CCs and the ICT

[ValenciaQBowl]

I'm starting a new thread on this topic, as it's dear to my heart, and it doesn't need to be mucking up the ICT Survey thread.

As Noah mentioned, a brief discussion of whether CCs should be part of the D2 ICT or have their own tournament happened after SCT. I'm of two minds on the topic.

This was not a great year for any of the CC teams. Though Valencia, Gulf Coast, and Chipola were very competitive with each other, none of us were very competitive with the other D2 schools. My guys came close in matches with Stanford and the excellent solo player from Brandeis, but close doesn't mean much. And the Valencia team that finished second in D2 in 2003 was a rare beast, one which I doubt will happen again. As far as I know, Broward in 06 is the only other team to finish in the top ten of D2.

The above suggests we would be better off with our own tournament, a possibility NAQT is supportive of, I think, if we can figure out logistical details. The advantage would be that more CCs would get to compete in a national-level tournament, the competition would be better, and we could have a national title winner who doesn't have an overall record of 4-10, as we did this year. Advantages to the ICT would be eight more non-CC teams getting invited, and maybe fewer really unprepared teams (as Noah pointed out, five of the CCs combined for something like three wins total). Finally, I and others have been working to get more CCs nationwide to adopt the game, and if we're able to grow beyond the states that currently play (KS, MS, AL, GA, FL), a separate tournament will make even more sense.

However, though we may never compete for the overall D2 title at ICT again, I expect to have teams in the next twenty years (I'm not going anywhere, suckers!) that will be top-ten caliber, and other CCs will also periodically have very strong teams. We love playing four-year schools: not only is it just interesting to get to see teams from Lawrence, Carleton, and other places we'll never otherwise visit for a tournament, but it's fun to test ourselves against them. More important, as I've mentioned before, I always get our team in front of our Board of Trustees (poltical appointees) and name drop schools we beat (um, we don't have too many for this year, unfortunately). In past years, if we've beaten a Stanford, MIT or Virginia team, our trustees don't need to know that we were playing freshmen who might be a program's D or E team--they just hear that we beat a big-name school. This helps our budget and allows us to play more tournaments.

I think a separate CC tournament is in the offing, and probably soon. However, when that happens, I'll want to work with NAQT to see if it's possible for CCs to still compete in a D2 SCT to try to qualify straight up in the same year, especially when we have strong teams. I'm not sure how that would work with question sets, though--maybe we'd have to select between a DII or CC SCT. Thoughts?

[Maxwell Sniffingwell]

Damn. I just wrote a well-thought-out reply, then deleted it by mistake.

The gist of what I said: Valencia belonged at ICT - you guys gave us (Lawrence) a fun, close match. But one of the CCs made it to ICT by putting up 7.03 PPB on an IS-set. This is not good. We need to keep schools like that out while keeping schools like Valencia/GC/Coast in.

My options:
a) Reduce the number of bids from 8 to 4, possibly by combining Alabama and Mississippi or something.
b) Hold the CC SCTs two weeks earlier than their current date. Then take the top 16 teams from those and hold a ICCT, maybe on the Div II sectionals questions or something. Then issue four invites to the Div II ICT based on finish at the ICCT. This would give CCs a true national CC title based on play against CCs only... then give a chance for schools like Valencia - schools that WON'T embarrass themselves by getting zeroed by sub-.500 teams - to play at ICT.

[MiltonPlayer47]

You have a good point about Community Colleges wanting to test themselves against good four year schools. That is understandable, but looking at the Div II lineup at ICT, it really looked like there were too many community college teams at the expense of other Div II schools who deserved to go. I can't really comment about other regions, but in the southeast Florida A won sectionals and was the only div II team from that tournament that was invited to ICT. FSU A and UGA A both played well at sectionals and were pretty much the same as Florida in terms of skill but did not get bids. I don't know how the community college teams going to ICT affected other regions, but for the southeast this does not seem right.

And it also seems that the Florida CC teams could have at least had a chance to play against good southeast teams throughout the year. ACF Fall at Shorter and and our MLK mirror at UGA could have been good practice.

