Tim wrote a quite thoughtful post, and I'd like some clarification. Exactly which tournaments are we talking about, where dinosaurs smack undergrad teams? Are we talking ACF, invitationals, trash, TRASH, somewhere else, or all of the above? Certainly efforts have been made to address the issue through some Junior bird and split divisions at tournaments (all good things). I think the problems posed aren't dinosaurs per se, but disparity among teams at *every* level. Let's think about this for a second. Exactly what chance do new programs have nowadays? I regretably watched a new team go 0-10 at the TRASH *junior bird* this weeekend. Are we now going to bash the teams composed of upperclassmen? (How unfair!) How many new teams have folded simply because it is too hard to compete against firmly established ones? For that matter, we all cried discrimination when CBI wouldn't allow the HCBU's to participate elsewhere. Are they playing now, a few years after that policy was abandoned? I haven't heard of too much improvement in this area, a completely different topic, but certainly not unrelated. Pennsylvania has a scillon 4-year schools. But only CMU, Pitt, Penn, and Swarthmore are seen on a *regular* basis playing. (Regrettably, Dickinson and PSU don't seem to be as active now.) This can't be an accident. It's been like this as long as I remember and the playing map might look quite similar ten years from now. You exclude the veteran players and I contend you'll miss the mark. The attention will just shift down to the next level where there will still be 300+ point victories. <Please comment> To address the grad-student/dinosaur/master's issue, I do want a master's circuit. And I think it should be a sister group to ACF, or at least patterned after it (because after all, the players will complain endlessly over decisions made without their input as we have seen with CBI and now quickly slide down the same path with NAQT) Questions for potential masters-level participants in such a league: (a) How many tournaments a year would you be interested in attending? (b) When should these tournaments be held? (c) Do you think 4-on-4 is best for such a league, or would it better be served by 3-on-3 or even 2-on-2? (d) Exactly what question difficulties are you interested in playing? Somehow I have a feeling that a healthy master's ciruict does not mean letting them play *only* on questions at a so-difficult-only- four-teams-will attend difficulty. At this present time, the Mid- Atlantic is not supporting an ACF-nats level masters field. I've been to 2 such tournaments in the last six months, and each had around 15 *players* total. Could, just perhaps, we get more people at the tournament if the questions were brought down a bit? Make the events 2-on-2 and then maybe the questions don't need to be as hard. Other activities such as sports, chess, etc. certainly have their "adult" or "senior" analogues. To be cute, may I propose the name "Master Circuit Competition", so the short name can be mc- squared? So there it is, what I want. Agree or disagree, but do act and expand the masters opportunity in academic events, because not all of us dinosaurs delight solely in trash. Bill
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:46 AM EST EST