A Beginner's Guide to Fantasy Quiz Bowl

[ClevelandCavaliers]

Introduction

We live in a society in which every major sport has an accompanying “fantasy” format. These formats, in which fans follow along with and cheer for players and teams they’d never otherwise pay attention to, are a crucial factor behind the sports’ growth and popularity.

This post argues that a similar format can and should be implemented for quiz bowl. In its first section, my post describes how such a format might be implemented. My post goes on to outline a potential “Fantasy QB” drafting strategy. Finally, this post puts forward an “Average Draft Position” to aid less familiar fantasy players and teams in deciding who to draft.

A quick note that because I am a college player, the Average Draft Position I propose is limited to college players. I unfortunately don't have sufficient expertise to make a similar post for high school or open players, so prospective competitors within those demographics are strongly encouraged to make their own average draft positions in preparation for fantasy drafts.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Part One: Why Fantasy QB?

Major organizations and authorities in the quiz bowl world have maintained for years that they’re dedicated to growing the sport. To this end, many have spent countless hours conducting outreach campaigns to “quiz bowl deserts” throughout the country. These efforts are admirable, but they fail to address the central problem that there are no “fans” of quiz bowl outside of its players, which limits the growth quiz bowl can ever achieve.

The logical next step is to expand the reach of quiz bowl to non-players by making it a spectator sport. But quiz bowl does not naturally lend itself easily to this — and not, as some might argue, because it’s a “sport of the brain.” Jeopardy! is the most popular TV show in America, and “University Challenges” and “High School Quiz Shows” attract millions of viewers and hefty sponsorships. So what’s going on with quiz bowl?

Some might argue that quiz bowl questions are too long and hard. The average non-quizbowler might rapidly lose interest, they say, when watching people answer questions on “triphenylphosphine” and “Robert E. Sherwood.” But this argument also does not hold up under the tiniest scrutiny; people watch the NFL all the time knowing that they themselves would expire upon contact with a 400-pound defensive tackle, and people are transfixed by 0-0 soccer matches for 90 minutes at a time while knowing they’d never be able to keep up.

The real problem is that there currently exists no route through which non-quizbowlers can get invested in players and teams and truly feel enthusiastic and excited about the prospect of watching quiz bowl games and following quiz bowl tournaments.

This is a difficult problem to solve, and several complementary steps would have to be taken to address it. We would need to institute a norm of tracking live stats and scores at regional tournaments, and open-source a system to do that. We would need to livestream matches at both national and top regional tournaments, which requires the presence of high-quality cameras and livestreaming infrastructure. We would have to at the very least post recordings of national tournaments on time.

But as a first step, we can institute a fantasy format for quiz bowl, to drive engagement and interest from both within the quiz bowl community itself and potential outside spectators. To this end, it's time to introduce Fantasy QB.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Part Two: What’s Fantasy QB?

Before beginning, I want to make a quick note on terminology. To avoid confusion, from here on out, competitors refers to those playing the game of fantasy QB, and players refers to those playing the game of QB.

At its crux, fantasy QB is a way for competitors to draft teams of their favorite quiz bowl players, and follow them as they compete in a variety of quiz bowl tournaments throughout the season. Much like fantasy football, competitors tweak their lineups and make in-season trades based on how players are performing and what tournaments they plan on competing in. At the end of the season, a series of "playoffs" will be run based on performances on national tournaments, and the winners would receive either a tangible award or sizable ego boost. Losers would be dealt with accordingly.

So how will this work? We begin with the Fantasy QB Draft, which takes place before the start of the season. This draft would work much like fantasy football or basketball do; competitors get together in a room or voice chat, and draft players in a snake format. I recommend that competitors draft 10-12 rounds of players in order to have a full lineup to pull rosters of 7-8 players from, but this is variable. By default, any player can be chosen at any time during this draft, but I suggest some restrictions and variants later in this post as well.

Competitors keep track of their lineups in a public Google Sheet where, before every weekend, they must lock in (or out) any players who will be playing that weekend. Once the players begin their first round, lineup changes featuring that player (on that set) can no longer be made.