[grapesmoker]

This is a difficult subject to write about, because if you're a decent player coming from a respectable 4-year university, you're inevitably running the risk of being condescending to the CCs. Greg, you've kind of done that already: saying things like "we need to keep these teams out" and "we need to spare them the pain of being drubbed by the rest of the field" is not the right way to approach this issue.

I think it's clear that the CCs start out with some disadvantages that teams at 4-year colleges just don't have. For example, many CC students may be working to pay for their education and thus not able to take a Friday off to drive 300 miles to play a tournament like Berkeley used to do and like Brown often does now. Another example is the perpetual lack of institutional support at the CC level and the lack of good coaches that can put together a team. Most good high school players go on to play at 4-year schools where they typically slot into an already established team or go out of their way to start their own, something that's difficult to do at a CC. On top of that, if you have players who are transferring after 2 years to a 4-year institution, it may be difficult to maintain continuity the way that university clubs do.

With all that in mind, I do have to question the wisdom of reserving 1/4 of the DII field for the CCs. As I understand it, CCs essentially qualify via IS sets rather than the SCT (or is it via their own SCT and not the same SCT that everyone else plays?). If CCs were qualifying on the same sets against the same opposition, and were only allowed to play DII once, I would have fewer problems with reserving such a large number of slots for them. But I think the way that the current qualification scheme is structured does not encourage CC teams to improve because they know that no matter what, they'll be sequestered in DII every year. Of course, ideally, those players would just transfer to 4-year schools, but that may not happen for whatever reasons, and being placed with freshmen when you've got 3 years of playing experience seems to me a lot like being told, "you're not good enough and we have to keep you from having your feelings hurt." On the other hand, creating a separate tournament for the CCs sounds equally patronizing. Now, we're saying "you're not even good enough to come play with the 4-year schools at all," and that's not a good solution either. Every team in the country should have the chance to qualify for the real ICT, and creating a separate tournament for the CCs takes away that incentive. I don't think that's a good thing.

My less-than-ideal solution would go something like this: CCs retain their number of slots if they can qualify on the same SCT as everyone else, against the same opposition. I would do this by setting a minimum S-Value that a CC has to attain to be eligible for that slot; this S-Value may be less than the minimum attained by any 4-year school (although it needn't be) and if enough CCs hit that mark, they get in. If they don't, those spaces go to teams on the waiting list. Also, you only get to play in DII for one year. I think this would strike a good balance between giving the CCs incentive to improve while at the same time making an effort to include them.

I think Chris did a good thing by opening up this discussion; I've never really thought much about this topic, but now that it's on the table, I'm going to suggest some things at the next ACF cabal meeting to make attending ACF tournaments more enticing for CC teams. Of course, I don't speak for ACF (LOL CAVEATS) but I think there's a possibility that we could implement some system involving either discounts or increased incentives for packet submission for CCs (or even new programs in general) if we don't already have those in place.

Lastly, I have to somewhat tangentially question whether the whole system of qualifications isn't actually to blame here. After all, most tournaments are open to anyone; the qualification procedures for ICT seem unnecessarily complicated, and the most they seem to do is to reduce the potential field by maybe 10 teams, tops. I wonder if we wouldn't all be better off and not have to worry about this if qualifying through the SCT was not a requirement for ICT attendance.

[jagluski]

With all that in mind, I do have to question the wisdom of reserving 3/4 of the DII field for the CCs.

You mean 1/4, right? 8 CC's in 32 teams or am I misunderstanding?

[Matt Weiner]

Personally, I think the current ICT setup is fine. It strikes a good balance between avoiding the condescension and fakeness of having a CC-only bracket just to ensure that the 7th-best CC team has a winning record, while still making sure that that there is a legitimate CC champion by having a CC-only final and inviting enough of the best CCs that it's not an automatic win for whoever manages to qualify. I am not really all too worried about the 25th best Division II team missing the ICT. Having space for CCs is a perfectly legitimate goal, and axing the 25th through 32nd best DII teams to meet that goal seems like a reasonable tradeoff. The 25th best Division II team is always going to be a fringe team anyway, and should probably get better at quizbowl if they want to play at nationals.

Changes that maybe should be made...as part of my general distaste for collegiate players using high school questions, I'd like to see the CC sectionals play on the DII SCT set; if the DII SCT set needs to be made easier for this, that's fine, since it probably should be made easier anyway, but that may not even be needed. Also, it would probably be better if the possibility of losing DII eligibility at a CC existed in some way, even if it doesn't work the same way as it does for 4-years. Perhaps you could lose DII eligibility if you are on a team that outright wins a CC sectional or wins a trophy at the ICT.

Also, CCs playing ACF sounds, unsurprisingly, like a good idea to me; there's no reason teams who can handle reduced-difficulty NAQT questions should avoid ACF Fall and similar events, or that those who play regular-difficulty questions should stay home from ACF Regionals. And yeah, I'm willing to give out CC trophies at ACF Nationals if there's demand for it...

[grapesmoker]

With all that in mind, I do have to question the wisdom of reserving 3/4 of the DII field for the CCs.

You mean 1/4, right? 8 CC's in 32 teams or am I misunderstanding?

i typ gud

Yeah, I meant 1/4.

[jhn31]

My suggestion would be:

Allow CC SCT winners to go to a CC national tournament.
If a CC team wants to go to the ICT, they can go to regular sectionals and try to qualify there.

As a member of a team that was likely in that 25-32 range on d2, it was highly annoying to host the Mississippi CC Sectional and hand a bid to the ICT to a team that we could consistently more than double their score, while we sat at home on ICT day.

[ValenciaQBowl]

Goddamit--I also just had a long reply that somehow didn't get posted after I hit submit.

Anyway, short version, for which there is likely great thanks: I've suggested in the past to NAQT that we'd like to play on D2 sets (instead of IS) at the CC SCTs, but they don't want to due to the performances of the majority of CC teams on the IS sets; to use the example above, if Pratt scored 7 ppb on an IS set, and they WON in Kansas, how do you think D2 would go over there?

I wrote a long bit about the real challenge being the gap between the strong CC programs, including us and Chipola, who both played at many regular circuit invitationals this year, and the rest. The good news is that there will be around 9-10 CC teams (including five from Valencia and Chipola) at USF's Sun n Fun, and next year I'll try to bring a Valencia team to ACF Nats (and Matt, you definitely don't need to have a separate award for us--unless of course, I can talk Chipola into coming, too).

Bottom line: if you know of CCs near you that play or if you know people going to CCs who could be talked into getting a team started, let me know, and I'll be happy to help.

[msaifutaa]

I am not really all too worried about the 25th best Division II team missing the ICT. Having space for CCs is a perfectly legitimate goal, and axing the 25th through 32nd best DII teams to meet that goal seems like a reasonable tradeoff. The 25th best Division II team is always going to be a fringe team anyway, and should probably get better at quizbowl if they want to play at nationals.

I don't have a strong opinion either way on CCs and am interested in seeing everyone's ideas, but since our school had the 26th best (2nd on the waiting list) DII team and went on to be invited off the waiting list and come in 5th (with several extremely close matches that showed they were competitive for an even higher position), I think that proves that the 26th-best team can sometimes be a true competitor.

That said, I admit that even I was surprised with the 5th-place finish, since our DII team did worse than 5th at our SCT site. It's worth considering though.

[Quantum Mushroom Billiard Hat]

I am not really all too worried about the 25th best Division II team missing the ICT. Having space for CCs is a perfectly legitimate goal, and axing the 25th through 32nd best DII teams to meet that goal seems like a reasonable tradeoff. The 25th best Division II team is always going to be a fringe team anyway, and should probably get better at quizbowl if they want to play at nationals.

Since my team was somewhere between 25 and 32, I figured I should comment here too. I felt after the SCT that we had played OK as a team, but our team was certainly not good enough to compete with the best out there. I am sure that we will have a much better chance to make an impact if we qualify next year, since everyone I played with is learning information very quickly.

I had no problem with not qualifying this year, and do not think that we should have. The CC players will get better by attending, and the freshmen and sophomores at 4-year colleges will get better in other ways.

