What to Do With Teams Who Find ACF Fall Too Hard?

[cvdwightw]

What if there were a packet set that was about as easy as an NAQT IS set, except that contained slightly longer questions and approximated the ACF distribution?

There is. It's written by HSAPQ. The company name says it all - high school. Regardless of how NAQT wants to bill its IS sets, 99% of its business (and thus 99% of its target audience) is high school tournaments. If NAQT can make a little extra money selling its already-produced sets to tournaments for college students, well, they'd be stupid not to consider doing it!

That said, I think that we need to take things in perspective. ACF Fall, the easiest college tournament of the year, is harder than high school questions. No matter how you spin it, this is fact. And sometimes teams and players find ACF Fall too hard. Really, I know it's impossible to believe, but some new teams really are that bad. The vast majority of entering freshmen recruits come in having played either no quizbowl or some variant on terrible speed-check-hose-bowl, and have never been exposed to good quizbowl in any way, shape, or form. You also have some formerly-CBI schools that are in the same boat of "never having been exposed to good quizbowl." So how do we get these teams and players that have no idea what good quizbowl looks like to give good quizbowl a chance without being turned off because the questions are "too hard"? I don't think IS sets are the solution to this problem, but they're the closest thing we have to a solution right now, unless either HSAPQ starts selling its sets on the college market (hint: never gonna happen) or a group of writers gets together and writes the Fall College Novice Tournament to emulate HSAPQ questions.

I think Chris Greenwood makes a very important point (in this thread): if you're going to use an IS or similarly low-difficulty set, placing CUT or similar restrictions is no better than no restrictions at all. One really good player is almost always going to beat four average players; we see this every time someone competes solo at a regular tournament and inevitably finishes in the top half. So just think what that one really good player is going to do to a team of four completely new players. As undergrads keep getting better, the CUT-style rules seem more and more outdated. If Minnesota had the money and the lack of sense, they could probably play their A team each solo and end up taking four of the top six spots (other two spots reserved for one- or two-man teams that catch a Minnesota A member on the inevitable bad packet). You essentially have to restrict the field to players with minimal quizbowl experience; if you're going to use an IS set, I'd restrict the field to players with no meaningful quizbowl experience at all.

I can see a way for NAQT IS-sets to potentially work as "college" sets, but this would require NAQT to keep a very strict eligibility rule: Once you have attended x IS tournaments as a high school or community college student (where x is somewhere above one and below six; for now, I'll assume x to be half the number of IS sets produced the previous year, rounded down), or y NAQT intercollegiate tournaments as a four-year college student (where y is 1 for any division SCT/ICT and no more than 2 for IS-tournaments), you are no longer IS-eligible. This would give players the opportunity to become exposed to "good quizbowl" and then immediately throw them out into the "real quizbowl world" once exposed. This will also give clubs the potential to hang onto players and bring them up to speed without them quitting after their first tournament. If the Fall College Novice Tournament is ever written, then it would have similar, but broader, eligibility restrictions - once you play at this or any other tournament against other college teams, you lose the opportunity to play on this set.

The reality is that we'll always have a high attrition rate as potentially interested recruits find the questions too hard or the competition too tough. Our job is then to figure out how to minimize this attrition rate without compromising good quizbowl. One potential way to do this is to allow them one tournament with ridiculously easy questions and a ridiculously diluted field. This will give them a group of fellow competitors that will be equally struggling at regular circuit tournaments; they'll have other teams that can empathize with their "this is hard" assessment of even a regular novice tournament, and they'll always have a reason to show up: beat those new other teams. It also gives experienced clubs more time to work on getting the "it's too hard" or "I'm not good enough" taste out of newer players' mouths before they get poisoned by it. If we can get new players/clubs hooked on the positive aspects of the game without them focusing on the negative aspects ("these questions are too hard for me, and my opponents are too good"), then they may be more willing to keep working at it when the questions are harder and the competition is tougher.

Anyway, I'm interested in seeing if other people have other thoughts for retaining these new players/clubs that we're potentially losing because they're not even ready to make the leap to ACF Fall.

[Important Bird Area]

I crossposted with Dwight in the other thread, but this seems like a good place to ask about the future of C-series.

Idea being: convert 1-2 IS sets per year to the SCT distribution. Provide them to hosts who wish to attract teams in the situation Dwight proposes (teams that are right now sub-mediocre on ACF Fall or DII SCT).

