Honda Campus All-Star Challenge
The Honda Campus All-Star Challenge (HSASC) is a program for historically black colleges and universities that is operated by the College Bowl Company and sponsored by Honda. The HSASC season culminate on a National Championship Tournament, an annual competition in March that has been held every year since 1990. For the entire duration of College Bowl National Championship Tournament, which ended in 2008, HCASC participants could not play in the College Bowl series due to the recycling of questions between the two events.
The name also refers to a small circuit of tournaments, advertised as "preparatory" HCASC Pre-NCT tournaments, which are run and attended by HCASC programs on questions supplied by College Bowl.
HCASC has infamously had a history of attempting to restrict HCASC teams from the mainstream quizbowl circuit. Until 1996, participants in HCASC were barred by College Bowl from playing in any quizbowl tournaments, on penalty of disqualification from HCASC. From 1996 until fall 1999, College Bowl compromised by allowing HCASC schools to play in "licensed tourmaments". To qualify as a licensed tournament, tournament organizers had to sign a statement acknowledging that College Bowl had a trademark on intercollegiate academic competition. This policy was met with criticism by individuals such as Albert Whited, who referred to the policy as being racist. On the other hand, the policy also had its supporters including, Tom Michael, Chris Sloan, and Hayden Hurst, who either defended the policy outright or condemned Whited for his "intemperate" language. Nonetheless the "licensed tournaments" policy was also repealed before the 1999-2000 academic year.
Since the lifting of the ban, teams such as Morehouse and Langston have ventured to quizbowl tournaments with some success.
The HCASC was televised on BET for several years in the 1990s.
HCASC NCT top finishers/locations
Links
- HCASC Sample Questions: http://www.hcasc.com/games/samples.asp
- "Pre-NCT Tournaments": http://www.hcasc.com/tmts/prenct.asp
- National Champions List: http://www.collegequizbowl.org/Maize/maizeresults.html