[Maxwell Sniffingwell]

This is a difficult subject to write about, because if you're a decent player coming from a respectable 4-year university, you're inevitably running the risk of being condescending to the CCs. Greg, you've kind of done that already: saying things like "we need to keep these teams out" and "we need to spare them the pain of being drubbed by the rest of the field" is not the right way to approach this issue.

Well, I don't mean to say that we need to keep the CCs out - sorry for phrasing my response unclearly. But I do think we need to keep the bad CCs out, the same way that we need to keep the bad 4-year schools out. For example, one four-year school used their host's autoqualify to go 1-12 at ICT, putting up just under 10 PPB. I can't help but think that their spot would've been better filled by any of the teams on the wait list.

Again, I don't mean to condescend to ANYONE. But this is a national tournament by qualification, so if a bad team makes it in, they're taking someone's spot. There are 32 invites, and they should at least go to 32 of the top 40 teams in the country.

[Mechanical Beasts]

Well, I don't mean to say that we need to keep the CCs out - sorry for phrasing my response unclearly. But I do think we need to keep the bad CCs out, the same way that we need to keep the bad 4-year schools out. For example, Carleton University used their host's autoqualify to go 1-12 at ICT, putting up just under 10 PPB. I can't help but think that their spot would've been better filled by any of the teams on the wait list.

Again, I don't mean to condescend to ANYONE. But this is a national tournament by qualification, so if a bad team makes it in, they're taking someone's spot. There are 32 invites, and they should at least go to 32 of the top 40 teams in the country.

I don't think that the solution, though, is making them qualify on SCT sets. Again the 7.08ppb example (which is a little misleading; apparently they were just nuts on tossups compared to their opponents: the second place team got 14ppb, and a few other teams had ten) is useful. When teams don't convert much on bonuses--even the Florida sectional didn't--and when not many tossups are converted--in Florida, on average 40% of tossups went dead--it's hard to think that IS sets are the perfect difficulty to differentiate between teams, and in fact SCT sets might be worse--if 60% of tossups are unanswered and bonus conversion drops to 5-10ppb, then luck becomes much more of a factor (when one team happens upon THAT ONE BONUS they've been waiting for, they have forty points off that tossup--which another team might need three more tossups to do--and it might take six more tossups read for them to get three more tossups, meaning that a thirtied bonus on tossup 19 could decide a game. It'd just be a very, very strange game.

Our matches with CC teams were a lot of fun, and honestly they seemed to have by far the best attitudes about being there. As Charlie Steinhice would attest, losing sucks, and getting stomped sucks a lot more, but they seemed to be among the too-few teams at the event that truly saw that even getting stomped is far, far better than not playing the game at all.

In short--there's no way to accurately qualify them on SCT questions, and there's no good reason to split them off from the ICT. It's their best and most-likely-to-be-funded shot at seeing great competition--while other Div II teams have mACF options, I bet it's a lot easier to get money by saying "we're going to nationals" than "we're going to the Beaver Bonspiel."

EDIT: inability to write a coherent sentence fixed.
EDIT: vagueness inserted.

[Maxwell Sniffingwell]

Our match with Valencia was a lot of fun, and honestly the CC teams seemed to have by far the best attitudes about being there.

Valencia was fun, all right, but I can't say that the second statement held true for the other CC we played. At all.

[ValenciaQBowl]

I had started to write something about funding in my long reply that was lost, but now that it's come up again, I feel like I should clarify what might be a misperception. I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Valencia has the biggest budget in Florida. It doesn't hurt that we have faculty coaches (me and two others), which helps us with the process with activities, but Valencia ended its sports programs over a decade ago, making us the only game in town. But Mr. Everyday is right that it has also helped us in budget requests that in the past seven years I've been able to get in front of our Board of Trustees and trumpet victories over teams like Stanford, MIT and Virginia, which impresses them (Though I tell them these wins are in something called Division II, I feel no need to specifically note to these political appointees that the teams we beat might be the C or D team from that school and was composed entirely of freshmen; if it makes them smile on us and gets me money to attend a tournament, it's a greater good).

