Killed the Pope

Facetiously claiming that a tournament "killed the Pope" or another celebrity is likely no longer used lingo in which a difficult tournament (often ACF Nationals) is said to have been responsible for a widely covered death that took place at the same time.

This meme may have started in 1994, when ACF Nationals was held on the day that Kurt Cobain's body was discovered. It experienced a revival and acquired its name in 2005, when a very difficult ACF Nationals coincided with the death of Pope John Paul II. In 2009, ACF Nationals was said to have killed Bea Arthur, who was the subject of a tossup in the tournament (the last ACF Nationals to include a pop culture distribution) that was read at almost the exact moment of her death.

2025 ACF Nationals was not considered unusually difficult but was accused of killing Pope Francis.