Re: 2003 NAQT ICT to be held in Los Angeles

rhentzel <*no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com*> · Fri, 11 Oct 2002 07:01:24 -0000

--- In quizbowl_at_y..., Matt Weiner <darwins_bulldog1138_at_y...> wrote:
> Southwest flies only to selected large cities. The
> average college town, and even such major cities as
> Boston, need to fly with a full-fare airline. So far
> it's been made known that Princeton, Illinois, and
> Harvard will have enormous difficulties getting to the

Matt --

So far this evidence hasn't been presented to NAQT; the one case that 
we have seen is that Illinois thought that its flights might be as 
much as $500; however, they could fly Southwest for about $200 a 
person.

As for Harvard, if they are willing to drive to Hartford (just under 
two hours according to MapQuest), they can fly Southwest for $186+$28 
per ticket (with 21-day advance purchase).  NAQT will announce 
invitations sufficiently quickly to allow for 21-day advance 
purchase.  While $856 isn't a small amount of money for airfare, NAQT 
doesn't believe that it couldn't be overcome; hosting one successful 
or two moderate-size tournaments could easily bring in that amount of 
money.

Princeton's drive to Hartford is about three hours, so they could 
take the same flights.

> event. I hope a field devoid of several contenders is
> something that NAQT and the tournament hosts work to
> avoid. I agree that finding 40 teams to show up will
> not be hard, but those teams being the best 40 from
> sectionals seems unlikely. In the past, NAQT has
> always paired a commitment to the integrity and
> quality of their tournaments from the perspective of
> the good of quizbowl with their business interests,

We appreciate this sentiment...

> and I hope this practice does not end with any sort of
> dismissive, "we'll make our money either way"
> attitude. I have not seen any such idea from any NAQT
> reps, but some are apparently eager to put those words
> into NAQT's mouth, and they appear to fit.

...but, speaking for myself, I think that this is uncalled for.  I am 
perhaps the most biased observer possible, but I don't see anything 
in NAQT's behavior or official announcement that indicates an 
official or unofficial policy that we don't care about getting every 
single one of the top teams to the ICT.  If you can point to anything 
that suggests that, please let us know, because it should be 
addressed immediately.

> I did a quick check of prices from several major
> Eastern air hubs. Los Angeles is on average $150 more
> expensive per person than a central city such as
> Chicago or St. Louis. The situation is more severe for
> teams in less populous areas.

That is probably true, but I don't think that the proper comparison, 
in this case, is apples-to-apples.  If the price of apples rises, 
some people are just as happy to eat oranges.  By this I mean that 
while it may be expensive to fly from Champaign-Urbana to Los 
Angeles, it's not that expensive to fly from Midway; back when I was 
competing for Iowa State University we would routinely drive to 
Omaha, Kansas City, or Chicago (six hours when I drove, five hours 
when Chad Kubicek drove) to take advantage of cheaper flights.

Naturally, NAQT encourages teams in easy-to-reach, central areas to 
bid for the 2004 ICT.

> I don't think that the circuit is obligated to make
> the California teams the beneficiaries of geography.
> All the currently active CA teams are found in the
> greater San Francisco or Los Angeles areas; they do
> not have to deal with the struggle to get to a major
> airport that a Penn State or Cornell does. Many east
> coast teams will have a much more difficult time
> attending this event than any west coast teams had
> last year, and the number affected will be much
> higher.
> 
> I await hearing the rationale for this decision as
> well as that for disregarding the other bids. There
> are lots of things that NAQT might have already done
> to alleviate the problems that we may not know about,
> and I'm hoping some of them have already been
> arranged.

NAQT does not feel any obligation to disclose the process by which it 
evaluates bids, but is more than happy to outline the basic 
rationale:  UCLA and Caltech gave us the best bid with respect to 
running a fun, logistically sound, high-quality tournament.  Once 
NAQT ascertained that reasonable flights were available, we were 
delighted to award those two schools the tournament.

Of course, anybody particularly interested in actually *making 
decisions* like this should start the path toward NAQT membership; 
every NAQT member was once a player and we've admitted two new 
members a year for several years.  There's a lot of work involved 
(writing, editing, administration), but there's no reason that people 
who feel extremely strongly about "how quiz bowl should work" 
shouldn't have a goal of eventually joining NAQT.

-- R. Robert Hentzel
President and Chief Technical Officer,
National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC