ANNOUNCEMENT: BOB (11/15/08) at Yale

[ChuyElChulo]

Yale will host its annual college tournament, Bulldogs Over Broadway (BOB), on Saturday, November 15, 2008, in the friendly confines of New Haven.

Since I alone have the cojones to do it, I will be this year's lead packet editor.

Fees:
Base fee $100
Working Buzzer discount -$10 (limit 2 discounts)
Minimum fee (with packet discounts listed below) $60

BOB (as always) is a packet-submission tournament, and here are the requirements:

Send me a packet of: 25 tossups/25 bonuses (a little harder than ACF Fall)

Packet specifics:

4/4 History
4/4 Literature
4/4 Science
2/2 of any of the above three (no more than 1/1 of each discipline)
3/3 Fine Arts (music, painting, architecture, etc.)
3/3 Religion/Myth/Philosophy
2/2 Social Science
1/1 Geography/Current Events
2/2 Miscellaneous (General Knowledge, Multi-disciplinary, or Trash)

Packet discounts/deadlines:
Friday October 10 -$25
Friday October 17 -$15
Friday October 24 No penalty
Friday October 31 +$20
After that : +$40

**Best packet discount (as determined by the editors) -$15

E-mail me about arrangements for novice teams, multiple teams from the same school, packet questions, etc.

We'd also be interested in a mirror or packet swap, so if you're interested in either, please let me know.

michael dot bilow at yale dot edu

Thanks,
Michael

[Mechanical Beasts]

I wanted to note that this is going up the same day as both the Harvard Fall Tournament and Illinois Open. It might be in your best interest to host it another day?

[ChuyElChulo]

The reason we were going to run BOB on 11/15 (instead of the usual first weekend in December) was because I heard you guys were running a packet sub that first Saturday in December. I'd prefer to run BOB on 12/6 so everyone can come, but if you guys want to run one on that date, I'd rather have one team miss out than push the tournament to the spring.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

The issue being that apparently many members of the MIT program who would otherwise be going are comitted to staffing HFT.

[Matt Weiner]

Hey, maybe you guys could bid to run ACF Fall or some other nationwide tournament in the New England region this year, instead of editing your consistently terrible independent event? I'm not trying to be mean, but that is pretty much what you have going on, so you could solve both the quality problem and the date-conflict problem in one swoop here.

[Mechanical Beasts]

Hey, maybe you guys could bid to run ACF Fall or some other nationwide tournament in the New England region this year, instead of editing your consistently terrible independent event? I'm not trying to be mean, but that is pretty much what you have going on, so you could solve both the quality problem and the date-conflict problem in one swoop here.

Yeah, an ACF Fall mirror or an IO mirror; either would be pretty sweet. Especially since I have friends at Yale. I'd like to visit them.

(You'd also not have to do a job you only do because you say no one else has the cojones.)

[The Logic of Scientific Disco]

I'll join the chorus asking for ACF Fall or similar, especially given the putative MO mirror that we will likely be announcing soon. It's going to be a pretty dense (=awesome) year for tournaments in the northeast, from the look of it.

[Auroni]

I also agree that a mirror should probably be aired rather than lower-quality house written questions

[grapesmoker]

I also agree that a mirror should probably be aired rather than lower-quality house written questions

BoB has traditionally been a packet-sub event.

I don't know if it's appropriate for people to ask Yale to change their tournament for something else. I do however think that BoB over the last couple years has been deteriorating in quality as a tournament, and I'm not sure a packet-sub event is worth going to if the editors are not going to take their responsibilities seriously. I'm all for a well-edited BoB, and we're too close not to go unless there are other issues preventing us, but if trends continue, I suspect many teams will not be wanting to make the trip in future years.

[stevengfeldman]

Honestly, I agree with Jerry that its sort of rude/inappropriate to ask Yale not to run their tourney. However, I do think everything would be much smoother if there were no conflict of dates. Perhaps if the tournament was moved a week or two it would be able to draw a larger crowd, sans conflict. But I do want to say that I would be interested in playing BoB.