[at your pleasure]

Could anyone else see these also appealing to high schools that want to buy a set from NAQT but are put off by the high proportion of mathcomp/trash/general knowledge in IS sets?

[Important Bird Area]

Oh, absolutely- if high school teams wanted to play a college-distribution set as a way to prepare for harder tournaments (such as a late-spring invitational for nationals prep), we would be happy to provide sets for that purpose. Indeed, we already make the DII SCT itself available on this basis.

[No Rules Westbrook]

I dont mean to say much, cause this really isn't something I have a huge stake in.

But, I don't think minimizing the attrition rate is really the best goal. A lot of people seem to have this notion that you can convince people to like good qb if you just coax them slowly enough. Eh, I really can't imagine a hypothetical decent qb player who would have been scared off by acf fall, but who we saved by implementing something easier and/or less scary.

I know that there's value to retaining people even if they don't ever turn out to be all that skilled or motivated, but at some point, you do have to say to people "either this is something you want to do or it's not." If people try football and realize they're awful at it, then often they quit, but that's just how things are - I don't think you can "trick" people into believing that they want to do something.

[Mechanical Beasts]

Well, to continue the unnecessary football analogy, I don't think Carson Palmer's first football practice ever featured his coach saying "this is football, kid" and then telling James Harrison to fuck him up. Similarly, I think it's quite valuable to make it clear that quizbowl is not about mostly sitting there insensate while your opponents talk about concepts you've never heard of. They will have to eventually decide whether or not they want to do quizbowl, sure, but maybe we don't want them to make the wrong decision by making them want to make it too early.

[jonpin]

I know that there's value to retaining people even if they don't ever turn out to be all that skilled or motivated, but at some point, you do have to say to people "either this is something you want to do or it's not." If people try football and realize they're awful at it, then often they quit, but that's just how things are - I don't think you can "trick" people into believing that they want to do something.

<sportsanalogy>It's a valid point, but when someone starts playing football, they're not expected to play the Chicago Bears in their first game. Some of the people under consideration may not be <i>awful</i>, but would feel they were by being over their head against the field of established teams they'd be facing, especially without a prior chance to build that "this is when I buzz" confidence. It's the difference between people who can't catch a football, and people who can catch a football but will drop it when they get hit hard (if that makes sense).The former were never going to make a mark; the latter might be scared off or might stick around depending on their first impressions.</sportsanalogy>

It really is a double-edged sword. Some people who are new to Good Quizbowl will go to ACF Fall, lose to Sorice (for instance) 450-20 and say "Fuck this." Other people who are new to Good Quizbowl will go to ACF Fall, lose to Sorice 450-20 and say "Holy crap, I wish I was that good."

[cvdwightw]

I know that there's value to retaining people even if they don't ever turn out to be all that skilled or motivated, but at some point, you do have to say to people "either this is something you want to do or it's not." If people try football and realize they're awful at it, then often they quit, but that's just how things are - I don't think you can "trick" people into believing that they want to do something.

Inevitably, this is going to happen regardless of how slowly you coddle people along. We're always going to have a high attrition rate anyways. But what I think is a manageable goal is to get people to quit because they don't like the game itself, or don't like it as much as other stuff - not because they went to one tournament, scored practically no points, listened to a bunch of questions on things they've never heard of, got beat up on by a bunch of average or good teams, had a miserable time, and concluded that quizbowl was no fun before they even had a chance to evaluate whether quizbowl was fun or not.

<sportsanalogy>It's a valid point, but when someone starts playing football, they're not expected to play the Chicago Bears in their first game. Some of the people under consideration may not be awful, but would feel they were by being over their head against the field of established teams they'd be facing, especially without a prior chance to build that "this is when I buzz" confidence. It's the difference between people who can't catch a football, and people who can catch a football but will drop it when they get hit hard (if that makes sense).The former were never going to make a mark; the latter might be scared off or might stick around depending on their first impressions.</sportsanalogy>

<sports analogy>Pinyan doesn't have it quite right. It's the difference between people who can catch a Nerf football in a pickup flag football game and that's as good as they'll ever be, and people who can catch a Nerf football in a pickup flag football game and would make a decent receiver if they ever got used to this new, bigger ball and the fact that people can hit you. There's no good way to tell a priori which group a given player's in.</sports analogy>

[grapesmoker]

It really is a double-edged sword. Some people who are new to Good Quizbowl will go to ACF Fall, lose to Sorice (for instance) 450-20 and say "Fuck this." Other people who are new to Good Quizbowl will go to ACF Fall, lose to Sorice 450-20 and say "Holy crap, I wish I was that good."