To illustrate, say ARCADIA is being hosted at Berkeley this Saturday, and Michał Gerasimiuk is suffering from a bad migraine. The onus is on the competitor who drafted Gerasimiuk to determine whether they want to take the risk and play him; after he begins his first round, his presence inside or outside the "ARCADIA" lineup is no longer mutable. Even if Gerasimiuk decides to stay home and the competitors play him, they will have to take the 0.00 points Gerasimiuk provides.

After tournaments conclude, scoring will work as follows. The player’s points per game (PPG) will be multiplied by their team’s points per bonus (PPB), all of that will be multiplied by [1 + (2 times the player’s powers per game (P/G)) - the player’s negs per game (N/G). All of that will then be divided by 100 to make scores easier to keep track of. Or to summarize:

PPG * PPB * [1 + (2 * P/G) - N/G] / 100

(Note that a different coefficient can be placed in front of the P/G if you want to weigh powers more or less, and scores can be multiplied by certain numbers if you'd like to weigh certain tournaments more than others based on tournament difficulty and importance.)

Before national tournaments, scores will be tabulated, and those with the highest scores will advance to a single-elimination playoffs on ICT and ACF Nationals.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Part Three: Fantasy QB Drafting Strategy

While you can make in-season trades and acquire players from the waiver wire, your fortunes for the season will be predicated largely upon how well you do in the fantasy draft. It's thus very important to understand the complexities of the fantasy format to properly set yourself up for success.

There are a few things you need to understand. First, there is a meaningful distinction between regular season fantasy quiz bowl and postseason fantasy quiz bowl. During the regular season, question sets tend to be easier, and blanket generalists without much support are able to score highly on easier tournaments by virtue of getting high power counts. However, during the postseason, question sets become more difficult, and lower-scoring players on good teams are more likely to score highly. Balancing players who will perform well during the regular season with those who will perform well in the postseason is thus a must.

The most valuable players in fantasy quiz bowl are those tier-1 generalists who will play a large quantity of regular season tournaments, and who also reside on good-enough teams to achieve decent score at national tournaments. These generalists are very, very rare. Thus, in your first round, it's critical that you draft one of these tier-1 superstars.

In your first round, while it might be tempting to select the "best player available," it's important to consider that many of the best graduate students are unlikely to play easier tournaments which can inflate your fantasy quiz bowl numbers. Thus, I suggest that you look for top, motivated undergraduate students first and foremost to stock your team in this round.

Note that this is probably going to be your most important pick. One of the idiosyncrasies of fantasy football is that the best players in the game are likely to score significantly more than the average role player, to a greater degree than, i.e., the distinction between Saquon Barkley and D'Andre Swift. It's thus critical that you get this pick right, and that you maximize your team's winning chances both in the regular season and in the postseason.

Some players who might fit this mold are Richard Niu, Arya Karthik, and Eve Fleisig.

In your second and third rounds, you should find both high-quality elite regular season scorers and tier-1 graduate superstars who can carry your team through a national tournament. Elite regular season scorers in particular are a bit more common, especially those on weaker teams, but their success is unlikely to translate to the same extent to the playoffs; hence the round 2 designation.

Some players who might fit this mold are Ryan Rosenberg, Mitch McCullar, and Christopher Sims.

In your fourth and fifth rounds, look for high-quality specialists who are able to score highly at national tournaments. Not only would this allow you to prepare for the playoffs, but it gives you a cushion. If you're on the precipice of the playoffs in the final weeks, you can trade these specialists to a contender in exchange for high regular season scorers who can carry you through the rest of the regular season.

Some players who might fit this mold are Cooper Roh, Annabelle Yang, and Liam Kusalik.

In your sixth and seventh rounds, look for hidden gems. If you're playing with several well-versed players, most of the obvious choices will likely be gone from the board, but many players with high ceilings, especially at national tournaments, are likely to remain.

Some players who might fit this mold are Rohan Kher, Jack Rado, and Guy Indorante.

In your subsequent rounds, stock your team with proven performers who can be counted on to score decent points if your top players are unable to make a tournament. These players should, if possible, have a track record of attending as many tournaments as they can. These players are more common, but the success of your season depends on finding those proven performers in the team situations that best allow them to perform well.

