Trash
This article discusses "trash," a commonly used term for popular culture in Quiz Bowl. For information regarding Testing Recall About Strange Happenings, the organization also known as TRASH, see TRASH.
Trash is the common name for popular culture (sports, movies, TV, video games, non-classical music, comic books, etc) in quizbowl. Though probably a derogatory term when it was first coined, it has been embraced by the most vocal supports of popular culture content in quizbowl, and the term no longer contains any value judgment.
In mainstream academic quizbowl tournaments, trash usually takes up between 0 and 5 percent of the distribution (there are no trash questions at all at the ACF Nationals or the PACE NSC), though NAQT has somewhat more trash (6.6% in their high school sets when pop culture and sports are treated as a unit [1]). In small amounts, trash questions can help keep rounds lively and increase retention of new players, but a preponderance of trash in an otherwise-academic tournament is bad.
Trash tournaments
Trash tournaments are tournaments involving questions exclusively on trash.
Matt Weiner once referred to the trash circuit as a "cancerous growth" that has a "chilling effect" on academic tournaments because of the way that teams often become entirely devoted to trash to the exclusion of playing academic tournaments. [2] This tendency can be seen in the fact that clubs like Villanova and Boston College now play exclusively in trash tournaments. In the past, "trash capture" affected Penn State and Georgia as well, until the Penn State club just dissolved entirely, and Georgia turned its fortunes around to become one of the most active academic clubs anywhere as of 2007.
The number of trash tournaments has declined significantly since the late 2000s, while participation at academic events has remained constant or increased. There were no standalone trash tournaments during the 2012-13 academic year.