[Matt Weiner]

Also rude and inappropriate: charging teams $100 each and then giving them what this tournament has always looked like.

[grapesmoker]

Also rude and inappropriate: charging teams $100 each and then giving them what this tournament has always looked like.

I'm not prepared to attribute malice where mere incompetence will suffice as an explanation. All things considered, a tournament is still better than no tournament, so let's focus on ways that BoB can happen without being subsumed into another event. I would prefer an independent BoB to remain a circuit staple because independent events that require packet submission are good for getting people to write and editors to edit. Granted, ACF Fall is good for that too (on the player side) but not as beneficial to the specific group of Yale editors. Not to mention that running an invitational is an important aspect of building team identity and coherence. Like I said before, I hope that Yale gets its editing act together and does a good job at BoB; if they don't, the risk is that teams will not want go to that event anymore, which should be dangerous enough in itself.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

Well, there's always the potential for Yale to find a remote site to work on a tournament together from, and have both sites submit packets and have Yale and the other school work on the editing together. That would probably be the best alternative, so that Yale can get the learning experience (and depending on the skills of the other editors, mentoring), the set will still allow packet submission, and this way there's a larger chance of it being high quality.

[ChuyElChulo]

BOB will happen as a packet submission tournament in New Haven, ideally some time before the winter solstice.

BOB's "consistent crappiness," however, appears to be some sort of bogeyman that comes out between incarnations of the tournament. I'm not denying that last year's BOB was not up to the standards of Wehrman-quality gold seal editing, but neither were last year's presidents. And, within the archived threads announcing BOBs past, the tournament has gotten pretty much uniformly positive reviews, a few editing complaints notwithstanding (search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&keywords=bob+ ... d%5B%5D=21).

And Mr. Weiner--if you really want to show up to BOB, I invite you to pay as much as you think the questions deserve.

[Matt Weiner]

Wehrman-quality gold seal editing

Uh...sure.

[grapesmoker]

BOB's "consistent crappiness," however, appears to be some sort of bogeyman that comes out between incarnations of the tournament. I'm not denying that last year's BOB was not up to the standards of Wehrman-quality gold seal editing, but neither were last year's presidents. And, within the archived threads announcing BOBs past, the tournament has gotten pretty much uniformly positive reviews, a few editing complaints notwithstanding (search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&keywords=bob+ ... d%5B%5D=21).

Mike, BoB in the past has been a pretty mixed affair. When Mike was the editor, the tournament quality seemed to vary a lot depending on how much time he had to edit; I remember playing BoB packets that looked like they hadn't been edited at all, and not only last year. Packets submitted by experienced teams tended to be fine, but packets submitted by Dartmouth C or some Brown frosh need work, and often it looked to me like they did not get it. Like I said before, I really hope that the BoB editing team this year does a better job.

[Sima Guang Hater]

I really hope that the BoB editing team this year does a better job.

http://www.doc-ent.com/qbwiki/index.php ... _Questions
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=4754&p=65072#p65072
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=4829&p=75087#p75087
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN2VqFPNS8w

Impress me.

[grapesmoker]

Hey, I apologize for raising the dead, but I was wondering if we could get some kind of update on this tournament. It should be noted that Nov. 15th is also the date of Illinois Open; perhaps Yale might consider making their event an IO mirror? In any case, it's less than a month away and we've heard nothing about whether it will take place or how packets are going, so I'd appreciate it if someone from Yale could say a few words about what's going on.

[Not That Kind of Christian!!]

There's an IO mirror 11/22 at Brandeis; our schools are way too close geographically for two mirrors to succeed.

[grapesmoker]

There's an IO mirror 11/22 at Brandeis; our schools are way too close geographically for two mirrors to succeed.

Oops, forgot about that. Still, I'd like to hear about what's going on with BoB.

[Aaron]

We have decided that BOB will not be run this year.