This drafting strategy is quite basic, and I expect that more detailed and effective drafting strategies are very possible. For maximum strategic enjoyment, consider using one of the variants included in the addendum to this post, especially those that require drafting a set number of specialists/generalists or a set number of players from each year.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Part Four: Average Draft Positions

The following ADP will be premised on the Mini-Fantasy QB variant, in preparation for ICT and ACF Nationals this year. Thus, many players worthy of being drafted who have not made the cut for both nationals are likely to be left off the list.

In addition, note that this list is not a ranking of how good quiz bowl players are relative to one another; there's plenty of room for that in a different post. This ranking is purely based on each quiz bowler's projected fantasy value.

Without further ado, you can find the average draft positions attached here.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Addendum: Variants

There are several variants to this standard Fantasy QB format for different circumstances. If you're satisfied with the default format, feel free to skip this section and go directly to Fantasy QB Drafting Strategy and Average Draft Positions.

The first is Year-Locked Fantasy QB. This format mandates that competitors must play a set number of players from each academic class (i.e., 2 freshman/sophomores, 2 junior/seniors, and 2 graduate students, a long with 2 FLEX players). This format forces competitors to balance experience and potential in constructing their lineups.

A second, alternative way of playing Fantasy QB with restrictions is Position-Locked Fantasy QB. This format mandates that competitors draft and play a certain number of players in each position. These positions can be categorized as specialists vs generalists, or even better, specialist vs Amogh-type generalists (AT) vs Gerasimiuk-type generalists (GT).

The distinction between the latter is more complicated, but essentially, AT generalists exhibit wide coverage without any extreme spikes in coverage, while GT generalists exhibit wide coverage with one or more extreme spikes in coverage. The distinction can be blurred at times, but to illustrate, some examples of AT generalists include Amogh Kulkarni (its namesake), Aum Mundhe, and myself, while examples of GT generalists might include Michał Gerasimiuk (its namesake), Forrest Weintraub, and Jason Hong. To summarize, GT generalists are the wide receivers of the quiz bowl world, whereas AT generalists are the running backs.

To aid in understanding this distinction, I've added these classifications to the Average Draft Position spreadsheet. If you decide to play this variant, I recommend asking that players include 2 AT generalists, 2 GT generalists, 2 specialists, and 2 flex players in their lineup for every set.

The third variant is Mini-Fantasy QB. Given that we've already made it a decent chunk of the way through the year, this variant could be optimal for fantasy drafts in advance of the upcoming national tournaments. Essentially, instead of drafting players in anticipation of a full season, Mini-Fantasy QB competitors draft players for a specific tournament. As a result, certain players who have expressed that they will not play the tournament are not drafted altogether. With some friends, I participated in a MIni-Fantasy QB draft prior to SCT, and can say that while it did not afford the constant excitement full-season Fantasy QB would have, it was more than worth it.

The fourth variant is Dynasty Fantasy QB, in which competitors retain a certain number of players from year to year, much like dynasty fantasy football. At the start of each new season, competitors participant in an entry draft in which incoming graduate school and undergraduate freshmen are drafted. This format would make long-term prospecting of players much more important, encouraging competitors to draft up-and-coming high school players as well as emerging college talents.

The fifth and final variant is Auction-Draft Fantasy QB. Instead of participating in a snake draft format, competitors would have a set budget (i.e., $200) at the beginning of the draft, which they can use to bid on each player. The highest bidder would receive the player, before competitors would move on to bidding on the next player.

The best fantasy QB formats are likely a combination of these variants specifically tailored to each fantasy draft group's dynamics, preferences, and idiosyncrasies. Happy drafting!

[Mike Bentley]

I haven't read this whole post, which I strongly suspect is at least partly sarcastic, but as the winner of quizbowl's first-ever fantasy quizbowl league, let me point you to: https://www.qbwiki.com/wiki/Fantasy_Quizbowl_League

[Santa Claus]

For everyone's convenience here are a few links to previous times this has been held as well:

2019-2020
2018-2019
2013-2014
2009-2010 (draft liveblog)
2008-2009 (draft liveblog)

edit: I've taken the liberty of updating the wiki page that Mike linked as well

[Good Goblin Housekeeping]

announcing that i have changed my position to specialist entirely for taysom hill-esque fantasy consequences

[High Dependency Unit]

Drafting yourself is an underrated strategy.

[wadegilespromoter]

Very interesting post that, while I don't believe you are 100% serious, serve as an interesting thought exercise.
DISCLAIMER: I know nothing about fantasy sports.