Not that I'm one to tell Mike Sorice what to do, but I'm guessing the problem here, if anything, is very experienced players playing ACF Fall, rather than teams that haven't played before showing up to a tournament essentially geared towards them.

This is one of the few times when I agree with Ryan. While we should do things that ease the transition to the college game for new teams (like host novice events, say) at some point we need to stop and think about trying to bend over backwards to retain that one extra team or whatever. Quizbowl is quizbowl; it involves knowing stuff, and if you play three matches, you can figure out if you like this game or not. We do not need to continually contort ourselves to offer yet another stepping stone to the college game. Some people will stick with it and some people won't and the improvements that are happening at the high school level are going to feed an entire new and expanded generation of good high school players into the circuit. If a hypothetical ex-CBI team can't bear to finish with a losing record and hear questions longer than three lines, that's sad, but the marginal utility of attracting such teams vs. the effort required to simplify the game for them is simply too much.

[setht]

I don't think minimizing the attrition rate is really the best goal. A lot of people seem to have this notion that you can convince people to like good qb if you just coax them slowly enough. Eh, I really can't imagine a hypothetical decent qb player who would have been scared off by acf fall, but who we saved by implementing something easier and/or less scary.

I know that there's value to retaining people even if they don't ever turn out to be all that skilled or motivated, but at some point, you do have to say to people "either this is something you want to do or it's not." If people try football and realize they're awful at it, then often they quit, but that's just how things are - I don't think you can "trick" people into believing that they want to do something.

To some extent I agree with Ryan--no amount of playing really easy tournaments is going to provide adequate preparation for competing at ACF Nationals (and I don't mean preparation in the sense of scoring points--I mean in terms of what the game is like, and finding the enjoyment that level of competition affords). However, I think his argument ignores the fact that quizbowl is, for most people, a social, team-oriented activity. It may be hard to imagine a player who will ever be a top-shelf ACF Nationals competitor who can't handle losing matches at their first ACF Fall, but it's not hard for me to imagine a club with 1 or 2 players who could become high-level players in a couple years plus 3 or 2 players who aren't going to be interested in that. It's not hard for me to imagine a club with a driver who is less serious about quizbowl than some of the other club members. It's not hard for me to imagine that a tough early tournament schedule might drive away the less-serious people and strand some potentially-serious people, and it's not hard for me to imagine that those potentially-serious people might wind up giving up on quizbowl in the absence of teammates and/or a driver. All this seems easier for me to imagine in less-established clubs, and in regions with fewer established clubs.

-Seth

[Joe Romersa]

Is the problem really that ACF Fall is too hard for some teams, or some teams play against teams that are too good during ACF Fall? Its not the harder packets, but the harder competition?

[Golran]

There are still a number of teams with Bonus Conversion under 10, which I would say means that this tournament is too hard for them.

[Skepticism and Animal Feed]

Empirically, I think there are complaints about tournament difficulty even at sites with a universally weak field -- i.e., where each game is actually competitive but lots of TUs go dead. While I cherish the concept that difficulty is defined by your opponent, it seems that this is the minority view.

[Important Bird Area]

What Seth just said: attracting more teams and players, even marginal players who may only ever be interested in playing 2-3 times a year at relatively easy events, has real value to the community.

It's not hard to imagine that teams scoring 8-10 ppb at ACF Fall might be frustrated by both the competition and the packets.

[Matt Weiner]

There are still a number of teams with Bonus Conversion under 10, which I would say means that this tournament is too hard for them.

The plot of bonus conversion intervals on ACF Fall last year was nearly a perfect bell curve:

25-30: 4 teams
20-25: 23 teams
16-20: 44 teams
11-15: 47 teams
5-10: 20 teams
0-5: 4 teams

144 teams played. Team #71 had a BC of 15.31, while team #72 had a BC of 14.94.