I'm glad to hear that my guys made good impressions! But next year I'll hope to have a scowling bunch of jerks who win a lot more games.

[Mechanical Beasts]

And even teams that don't notch such victories get to say that they got an INVITATION to NATIONALS, as opposed to just deciding to attend a random (m)ACF tournament. In high school, where the money was certainly there but reluctantly given to anything but sports, invitationals for debate, science olympiad, etc. were murder even to get a school bus for--even though we'd offer to pay our own way on hotels, registration, etc. But nationals funding was almost a given. Names count so, so much with "political appointees," as you put it.

[theMoMA]

It's completely unnecessary to call out specific community colleges as exemplars of bad teams. It's uncalled for, and the arrogance behind these statements is appalling. I really hope that we can have productive discussions that show some tact towards other teams. I cringe to think of what CC players will think about the quizbowl community when they read this thread.

[Matt Weiner]

It's completely unnecessary to call out specific community colleges as exemplars of bad teams. It's uncalled for, and the arrogance behind these statements is appalling. I really hope that we can have productive discussions that show some tact towards other teams. I cringe to think of what CC players will think about the quizbowl community when they read this thread.

This.

[Maxwell Sniffingwell]

It's completely unnecessary to call out specific community colleges as exemplars of bad teams. It's uncalled for, and the arrogance behind these statements is appalling.

For the record, I dropped two names in this thread negatively - one each of 4-year and 2-year schools. But I don't really see it as arrogance if I'm trying to use a bad performance to point out a flaw in the system. I'm not saying that the schools in question should go crawl in a hole and die... I'm just saying that if lower-quality teams (lower-quality for WHATEVER reason) take spots at a national tournament that could've been filled with competitive teams, something is wrong with the qualification process.

I really hope that we can have productive discussions that show some tact towards other teams.

I think that we HAVE had a productive discussion. But I will admit that I could've shown more tact. I've edited out the names of specific schools, and I would encourage everyday847 to do the same.

Again: I was a tad tactless, yes. But I repeat that bad teams should NOT be at an invite-based national tournament.

[Mechanical Beasts]

I didn't mean to be tactless; I was simply citing the same example that Chris had used--I thought that it was a legitimate statistical argument. There's a difference between saying that they're a bad program--that's wrong and uncalled for--and saying that they had a poor showing at an SCT. It might be more polite not to reprint statistics that are available on NAQT's website, but I want to emphasize the fact that I did so to look at the numbers--and the fact that those numbers might stop differentiating well between teams if those SCTs switch away from IS questions. That isn't a judgement on the program; that's mathematical fact.

I look forward to seeing CC schools grow and improve in the future and have enjoyed playing them precisely because I KNOW that they're good programs.

I apologize for any harm I may have done.

[ecks]

I'm just saying that if lower-quality teams (lower-quality for WHATEVER reason) take spots at a national tournament that could've been filled with competitive teams, something is wrong with the qualification process.

Not necessarily. For Carleton University in particular, I was moderating a couple of their games. As you can tell by looking at their roster, they only brought two people. This is because a lot of their members dropped out at the last moment because of freaky finals rescheduling (some finals for some of their players were moved to that Saturday). I don't know how good they would have been had they brought their true "A" team, but their performance doesn't necessarily represent a flaw in the qualification process, as they might have qualified "legitimately" but still been forced to only bring two people.

[ValenciaQBowl]

I hadn't even thought about the "calling out" of the Pratt team when they were mentioned. Valencia and the other Florida CCs (who all hung out some in St. Louis) got to spend time with the Pratt folks on the trains and at breakfast, and they're fine folks. They seemed to understand what they were up against, and I'm working with their coach and the coach at Cloud County to hold more mACF tournaments in Kansas (like all CCs outside of Florida next year, they'll have an opportunity to mirror Delta Burke for free to get them more play time (Pratt's coach told me they played in something like three tournaments before ICT!)). So I don't think they'd take offense at a mention of their actual stats.