We would need to livestream matches at both national and top regional tournaments, which requires the presence of high-quality cameras and livestreaming infrastructure

The problem with this is first of all a) cost for cameras and livestream-capable infrastructure (which presumably teams will need to absorb by higher fees, which suck), b) that ACF regionals is run similarly to that of Fall and Winter logistically, with the exception that the former is used as qualifiers for Nats. What I mean by this is that regions are quite local when compared to the grandeur of the US. The first round read on the East Coast at 9:00 ET would be made public for those on the West coast at 9:00 PT. This is made even worse with the commendable spread of Quizbowl to the UK, several time zone ahead of ET. Also, this would just be too many rounds happening at the same time for your average non-quizbowler (save for family) to ever be interested.
With NAQT, there is an added issue of export controls as packets are restricted.

To illustrate, say ARCADIA is being hosted at Berkeley this Saturday, and Michał Gerasimiuk is suffering from a bad migraine. The onus is on the competitor who drafted Gerasimiuk to determine whether they want to take the risk and play him; after he begins his first round, his presence inside or outside the "ARCADIA" lineup is no longer mutable. Even if Gerasimiuk decides to stay home and the competitors play him, they will have to take the 0.00 points Gerasimiuk provides.

Problem is, given that your average Quizbowler (even the good ones) are just regular, non-famous, human beings. Unless said quizbowler is very vocal about any ailments/personal plans regarding Quizbowl, you cannot really keep track of who has a migraine or not unless you happen to be close to the player. Sometimes, a Quizbowl tournament would be canceled (which from my understanding happens a lot less nowadays, but can still occur), a player may be unexpectantly sick, or suddenly unable to come. It would be fundamentally unfair to penalize fantasy competitors just because of inclement weather in one region canceling a match.

There is a rather simple way to solve this: using subs. Aside from your four persons core team, competitors should also designate 2-3 subs from the roster to be subbed in as needed. This can also be applied partially if a player on the core team is subbed out in real life.

After tournaments conclude, scoring will work as follows. The player’s points per game (PPG) will be multiplied by their team’s points per bonus (PPB), all of that will be multiplied by [1 + (2 times the player’s powers per game (P/G)) - the player’s negs per game (N/G). All of that will then be divided by 100 to make scores easier to keep track of. Or to summarize:

Two problems (or rather one problem manifested in two ways):
Quizbowl by definition is a team game (unless you're soloing Nats, which props to you).
If a really good player is on a team of other really good teammates, the reported performance may be diminished just because the opportunity to buzz was simply taken by teammates. Whereas if a player is on a team with other players who may not be as good, the player will likely do much better than otherwise reflective of one's strength.
The same thing applies to the circuit's strength. To that, we should introduce a strength of schedule (SOS) multipliers that we see in ACF and NAQT A-values and d-scores respectively. Those on teams with good teammates should have a higher SOS value, and those on teams with not as good teammates should have a lower SOS value to level the field. I know that many have complained that SOS values are over-tuned, but with SOS values one cannot level the field required for a fantasy game.

Another issue: Since ACF games do not have powers, this punishes players who play more ACF and less NAQT (and other tournaments with powers). However, since ACF games now (ideally) have detailed stats which (ideally) are posted relatively quickly, we can devise a system where if a player gets a TU at a buzzpoint at the 75th percentile of all (not just players at the mirror site) players, this can effectively count as a power.

Before national tournaments, scores will be tabulated, and those with the highest scores will advance to a single-elimination playoffs on ICT and ACF Nationals.

This may present a problem where some competitors will lose too many players (despite their fantasy team qualifying) as players may a) not qualify for either tournament b) only qualify for one c) choose/is unable to play at one. We should allow competitors who lose a certain significant amount of players to do a quick compensatory drafting round to pick from a list of players that are confirmed to go to Nats.

Part Four: Average Draft Positions

I am legitimately interested in how the draft position value was calculated.

Lastly, a lot of housewrites have a long mirroring period. ARCADIA (which you mentioned) had their first mirror at UIUC 2024/11/9, and have their last mirror to be held on 2025/03/08. This is a problem as some competitors will benefit having players in regions with more mirrors by geographical convenience. Instead, scoring should be averaged over the number of tournaments the competitors sends out their fantasy team to, and that we should mandate that all four players on the roster should be playing the particular tournament each within a month for their stats to count. We should mandate competitors send their team to ACF Fall, Winter, and Regionals, and SCT, and also a certain number of housewrites of varying dottage (e.g: 1 1-dot, 2 2-dots, and 1 3-dots).
--
Overall this has been an really interesting thought exercise over quizbowl, so I thank you for that.

[ClevelandCavaliers]

Really appreciate your response to my post, and I feel I should respond to the criticisms you've raised here. Aside from that, I do want to emphasize that whether or not you believe I'm serious should not matter — my purpose in making this post is to publicize a fantasy format that my friends and I had fun playing, and I believe others could also derive enjoyment from.

The problem with this is first of all a) cost for cameras and livestream-capable infrastructure (which presumably teams will need to absorb by higher fees, which suck), b) that ACF regionals is run similarly to that of Fall and Winter logistically, with the exception that the former is used as qualifiers for Nats. What I mean by this is that regions are quite local when compared to the grandeur of the US. The first round read on the East Coast at 9:00 ET would be made public for those on the West coast at 9:00 PT. This is made even worse with the commendable spread of Quizbowl to the UK, several time zone ahead of ET. Also, this would just be too many rounds happening at the same time for your average non-quizbowler (save for family) to ever be interested.
With NAQT, there is an added issue of export controls as packets are restricted.

Yes — this would be a major challenge. But there are several solutions to this problem:

• Make it so that each round is run on a packet in accordance with Eastern time. For instance, round 1 of ET sites would be run on packet 1, round 2 of ET sites and round 1 of CT sites would be run on packet 2, etc. This would be much more difficult to coordinate, but it could be feasible.

• Write more packets, and have several rounds specifically for streaming. I know this would require more work on the part of writers and editors, who already have a lot on their plate, but in the future, AI systems could make this process much easier. I acknowledge that as a question writer myself, we could mourn the loss of a certain amount of ingenuity and "humanness" on the part of writers; but this creativity could manifest in other housewrites, and isn't necessarily a muscle which atrophies when it's not used to its breaking point.

• Only specific playoff matches at specific sites would be livestreamed, making packet overlap a significantly less important issue.

• Quick note: there's a counterargument to be made that this would lead to rampant cheating as people tune into livestreams in bathrooms and learn what tossups are coming up. But if you really wanted to, you could already easily cheat by asking those in more advanced time zones what questions have come up so far. So I don't see why having livestreams would make this so much more prevalent that it'd be worthy of scrapping the whole idea for.

On NAQT: I don't think that every tournament needs to be livestreamed, and if NAQT, for instance, wanted to keep its SCT and ICT questions private, then it is within its rights to.

Problem is, given that your average Quizbowler (even the good ones) are just regular, non-famous, human beings. Unless said quizbowler is very vocal about any ailments/personal plans regarding Quizbowl, you cannot really keep track of who has a migraine or not unless you happen to be close to the player. Sometimes, a Quizbowl tournament would be canceled (which from my understanding happens a lot less nowadays, but can still occur), a player may be unexpectantly sick, or suddenly unable to come. It would be fundamentally unfair to penalize fantasy competitors just because of inclement weather in one region canceling a match.

There is a rather simple way to solve this: using subs. Aside from your four persons core team, competitors should also designate 2-3 subs from the roster to be subbed in as needed. This can also be applied partially if a player on the core team is subbed out in real life.

Indeed — life happens sometimes, and it sucks. But life also happens to football players, for example, and that doesn't make fantasy football worse. I think there's an argument to be made that we should embrace the uncertainty, and take it in stride. It doesn't make it unfair to penalize fantasy competitors for this, just because fantasy players are aware that things happen and sometimes they'll lose matches that on paper they should've won.

I'm not a fan of the idea of using subs, assuming you mean subbing once a tournament has already started. To go back to football, sometimes a player is schemed out of the game, or the player gets an early injury and isn't able to play any longer. That's part of the fun of the game — not every match is going to go exactly as you expect it to, and sometimes in fact you'll get 0 points from your star player. I think adding subs makes the game significantly less exciting, and would strongly recommend against it. That said, if your fantasy league decides subbing is a good idea, more power to you.