This suggests to me that, contrary to the claim that ACF Fall was "too hard", it in fact had the most precisely and correctly managed difficulty of any quizbowl tournament in history.

[Important Bird Area]

Empirically, I think there are complaints about tournament difficulty even at sites with a universally weak field -- i.e., where each game is actually competitive but lots of TUs go dead.

The latter is of course a sign that the set is too hard for the weak field.

There are still a number of teams with Bonus Conversion under 10, which I would say means that this tournament is too hard for them.

The plot of bonus conversion intervals on ACF Fall last year was nearly a perfect bell curve:

25-30: 4 teams
20-25: 23 teams
16-20: 44 teams
11-15: 47 teams
5-10: 20 teams
0-5: 4 teams

144 teams played. Team #71 had a BC of 15.31, while team #72 had a BC of 14.94.

This suggests to me that, contrary to the claim that ACF Fall was "too hard", it in fact had the most precisely and correctly managed difficulty of any quizbowl tournament in history.

"Too hard" being of course relative to the field; imagine a tournament with, say, five teams in that 5-10 category, and four other brand-new teams a bit weaker than that.

[grapesmoker]

To some extent I agree with Ryan--no amount of playing really easy tournaments is going to provide adequate preparation for competing at ACF Nationals (and I don't mean preparation in the sense of scoring points--I mean in terms of what the game is like, and finding the enjoyment that level of competition affords). However, I think his argument ignores the fact that quizbowl is, for most people, a social, team-oriented activity. It may be hard to imagine a player who will ever be a top-shelf ACF Nationals competitor who can't handle losing matches at their first ACF Fall, but it's not hard for me to imagine a club with 1 or 2 players who could become high-level players in a couple years plus 3 or 2 players who aren't going to be interested in that. It's not hard for me to imagine a club with a driver who is less serious about quizbowl than some of the other club members. It's not hard for me to imagine that a tough early tournament schedule might drive away the less-serious people and strand some potentially-serious people, and it's not hard for me to imagine that those potentially-serious people might wind up giving up on quizbowl in the absence of teammates and/or a driver. All this seems easier for me to imagine in less-established clubs, and in regions with fewer established clubs.

We can certainly imagine anything we like, but I think the actual data of tournament attendance over the last few years says that in fact many teams do come to ACF Fall and stick around on the circuit. Whoever these teams are that are discouraged by their ACF Fall performance, they're very much in the minority and while I certainly don't suggest they be driven away, there's no reasonable way to keep those teams and still be running anything that looks like a collegiate quizbowl event. We have this debate every year for some reason because every year someone thinks they've invented the stepping-stone theory, but it never actually works.

[Matt Weiner]

Why do we need to imagine it? Was there such a tournament or not?

[Important Bird Area]

Because Dwight started the thread by asking about new teams:

I'm interested in seeing if other people have other thoughts for retaining these new players/clubs that we're potentially losing because they're not even ready to make the leap to ACF Fall.

and I thought it was a useful question, for bringing ex-CBI teams into good quizbowl and expanding the circuit to places it doesn't exist now (like the mountain West).

[at your pleasure]

What are the chances that some of the ex-CBI programs that'll die out will be revived by incoming freshmen who were serious in high school and that at least some weaker players will stick around for social reasons?

[Mechanical Beasts]

The plot of bonus conversion intervals on ACF Fall last year was nearly a perfect bell curve:

25-30: 4 teams
20-25: 23 teams
16-20: 44 teams
11-15: 47 teams
5-10: 20 teams
0-5: 4 teams

144 teams played. Team #71 had a BC of 15.31, while team #72 had a BC of 14.94.

This suggests to me that, contrary to the claim that ACF Fall was "too hard", it in fact had the most precisely and correctly managed difficulty of any quizbowl tournament in history.

No one would deny that the ACF Fall 2008 editors correctly and remarkably anticipated the strength of the field playing ACF Fall. No one is saying that ACF Fall was "too hard."

People are saying that ACF Fall may have been "too hard" for some teams to get the appropriate hard-on for quizbowl, and it certainly may have been for the bottom 24. I don't really know where I stand on what ought to be done with that bottom 24; we can either say "start knowing things" or we can say "this tournament might feel more comfortable" and offer them an alternative. All I know is that I won't be writing that easier alternative.

