After years of flying, driving long distances, and wiping out our entire travel budgets for Trash tournaments, it's a relief to see that someone's listened to our southern complaints and found a place equally as far away from our part of the world as Boston, North Carolina, and Florida, so we can still pay for airfare. If we qualify, we'll definitely be there. How? We've set up commmunications with the Provost's office on campus and the President's office on campus, then made appointments with the various peoples involved, bathed, dressed up in clothes that aren't necessarily t-shirts related to Star Wars or They Might be Giants, came up with travel figures, and then presented these to the people who have money at our university. For the past six-seven years, the President's office has helped us out -- re:bankrolled -- our trips to Nationals tourneys we have to fly to, which means almost every national tournament except for the Nashville NAQT ICT, the St. Louis NAQT ICT and CBI's National Tourney in Manhattan, Kansas. Approach your officials with legitimate, researched figures, and inform them about how you represent the academic level of your university in competition. I can't believe Illinois Champagne-Urbana couldn't walk into the President's office with a stack full of National Championship and Runners-Up trophies and NOT get some money. Hell, we've never won one (Trashionals was a multi-region effort) and we've never been refused, even though my salary's been cut by 10 grand a year due to budget cuts so we can pay for Bob Stoops' pay raise. I have no idea how Texas A&M travels as much as it does -- wait, it's the 100 high school teams they have every year at their high school tourney... -- but they seem to be everywhere these days. There's an idea: more fundraising. If anyone in this nation has had the right to bitch about where tourneys are held, it's the teams on the West Coast and the Southern teams. Yet, somehow, we don't immediately jump on an opportunity to raise our voices when something doesn't seem to be going our way. Maybe it's because we're used to it. Or maybe it's because we've learned that the circuit is extremely biased towards the eastern and northern teams and we're used to it. Or maybe this is such a stupid argument that we can't understand how anyone could get more than nominally upset at the idea. It's October. If you plan on qualifying for the NAQT ICT, begin your travel estimates now, so you can turn them in to the proper people when you do qualify. Your university presidents are usually totally unaware that academic teams exist, but when they find out, they tend to be very sympathetic. Or, you can have your own NAQT ICT, wherever in the eastern United States, and call it the No-Homers National Championship. See you in LA (hopefully). David Murphy, University of OKlahoma
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