Quizbowl by definition is a team game (unless you're soloing Nats, which props to you).
If a really good player is on a team of other really good teammates, the reported performance may be diminished just because the opportunity to buzz was simply taken by teammates. Whereas if a player is on a team with other players who may not be as good, the player will likely do much better than otherwise reflective of one's strength.
The same thing applies to the circuit's strength. To that, we should introduce a strength of schedule (SOS) multipliers that we see in ACF and NAQT A-values and d-scores respectively. Those on teams with good teammates should have a higher SOS value, and those on teams with not as good teammates should have a lower SOS value to level the field. I know that many have complained that SOS values are over-tuned, but with SOS values one cannot level the field required for a fantasy game.

When I do a fantasy football or fantasy quiz bowl draft, I don't pick the player on the board who I believe is the best remaining player; I pick the player who I believe will get me the highest score. It's why Brock Bowers is probably going to go ahead of Josh Allen next year, or why I'd pick a whole slate of players before Jakob Myers (who's presumably not going to play ACF Winter etc). I understand that sometimes this may lead to good players shadowed by good teammates to be picked later than their skill, but it's not a "good at quizbowl" draft, it's a fantasy draft. I'm fine with that.

In general, I don't think we should complicate things. I think it's a lot simpler to understand a player's performance in terms of their P/G, PPG, and PPB, rather than adding in SOS and a host of other metrics that might make things more true-to-life, but also make things a headache to plan for and calculate. Adding SOS also removes your ability to see your player's fantasy score live, as stats get posted from round to round. It removes some of the excitement as you have to wait for final confirmed results after all D-values are confirmed anyways.

I'll also add that there's a mechanism to account for good teammates, and that's PPB. Based on SCT, ICT, Nats, and Regs fantasy scores, it seems to do an adequate job in rewarding top players with good teammates.

Since ACF games do not have powers, this punishes players who play more ACF and less NAQT (and other tournaments with powers). However, since ACF games now (ideally) have detailed stats which (ideally) are posted relatively quickly, we can devise a system where if a player gets a TU at a buzzpoint at the 75th percentile of all (not just players at the mirror site) players, this can effectively count as a power.

I agree that this might lead to some imbalances between ACF and housewrite tournaments of nominally the same difficulty. I think the way to fix that is to add a certain coefficient to ACF tournaments to boost the scores. Again, I think we should avoid compromising the fun real-time aspect of fantasy quiz bowl as much as possible, because it can quickly get boring otherwise.

As a general note, based on comparisons of Regs and Nats fantasy scores with those of SCT and ICT, there seem to be no egregious differences in which players achieve the highest scores. However, there are a select few players who perform significantly better when powers are removed from the equation, and vice versa. I will leave it to the fantasy player to find these players, draft them, and sub them in and out for powered/non-powered tournaments as they see fit.

This may present a problem where some competitors will lose too many players (despite their fantasy team qualifying) as players may a) not qualify for either tournament b) only qualify for one c) choose/is unable to play at one. We should allow competitors who lose a certain significant amount of players to do a quick compensatory drafting round to pick from a list of players that are confirmed to go to Nats.

I think overall what we should be striving for is not a format in which the best drafted team on paper gets the inside track, but one in which a team that goes out and takes risks can have those risks pay off in a fantasy format. In addition, fantasy quiz bowl should not only take into account overall skill, but also availability, team construction, and drive towards improvement, just as fantasy football does.

That said, I do believe that there should be an in-season waiver wire so that players who have been undrafted or are dropped can be picked for one's team at designated times. Thus, if all of your players somehow get "injured" before nationals, you'll be able to add to your team any undrafted player pending the priority of your claim. There are several ways a waiver wire can work, but this article explains things quite well.

Lastly, a lot of housewrites have a long mirroring period. ARCADIA (which you mentioned) had their first mirror at UIUC 2024/11/9, and have their last mirror to be held on 2025/03/08. This is a problem as some competitors will benefit having players in regions with more mirrors by geographical convenience. Instead, scoring should be averaged over the number of tournaments the competitors sends out their fantasy team to, and that we should mandate that all four players on the roster should be playing the particular tournament each within a month for their stats to count. We should mandate competitors send their team to ACF Fall, Winter, and Regionals, and SCT, and also a certain number of housewrites of varying dottage (e.g: 1 1-dot, 2 2-dots, and 1 3-dots).