[Mike Bentley]

From my own personal experience, I certainly felt the first tournament I went to was too hard and was very discouraged by it. My high school quizbowl experience involved playing on Chip questions that were short, and probably around 50% of the time really easy. Sure these were terrible questions and frustrating at times, but throughout the match I felt like I had a very high utility--if I had just buzzed a little faster on question X, Y and Z we would have won that match. In this first tournament I played (which was whatever Cornell hosted in the fall of 2004--which I think was something like a "regular season" tournament) I maybe had 7 buzzes the entire day. Overall it just wasn't nearly as fun as high school quizbowl was and I seriously considered not coming back after that. It wasn't until I played a trash tournament in November that I really had a good time at a quizbowl tournament (not that I was answering too many more questions, but I at least had the feeling that I could have answered more questions because of the familiarity of the topics). It probably wasn't until my sophomore year that I really started having a good time at quizbowl tournaments as I had finally grasped enough of the canon to figure out what I knew and what to be satisfied with when playing tournaments.

Actually, now that I've finished writing this, I remember that I attended SNEWT my freshman and sophomore years and I think that was a great success. This was a tournament on easy questions (I think they were Delta Burke mirrors) and limited to just freshmen and sophomores. In established circuits, I think it would be a great idea to bring a tournament of this type back. I think one of the reasons that NAQT is so popular amongst teams that aren't circuit regulars is the fact that they segregate the DII field and let them play each other on easier questions. I don't see why we can't have an mACF event of this style with strict eligibility restrictions (for instance, players must be in their first or second year of college quizbowl with a "gentleman's agreement" that the better players still eligible will stay away). This won't even require a new set. From what I've observed, high-quality high school sets do a very good job of distinguishing low-level college teams. Why not run one or two events a year like this on an HSAPQ set? I fail to see how newer players wouldn't benefit from this. I still haven't seen great numbers of players who weren't high school circuit regulars join teams and regularly attend events. Even if this somehow creates an atmosphere where people only attend easy tournaments (which is unlikely, especially if the 2 year rule is kept), the alternative is the current situation where these pepole just don't stick around at all.

[... and the chaos of Mexican modernity]

I think Jerry pointed this out earlier in this thread. Do the less experienced teams find it too difficult because you have teams that are way more experienced that play against teams newer to quizbowl (e.g Brown A vs U.S Naval Academy A, Harvard A vs Iona A) or are the questions way too hard? I mean you could limit certain players from playing if you want to make it a lot easier, but there would still be objections. I mean just looking at some of the standings from ACF Fall there is clearly more teams that go to ACF Fall more then any other tournament (Excluding NAQT SCT and ICT), and I don't see any wrong in making some of the questions easier but with a longer tossup maybe 8 lines or so like Dwight said earlier.

[jonpin]

Even if this somehow creates an atmosphere where people only attend easy tournaments (which is unlikely, especially if the 2 year rule is kept), the alternative is the current situation where these pepole just don't stick around at all.

There's already been something mentioned as to the utility of keeping marginal players on good teams interested. One more potential benefit is the player who tags along who knows he isn't very good, but finds it entertaining and social and is willing to help staff an event.

The other issue has been the utility of keeping marginal teams/programs interested. Here's something I just thought of: The more Podunk State-type teams that stick around, the more teams there are that can come to a tournament you're hosting, which means more fundraising and more money that you have available to go to the tournaments that Podunk State doesn't give a flip about. For teams whose budget is infinity dollars, this may not matter, but for teams which have to beg for whatever crumb their student activities board will throw, another $50 entry fee received is another $10 each team member doesn't need to pay to fly to Nationals.

[No Rules Westbrook]

Zach, tightly restricting the length of questions in novice events is a key feature to making them approachable. We've established in here many times that the "appearance of difficulty" matters way more to people than how difficult a tourney really was.

Anyway, Jerry's right, the stepping stones to real college qb have been exhausted.

To anyone still discouraged, I'd offer the following advice as helpful prodding: Good players in qb are not superhuman genies. Have some confidence in yourself that you can be just like them, why can't you? Many many people who've been around in qb admit that they were motivated largely by the impulse of "I can be just as good as that asshole, watch me!" - embrace that spite, it's the most powerful tool you've got.

[grapesmoker]

Six to seven lines is a good length for an ACF Fall tossup. Remember, your awesome leadin about the 5 most famous critical theorists to write about "Billy Budd" is not going to help anyone at this level; all the players who might know such things are not playing this tournament.

