The best reason I’ve received is that it costs less to host a tournament at a university than at a hotel. But these are not the only two options for tournament sites. And given the myriad problems with university hosting (some of which I will present below), I think it is time for a change.
Here are some of the problems with hosting at a university (particularly one on the East Coast):
- The hosting fees. ACF must delegate a sizeable portion of its yearly budget towards paying universities for hosting fees, some of which are quite steep.
- Significant effort must be put into setting up classrooms to be match-ready. Some of the buildings or rooms that the university provides can be inconvenient for quiz bowl gameplay or organization.
- Universities selected are often inconvenient for large swaths of the field. This year’s nationals is in Duke, and players from California must pay something on the order of $1,000 for seven-hour flights. If they do not want to miss class on Friday, they must also take a red-eye into an already grueling tournament.
- The match schedule is cramped, meaning that each player spends hours upon hours (and pays hundreds of dollars) just to fly in, play some quiz bowl, and fly out, without having the chance to experience anything else at ACF Nats. I’d be curious to see stats for retention rates following each national tournament, but I’m confident in inferring that the grueling experience of Nats (which allows for very little time to tour the campus or explore the surrounding city) makes at least some players quit.
The logical first counter to this point is that it would be impossible for this to logistically work. Thus, I will outline what I envision for the logistics of such an event:
- There is a central command center with tournament directors, drinks and snacks for players and staff, and restrooms. This command center may be housed just outside a major building at the park.
- To accommodate each of 6 preliminary brackets, 6 sites, each a 15-minute walk from the command center, are established, in every direction. Each of these sites will then host 4 games, laid out in a square formation with each vertex of the square about a 3-5 minute walk from the next to prevent players from overhearing other rounds, while also allowing them to see all rounds so they don’t get lost.
- An opening meeting would take place for all teams, using a loudspeaker to amplify the tournament director’s voice. Everything would happen similarly to a regular tournament.
- At the start of the tournament, 6 “overall staffers” would be assigned to guide players to their playing sites. These “overall staffers” would stay at the playing site the whole time in the case of any (non-life-threatening emergency) and could ask for backup from the central command center at any point.
- Each game will be hosted on either a picnic table or perhaps on the ground (if someone cannot play on the ground, they can request that their matches take place on a picnic table or the like). Regular buzzer systems will be used, which are plugged into portable batteries. Each game has a backup portable battery (and there are spares in the central command center). During lunch breaks and the overnight break, a tournament director drives the portable batteries somewhere to charge.
- Communications would take place over Discord and email. This would entail that the park in question must have internet access, which perhaps makes some parks a no-go but which I suspect makes most (or at least many) parks workable.
- When a round concludes, the players of that round would stand up. Once all four rounds stand up, teams would proceed to their next room.
- Once the preliminary rounds conclude, players would be free to drive anywhere for lunch, and told to return to the central command center by a specific time, Then, players would be handed their schedules and led to one of now four sites for their playoff brackets, arranged in a hexagon pattern.
- At the end of the day and the end of the tournament, the buzzers and batteries would be packed up and sent back to the central command center, where they would either be charged or given back to teams.
- Hosting in a national park costs $0. ACF can use its newly cleared-up funds for other endeavors, like promoting quiz bowl or paying editors and staffers equitable fees.
- There are many national parks in the middle of the country, allowing for much easier travel arrangements that do not disadvantage certain segments of the country that must pay more and for longer flights than others.
- Players have the chance to play quiz bowl at a national park! Instead of being crammed in a room playing quiz bowl, players now have the chance to experience the great outdoors. They can play quiz bowl while watching beautiful mountains in the distance, or surrounded by birds and squirrels and other wildlife. I think this would make players have a much better experience, and would perhaps remove the grueling aspect of Nats to some extent.
- This does not seem significantly more difficult to arrange logistically; perhaps the only difference is that there is plenty of precedent to draw on when hosting at a university. But universities can sometimes be unreliable, and at least I know that players often got lost in the maze that was the MIT building last time.
- Significantly less time would be needed to set up chairs and buzzers in each room, and then put up placards and signs telling teams which room is where (and still have teams get lost). Having six set locations, with “overall staffers” there to guide teams, as well as Google Maps on hand, seems to be much better.
- The weather. We don’t want rain to damage buzzer systems and drench players, essentially. The solution to this is probably just to host in an unrainy place.
- Accessibility issues. Players who need accessibility accommodations would find it harder to play in a large open space. I think this is workable by perhaps making one of the spaces somewhat closer to the central command center, and asking teams to inform tournament directors beforehand of any issues.
- National parks can be more remote. I think this is not necessarily true; there are usually plenty of buses into national parks, as well as hotels on site. I’m not familiar with the cost of hotels, but this would not fall on the shoulders of ACF, and I suspect they are not much steeper than the cost of hotels in New York City or Durham. In addition, if food becomes an issue, then ACF can cater and ask teams to pay for the food.
Again, the proposal may sound absurdist at first, but I genuinely believe that there are clear problems with the current system. Something like this could be a viable solution; national parks seem the most logical to me, but regular parks or other open spaces also seem like preferable options. Even take the outdoors out of the equation if you want - does it really have to be an East Coast university?