I don't think this is a problem; all of the regular season tournaments will likely be played before nationals anyway, and if a player doesn't show up to ACF mirrors, then you can drop them before the tournament by doing your due diligence on their status beforehand. You can also prioritize drafting players you know will post about their status on the Quizbowl discord or get back to a DM, rather than players that are generally off the QB grid.

If some competitors play more tournaments because of geographical convenience, then those competitors might just have a higher draft position, and that doesn't mean there's inherently a huge problem. The market, in other words, will adjust.

Again, I really appreciate your responding to this post in a serious, constructive way. My goal in making this post was not to make a funny gag and then leave; I genuinely believe fantasy quiz bowl would be a fun side activity people could play during the quiz bowl season. My post presents some ideas on how this format could be run, and in the next few days, I hope (with significant help) to add some templates that would make fantasy quiz bowl easier to run from scratch.

Finally, again to address questions of whether this post is serious: it should not matter. Some might find this post trivial or whimsical, and dismiss it out of hand; and that's fine. But I hope others find in fantasy quiz bowl a cool activity that could add some color to the quiz bowl season, and which they'd be down to give a shot with their teams and friends.

[wadegilespromoter]

One more thing that I really want to know - how did you quantify the projected average score for each player in the spreadsheet? It doesn't seem to line up with the reported SCT score.

[Owen Mimno]

Andrew is right that, in the landscape of hypotheticals that fantasy games entail, there is no way to objectively measure a player’s skill based on the statistics we are given. But just because our model will be wrong doesn’t mean it is pointless to seek usefulness. Theoretically we could assign fantasy points based on whether a player shows up to the tournament wearing a certain color we have chosen beforehand, and this would be an equally valid method of constructing a fantasy format, but of course we wouldn’t find it anywhere near as fun. Simplicity in calculating results is indeed a valuable aspect of the point-assignment system, but I think it is also worth ensuring it accounts for other factors — for instance, that the optimal method to increase one’s own fantasy score is to just know more and perform better, rather than trying to find ways to game the formula. In spite of their criticisms, A- and D-values (for national tournament qualification) and Groger Ranks (for the amusement of high schoolers) are sufficiently strong benchmarks for this sort of purpose.

Similarly, while those making drafts will inevitably be matching players to criteria, I imagine it would be more rewarding, all else equal, to have fantasy scores minimally reliant on environmental performance factors (e.g. the strength of a player’s team, the strength of their opponents, the difficulty of the sets they play, etc.). Still, more fundamental factors affecting the frequency of a player’s performances should be kept (e.g. graduation, retirement, sickness). Perhaps the challenge then is to develop the most representative model of skill and performance while working within the constraints of relative simplicity and rapid results. In any case, I believe that this model can afford to lean more towards complexity, and that any potential fantasy QB leagues will have an easier time making it simpler as desired than the reverse.

As a final point, the stated grander purpose of this idea is to encourage engagement with quizbowl from people who do not play it (or are not seriously involved with the community), much like how the participants in other fantasy sports are generally not professional athletes. I would be interested in playing fantasy QB, and I would be interested in forming a league with fellow quizbowl players, but I do not see myself making any attempt to involve non-quizbowlers, nor do I imagine many of us would. The issue behind the lack of interest in quizbowl among people who don’t play runs deeper than “there is no fantasy format”, and even beyond “there are not enough live stats/recordings”, and I’d be curious to hear what other people think is responsible for this social phenomenon and whether it can or should be changed. We as a community seem to have utterly rejected the very premise of outside engagement (wouldn’t you find it weird if somebody with no relation to the game joined quizbowl Discord servers just to be in the loop? or showed up at a tournament to watch their favorite team?). Perhaps quizbowl needs its own version of r/nba and r/nfl, getting us closer to other college sports in terms of external interest — or perhaps we are better off as the insular little community we are, only getting drafted by people we know by name and can talk to.

Ultimately though, I think this is a great idea, and I hope it catches on! I commend Andrew for the work he put into this spreadsheet as well.

[The Blind Prophet]

Feels like to me you need more positions than just two types of generalists and specialists, those categories feel pretty meaninglessly broad at the moment