The better news is that, as far as I know, I'm the only person from any of the FL, GA, or KS CCs to read this board. I know some of the Faulkner guys (or now Bama guys) are here, but I'd be surprised to find out any FL people are (but, because of screen names, I'm not certain--let me know if I'm wrong). We have a junior college board on Yahoo, and it's like pulling teeth to get my colleagues to use it to announce tournaments and results or discuss ideas. This is perhaps another effect of having faculty coaches with families as team heads--they don't feel they have the time to practice six hours a week, let alone keep up with message boards. Anyway, I'm glad for this discussion and am still interested in hearing more thoughts about having CCs in the ICT.

[Mechanical Beasts]

We have a junior college board on Yahoo, and it's like pulling teeth to get my colleagues to use it to announce tournaments and results or discuss ideas. This is perhaps another effect of having faculty coaches with families as team heads--they don't feel they have the time to practice six hours a week, let alone keep up with message boards.

Would it be easier / less daunting to run an email list instead?

--Andy

[grapesmoker]

One thing that seems to be getting missed here is in the discussion of the bottom ICT teams. There are 32 teams split into 8 brackets; based solely on how bracketing happens, you are virtually guaranteed that most of the teams 25-32 will be 1 or 2 win teams, regardless of whether they come form a CC or a 4-year college. So using a team's ICT record to claim something about whether or not they should have been there in the first place isn't all that useful, because if you figure a similar team would replace them, that team would almost surely have finished in the same position.

[Mechanical Beasts]

if you figure a similar team would replace them, that team would almost surely have finished in the same position.

And I think the argument made here is that SOME of the CCs would be replaced by better teams, not by teams that would have finished in the same position. (I think a UGA poster said that his team was essentially #25-26; correct me if I'm wrong. I think his argument would be that they are better than at least one of the CC teams that made it.)

I don't know if I buy that argument, though it seems legitimate if stats alone are compared.

[Matt Weiner]

And I think the argument made here is that SOME of the CCs would be replaced by better teams, not by teams that would have finished in the same position.

I'm not a mathematician or anything, but it seems to me that someone has to finish last at every tournament.

[Frater Taciturnus]

And I think the argument made here is that SOME of the CCs would be replaced by better teams, not by teams that would have finished in the same position.

I'm not a mathematician or anything, but it seems to me that someone has to finish last at every tournament.

Matt, clearly you did not pay attention in middle school PE. Everyone knows that nobody actually loses; Everyone's a winner!

[Mechanical Beasts]

And I think the argument made here is that SOME of the CCs would be replaced by better teams, not by teams that would have finished in the same position.

I'm not a mathematician or anything, but it seems to me that someone has to finish last at every tournament.

Yes, and what I'm saying is that--just like a team came off the waitlist to finish fifth--there are possibly teams that have the 25-32 S-values that will finish in different positions than 25-32. But regardless I think I was misinterpreting what y'all meant by the "same position"--the argument that's being made is that the strongest teams should make the tournament and that though the only net change would be that four-year schools would take up the bottom slots that community colleges do currently, there would be more parity in the competition--perhaps there would be more 3-win schools. Again, I don't know if I endorse that argument; I just think it ought to be represented well.

[Maxwell Sniffingwell]

Yes, someone in the tourney WILL finish last. However, I'm all for raising the strength of the field: in other words, raising the skill level (PPB, PPTH, whatever) of that team that DOES finish last.

Taking my argument to a ridiculous extreme for clarifaction purpose: A four-team tourney featuring Illinois, Brown, Chicago, and Maryland could have a team that goes 0-6... for the sake of argument, let's say it's Brown. So would a four-tourney tourney featuring Illinois, Lawrence, Chicago, and Maryland. But if I'm only inviting four teams and I want to call my tourney a national championship, I'd rather have Jerry and Eric out there losing six games in a row than have some uppity freshman from the Chicago suburbs doing the same thing, admittedly in more spectacular fashion.

The waitlisted teams weren't necessarily worse than the Wake Forest/Alabama/etc. schools that finished just above the bottom lump of CCs. So if a waitlist team finishes, say, 15th, shifting everyone down a notch, someone will still finish last. But that last-place finisher would be objectively better than the last-place finisher of a non-shifted tourney.