As for difficulty of competition, it varies. Obviously if you come to ACF Fall this year and you have to play my esteemed teammate Guy Tabachnick, that might be a rough game if you just came out of Chip-style high school quizbowl. On the other hand, my esteemed former teammate Eric Mukherjee didn't start regularly picking up a buzzer until well into his sophomore year, so it's not like you can't improve if you want to. However, at ACF Fall you will also play many teams that are on your level; the stats Matt posted demonstrate pretty conclusively that last year's edition (which at the time was quite highly praised) hit a very good difficulty mark overall. I don't see anything that suggests that a similar tournament this year wouldn't hit that mark again, which to me means that it's about right for the overall field, even if the tail end of that Gaussian finds it to be more challenging than what they're used to.

[ValenciaQBowl]

I'd just like to follow up to Mike Bentley's point above that the Delta Burke, though understandably (though in my mind, misguidedly) maligned by folks used to standard circuit tournament difficulty, is a good introductory-type tournament to introduce mACF-style quizbowl to brand newbies. As I always remind folks, over half of the field at Valencia's tournament will be playing their first tournament of any kind, and as much as folks at the HS mirror at Penn pointed out last year that they felt the bonuses lacked the easy-middle-hard distinctions they're used to, only TWO TEAMS averaged over 15 ppb (Valencia and Chipola, unsurprisingly) at my site, suggesting I over-shot difficulty in the bonuses. There was an easy-middle-hard distinction, but those playing it up north were too unfamiliar with the CC audience I'm writing for to always see it. (This is not to say that the DB sets can't be better written/targeted, etc., obviously).

I write this to offer DB mirror possibilities to any folks who want to run a truly introductory tournament, particularly in areas without strong regular circuit participation. Wash U is probably mirroring, but others who are interested should contact me. As Penn learned last year, DB is not the right difficulty for the established high school teams or for areas with established college circuits, but it might be a good starting point for college teams that are brand new to the game or regions with less regular participation.

PS--this brings out another point: the idea of a dichotomy between HS and college difficulty has eroded enough that it probably barely exists in any meaningful fashion. The strongest HS teams have players who have read (and probably played in) all the college sets of the last couple years (or perhaps have even written whole tournaments hard enough to challenge the best players in the game(!)), and the newest or least connected college teams might comprise people for whom a NAQT IS set is vexing.

[Captain Sinico]

I agree with Chris here: I've often successfully used his sets for introducing our new players to the college game. Also, I'd like to point out that the niche we seem to say we're failing to serve here used to be filled by mACF novice tournaments, which don't seem to exist anymore. Perhaps it's a good time to resurrect that area of the circuit.

MaS

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Is it though? We have EFT, ACF Fall, Minnesota Undergrad, occasionally Illinois Novice as a separate set, and Delta Burke that are all written at a low level that should be accessible to novice players. Maybe they aren't all technically novice tournaments, but I think the difficulty is more what counts.
Edit: I forgot Division 2 at the SCT. Also, I think D2 awards at ACF Fall can kind of make up for a lack of field restrictions, since it still means you're rewarding a novice team.

[Cheynem]

I think "more" novice as opposed to "less" novice is always a good idea. I sincerely hope MUT lasts a long time, but everyone in quizbowl knows how cyclical things are--a few years down the pike, a new cluster of students, who knows what could happen?

I'd also like to see a novice tournament that strenously enforces some eligibility requirements--i.e., if you've ever played collegiate quizbowl (even if you're a freshman), you can't play. Maybe that's draconian and maybe we'd end up with really dinky fields, but I'd be curious to see what would happen.

[cvdwightw]

Is it though? We have EFT, ACF Fall, Minnesota Undergrad, occasionally Illinois Novice as a separate set, and Delta Burke that are all written at a low level that should be accessible to novice players. Maybe they aren't all technically novice tournaments, but I think the difficulty is more what counts.
Edit: I forgot Division 2 at the SCT. Also, I think D2 awards at ACF Fall can kind of make up for a lack of field restrictions, since it still means you're rewarding a novice team.

I agree with you that these tournaments do a great job of being accessible to most novice players - and as Ryan says, maybe if they can't hack it at this level and don't have the desire to get better, they weren't going to be playing long anyways.

