Hi everyone, haven't posted to the club in a while so I thought I'd catch up on a couple threads that have been buzzing around lately (good to see the board is hopping again these days) Does anyone have driving directions to Smackdown, USA? It seems surprisingly close to Newark, DE... kind of a good nickname for the town considering what Lehigh did to the Blue Hens there last weekend on the gridiron. (Lehigh's QB & I played football together in HS) I was much more interested in the vituperative discussion concerning the latest poll and the thread's eventual transformation into jingoistic yet enjoyable nonsense. I was glad to see that the final at Mackenzie Bowl contained one school from each country. Congratulations to CWRU, who looks to be gaining strength with terrific new players like Brandon Eilertson. Look for them to be making some serious noise wherever they play the rest of the year. (Tom - sorry we didn't get to do dinner with you Saturday night... we couldn't even dine together as a program and would up going to two separate places amongst ourselves, even) There has been plenty of discussion about the questions used in last weekend's tournaments, and I agree with most of the commentary, that is to say, the Vandy questions ran a bit on the odd side, etc. One thing that wasn't discussed too much was the Canadian-American bonus laming at Mackenzie Bowl and how that affected the dynamics of game play. It seemed to be a very effective rule, IMHO... only in a few instances do I recall teams regretting their decision to lame or not to lame. In the matches I moderated, I read off the answers to lamed boni for teams from both countries and the average conversion would have been about 5 points... that is to say, whammy/bagel 1/2 the time, no more than 10 pts any other time. I think "bitchass," whoever he is, was somewhat vindicated in my mind when I saw some Canadian teams totally CREAM 30 point boni on Canadian content that I had never heard of at all... it's obvious in my mind that the best Canadian players have great recall skills, but in a parallel-universe sort of way... does that mean they're not any good? I think not... and there's not just one good Canadian player (Dave Thorseley) but several... Cameron Barr, who I had the privilege of moderating for in several rounds, was a total monster on geography and any Canadian content. I could visualize him fitting in perfectly in any one of several circuit powerhouses, but he's at Queen's for the forseeable future, so take notice... someone said something about Canadian schools not having any nth year grad students... how's that work? By the way, if UWO keeps up their rate of improvement, the polls cannot ignore them for much longer. By the way, the UWO campus is gorgeous... but all the tunnels beneath it tell me it might not be that way in a few months! Having said that much, it's going to be a long time before Queen's, Western, or anyone else is ready to take on Chicago, Harvard, Illinois, or a top Michigan team for continental supremacy... but suffice it to say this Yankee was impressed. I can't wait to go to Canada again, this time to play, not just because Tim Horton's coffee rocked my moderating neurons unlike anything I've had in a while. Alright, I'm outta here... gotta be a scab player at Nittany Lion tomorrow morning. -Adam Schaible Pitt Quiz Bowl VP
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