[Anthony Bush]

[cross-posted to [email protected]]

With over 1000 CC's/Juco's/Associate Degree granting institutions in the U.S and Canada, certainly a 16 team (or 32 team) CC ICT could be supported. However, this won't come to fruition until the CC pool is expanded past the five or six states that hold NAQT CC Sectionals.

Without knowing NAQT's organizational structure, I would only be speculating that there is enough staff to send information packets to the Academic VP's, Student Affairs VP's or Provosts of these 1000+ institutions that have perhaps not received info about NAQT. Additionally, NAQT would need to clarify what makes their organization different than CBI, ACF, or even TRASH, which I have found appeals to my student body's "non-traditional" CC age bracket (this is the first year I lacked a player over age 28).

I favor a separate CC ICT to compare our team (should we ever get in again) against a similar peer group, perhaps with the Final Four of that tournament getting bids (and hopefully some financial subsidy) to the D2 ICT. It means more question writing for NAQT staff; however, if the CC sectionals were expanded from 6 to 20-30 states/regions, the economy of this expansion would help NAQT grow.

My question is: does this growth come from NAQT and its agents, or those of us who don't speak for NAQT, but want to encourage other schools to join the fun?

--Anthony Bush
GPC Quiz Bowl Team Advisor
Testing Recall About Strange Happenings staff member

[NotBhan]

FWIW, I like the current setup. Unless, or until, there are a substantial number of moderately strong CC teams outside the southeast, I'd much rather take a CC team to the ICT to play against the likes of Harvard and Chicago than to simply play other CC teams that we see in half a dozen other tournaments. As it stands, there seem to be few CC teams at all outside the southeast, let alone strong ones. It's certainly good from a funding perspective to have big-name opponents -- I know I made use of that on more than one occasion, even before the CC's were added to the ICT. (I'm fine with the qualifying method as well.)

I'm somewhat lacking in sympathy for D2 teams in the prospective #25-32 qualifying spots for reasons noted by others, and since the D2 field was only 24 teams before the CC's were added in '02. Nor is it necessarily a bad thing for the #27 D2 team to still be eligible to play in D2 the following year when the team can theoretically be more competitive.

--Raj Dhuwalia (former coach of Broward CC)

[ValenciaQBowl]

Thanks for your post, Anthony--I'm glad some other CC coaches are keeping up with this board.

As to recruiting CCs, I'm certainly not waiting for NAQT to do all the work, though I am including them in my discussions with prospective schools/faculty/student activities people, and I'm keeping them in the loop of what I find. CCs do (and should) play lots of other invitationals and state tournaments, so NAQT is not our only option, but their national scope and the opportunity they offer to play against "name" schools is attractive when I try to sell the game to schools unfamiliar with it.

I've made some preliminary contacts in Virginia, and thanks to help from Dan Goff in getting info about activities contacts, I plan to make more serious pitches after my classes end next week. Anthony, if you have contacts at some of the other Georgia CCs, particularly those that used to play but now don't (Bainbridge, East Georgia, Abraham Baldwin, etc.), please see if we can get them back in--they should already have some buzzers and institutional memory of the game.

[First Chairman]

So, here's the odd question which I guess I should ask... what do you think is needed for a viable and sustainable CC circuit? Obviously NAQT can't do all the work. CBI works through ACUI. ACF... doesn't seem to be appealing. The only possible model I can see that could work is the Honda/HBCU model, and we're definitely not there. But I do see your point: the HBCU's are welcome to play at ICT but they don't. Instead they stay with the Honda model. I can see a separate CC championship as well being attractive, especially if you got someone like the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation to look at the opportunity.

[ValenciaQBowl]

I'm not looking for a separate CC circuit; it's unlikely CCs will ever really have common national tournaments, but really, universities don't exactly do that, either. And Valencia has no shortage of tournaments opportunities--we just play everything we can that's regional, just like FSU or USF or most schools do. That's what I hope other CCs will do, too, if we can get them to start. I'd say there are over a dozen CCs in FL, GA, and AL who regularly go to UTC tournaments and other events at other schools. And being members of the "regular" circuit is also the best way to make CC players more competitive. We just have to get the others started.