What we don't have is a circuit of tournaments where new players and teams can compete against each other for the entirety of a full tournament. Illinois Novice has always been good in this respect, because they make new teams submit questions and keep the field restricted; thus, they give each team the appearance of putting in the work to attend the tournament, while keeping the question difficulty and field strength manageable. Only a few tournaments have any sort of "real" entrance restrictions (no, CUT-style does not count). I can understand where it might be difficult to put more in, since the tournament calendar is already saturated, but it's something to consider.

I also agree with Mike (Cheyne) that it would be interesting to have a tournament reserved explicitly for really new, like first-tournament-ever players. Essentially, it would be like CBI IM difficulty, except that the questions wouldn't suck.

[bmcke]

From this thread plus my experience:

- It's true that a lot of novices don't have any interest in real quizbowl.
- Most of those people can be happy enough playing a circuit of easy tournaments plus trash tournaments.

- It's true that other novices would like playing serious quizbowl.
- Most of them have enough easy tournaments to improve without feeling useless.

It's possible to make the easy tournaments easier, which would cut novices off from the main quizbowl circuit but would keep them happy and participating.

I think the main problem is that not enough new players have an interest in playing serious quizbowl. Is this a matter of recruiting? Maybe there should be a discussion about how to recruit students who will like quizbowl and who will succeed at quizbowl.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

I think the problem is that teams that are sort of infected by an anti-ACF (or whatever) mentality don't build the proper expectations to their novices from the get go. At Mizzou last year, I don't think anyone that ever went to any tournaments complained that they didn't get what they were expecting (and we went to every ACF event of the year, plus things like Cardinal Classic, Minnesota Undergrad, and EFT). I'm sure this is because from the very beginning of the year I read packets from ACF Fall-upwards and immediately explained to any new players what made longer, pyramidal questions the ideal setup (also I made it clear that we were going to try and avoid anything else, since otherwise all we would have been able to go to would be Wash U's old IS set tournament). Based on my experiences, I think it's safe to say that this mentality about how ACF Fall is too hard to be worth their time is a fault that lies more with club leaders for not doing everything they can to make well-written college quizbowl the expected kind.

[Ethnic history of the Vilnius region]

I think the main problem is that not enough new players have have an interest in playing serious quizbowl. Is this a matter of recruiting? Maybe there should be a discussion about how to recruit students who will like quizbowl and who will succeed at quizbowl.

Basically, I think what Charlie said is correct. The problem that lots of new programs have isn’t so much recruiting people who are interested in good quizbowl but developing an interest in good quizbowl internally in those programs in the first place. Obviously, many programs that have trouble on novice sets consist of players with little or no quizbowl experience. It’s easy for new programs to quickly get alienated by novice level questions that consist mostly of things they’ve never heard of, and if there is no one in the club who wants to take the lead and orient it towards good quizbowl, it's not going to work out. The chances of such teams not lasting more than a few years are pretty good, but I think it helps to engage those program when possible with things like direct e-mail and talking to them at tournaments. And I wouldn't be opposed to a true intro style tournament below ACF Fall level in difficulty with really strict eligibility requirements.

Getting back to the issue of recruiting, I don’t know if there is a way to recruit in a way that will attract specific types of people. Trying to attract as many people to practices as possible seems the way to go as far as I can tell. Directly contacting freshmen with known high school quizbowl experience, posting fliers, manning student activity fairs, having pizza at early practices, and word of mouth all seem like decent ways of recruiting anyone who would be interested in quizbowl.

After you've gotten people to the practice, it’s a matter of retaining people who will be interesting in being involved in an organization that embraces good quizbowl. You don’t want to retain all of the people who come for free pizza and thought quizbowl is Trivial Pursuit with buzzers, but you don’t want to drive off strangers to good quizbowl who are frustrated by novice level questions that might as well be Nats level for them. People who want a bar trivia-like atmosphere will be driven off by having to sit through 2 or 3 rounds of novice sets on stuff they’ve never heard of and don’t care to know about. The trick is retaining, say, Mike Bentley. To do this, I don’t think there’s a problem with sprinkling practices with some high school questions, Delta Burke-like events, and trash. I’ve seen plenty of valuable teammates in my career derive enjoyment from such questions when things like EFT were kicking their ass.