here's the current state of the field:

Vandy (2)
UTK (1-2)
Louisville
Centre
Cincinnati
Open team of Adam Liem/George Stevens

Any further field updates?

What will be the format for this tourney? Voting for double round robin if the field stands at 8. I would much prefer that (14 rounds + finals) than a single round robin followed by whatever playoff system would be created.

Despite the late start to the UF-Vandy football game on Saturday night, I can confirm that I will be showing up to staff this on Sunday. I can also bring my own laptop if you plan on running a paperless tournament.

Currently, the field looks like this:

Vandy (2 teams)
UTK (2 teams)
Centre
Adam/George
possibly Louisville

We're planning to definitely do a double round robin.
Evan, we're actually set for readers/statskeeper -- the only thing I could use is more scorekeepers just to make things run faster. If you want to come do that that would be great, but if you don't want to come just to be a scorekeeper, that's fine. :)

To the folks who are coming: Who's bringing a buzzer?

Dang, what happened to Cincinnati? And I guess Louisville, for that matter...

The Adam/George team is planning to bring at least 1 buzzer

Cincinnati decided they couldn't come on a Sunday, and Louisville is having packet issues.
Good that you're bringing a buzzer... that should mean we have enough, unless some other team not listed above magically shows up. :)

We'll be bringing one or two

I just wanted to throw out the fact that Evan Nagler is an awesome reader.

wd4gdz wrote:I just wanted to throw out the fact that Evan Nagler is an awesome reader.

I second that.

Anyways, I think we won't be able to bring a buzzer system to this.

Yeah, it turns out that we won't be able to bring a buzzer to this. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Hey, so if Louisville doesn't show up, leaving the field at 6 teams, might I suggest we do a triple round robin... I'd prefer that to the 10 + finals we'd be getting from the double RR, and plus,

Matt Weiner wrote: The ACF rules require a minimum of 11 games in normal circumstances

I don't know if 10 + finals counts since finals are "if necessary", right?

However, if Louisville shows up and there are 7 teams, double RR sounds pretty good to me.

Edit: Will this be a paperless tournament?

wd4gdz wrote:I just wanted to throw out the fact that Evan Nagler is an awesome reader.

Evan, if you feel like spuriously flying across the country just to read ACF Fall, we have a spot for you (we wouldn't pay for any of your expenses, but the option is there...)

AdamL wrote:Hey, so if Louisville doesn't show up, leaving the field at 6 teams, might I suggest we do a triple round robin... I'd prefer that to the 10 + finals we'd be getting from the double RR, and plus,

Matt Weiner wrote: The ACF rules require a minimum of 11 games in normal circumstances

I don't know if 10 + finals counts since finals are "if necessary", right?

However, if Louisville shows up and there are 7 teams, double RR sounds pretty good to me.

Edit: Will this be a paperless tournament?

With 6 teams, I would suggest what we did for regionals last year - a double RR and then do mini brackets of top 3 and bottom 3, with finals if necessary. Since it's on a Sunday, I'm guessing people won't want to play up to 17 games for triple RR plus finals. Plus, this allows for any rounds containing attending teams' contributions in the playoff re-bracket.

vandyhawk wrote: With 6 teams, I would suggest what we did for regionals last year - a double RR and then do mini brackets of top 3 and bottom 3, with finals if necessary. Since it's on a Sunday, I'm guessing people won't want to play up to 17 games for triple RR plus finals. Plus, this allows for any rounds containing attending teams' contributions in the playoff re-bracket.

Even better. Can we do this? (you're right, I was a little hesitant about asking for potentially 17 games too, but I'd want that over 10+finals)

cvdwightw wrote:

wd4gdz wrote:I just wanted to throw out the fact that Evan Nagler is an awesome reader.

Evan, if you feel like spuriously flying across the country just to read ACF Fall, we have a spot for you (we wouldn't pay for any of your expenses, but the option is there...)

While I appreciate the offer, I'll probably just show up to the Knoxville location and spell the readers who are there for a few rounds each while scorekeeping in other rounds, unless those readers insist on reading all ~15 rounds themselves. We'll see how I'm feeling when I get back to Knoxville late tonight/early tomorrow morning.

Quick results:

After playing a double round robin and then brackets of top and bottom halves:

1st: Vandy A
2nd: Adam Liem/George Stevens (they were one game ahead at the end of the tournament and decided to concede the finals to Vandy in the interest of getting home sooner)
3rd: UTK A

Top scorers:
1st: Adam Liem
2nd: Robert Trent, Vandy A
3rd: George Stevens
4th: Joe Wells, Centre

Thanks to Evan Nagler, Don Windham, and Taylor Kulp for coming just to be staff, and to the ACF Fall editors for producing an excellent set of packets... complete stats will be posted tomorrow.

Unless Vandy lost that last game to UTK, I believe we were tied with them at 2 losses a piece. Either way, my day was too long as it stood and the major traffic jam on the way home didn't help matters.

ClemsonQB wrote:Unless Vandy lost that last game to UTK, I believe we were tied with them at 2 losses a piece. Either way, my day was too long as it stood and the major traffic jam on the way home didn't help matters.

Vandy did lose that game to UTK.

Complete stats are now available for your enjoyment.