[Maxwell Sniffingwell]

especially if you got someone like the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation to look at the opportunity.

I'm a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar in my sixth year with the program. If you guys want, I can make the contact...

EDIT: It's good to see that more and more people are getting to know about the Foundation. JKC would be a great choice, though - they already have a lot of experience dealing with CCs (they give lots of money to 4-year schools in an initiative to get them to consider CC transfers and just generally try and keep CC students from being forgotten.)

[First Chairman]

especially if you got someone like the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation to look at the opportunity.

I'm a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar in my sixth year with the program. If you guys want, I can make the contact...

EDIT: It's good to see that more and more people are getting to know about the Foundation. JKC would be a great choice, though - they already have a lot of experience dealing with CCs (they give lots of money to 4-year schools in an initiative to get them to consider CC transfers and just generally try and keep CC students from being forgotten.)

Considering that my own office works VERY closely with both our scholarships office and our CC-transfer office, I get to know a lot about those scholarships... especially if any of them decide to apply to med school.

If you could find someone who I could reach regarding some sponsorship... that would be awesome. (Not quite like video games apparently, but pretty close.)

[gabobo]

As a cc coach who has taken teams to the ICT 4 of the 7 possible years, I agree that it is nice to be able to request money to travel to the "national" tournament. And it is helpful to come home and say "We beat Columbia, Caltech, Pitt, and Virginia".

It is also frustrating to finish in a 3 way tie at your SCT only to shake out as 3rd after tiebreakers and not get invited only to see the two teams you were tied with finish as the #1 and #3 CC teams at the ICT. It is also frustrating to lose only 2 games at your SCT and see a team you beat get invited while you are waitlisted. And it's frustrating to see winners of other sectionals go when the field there was really weak statistically and believe that you would have won there if you had just gotten timely communications from the TD or had just had enough money to travel that far.

Now, whining complete...

If the field were to be expanded, the odds of the above frustrating situations would be reduced. I, too, would love to see the game played in CC's in more states. I can't belive that with as many CC's as there are, more don't participate. I like both ideas that have been floated out there.... Saving room for the top 4 from a CC Championship at the DII ICT, or allowing seperate qualification into both or either a CC championship and/or the DII ICT.

As for question difficulty, I have been surprised that we CC's are allowed to qualify based on IS sets, but I don't really mind it. On the other hand, when you play on IS sets all year and then get to the ICT and the difficulty is so much higher, it's like the NCAA deciding to raise the goal and back up the 3 point line for the big dance just because "the best teams can handle it". This year, a girl from Faulkner who has averaged over 60ppg only managed between 10 and 20 at the ICT. That's tough on kids.

Anyway, my bitching aside, I would not feel cheated if we had a CC only tournament, especially if we still have a chance at the ICT somehow. What about CC SCT's on IS sets in January, and CC championship on the DII SCT set in February, and the top 4 CC's qualify for the ICT?

[Maxwell Sniffingwell]

especially if you got someone like the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation to look at the opportunity.

I'm a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar in my sixth year with the program. If you guys want, I can make the contact...

EDIT: It's good to see that more and more people are getting to know about the Foundation. JKC would be a great choice, though - they already have a lot of experience dealing with CCs (they give lots of money to 4-year schools in an initiative to get them to consider CC transfers and just generally try and keep CC students from being forgotten.)

Considering that my own office works VERY closely with both our scholarships office and our CC-transfer office, I get to know a lot about those scholarships... especially if any of them decide to apply to med school.

If you could find someone who I could reach regarding some sponsorship... that would be awesome. (Not quite like video games apparently, but pretty close.)

Actually, I'll give them a call this Saturday. I'm sure my JKC advisor from back in high school would point me in the right direction... she's always been very supportive and even flew out to LA with me when I was on Jeopardy!.

As they have a) a f$#%load of money and b) interest in improving the quality of life for the smartest CC students, JKC would be perfect for this.