Even though I am proud to wear and bleed Razorback Red (Go Hogs! Beat Georgia), the tiger has been, is, and probably always will be my favorite animal (as evidenced by my Yahoo! name). Fascinated enough to learn their demographics by subspecies (which gave me the knowledge to buzz in very VERY early on a tiger question at a recent tournament), I can usually be seen wearing orange and black to tests, parties, and especially quiz bowl tournaments. One only needs to observe my car to view my enamoration with William Blake's most famous subject. Indeed, if there's nothing at stake for the Razorbacks, I have traditionally rooted for teams which have the tiger as their mascot (yes, even LSU and Auburn). However, I have been very tempted to make an exception to this tradition for the quiz bowl team of the University of Missouri. I, like many others, am tired of the endless biographies, tournamentographies, and top-25 plugs that Mizzou's captain (I think you know his name by now) makes. Let's face the facts: winning a tournament with the same record as the second-place team, in which you go 1-1 against the second-place team, and in which the questions were written for high-school players and first- and second-year college players, does not by any means qualify a team to become one of the top 25 teams in the nation. Mark, I understand that he can become a good friend, as most people can become, and I also understand that there are many good- natured, "slightly" more modest people in Mizzou's program, but a captain, like a president, is the main ambassador for an entire group or nation, and Mizzou's quiz bowl captain is slowly becoming a disgrace to tigers everywhere. A captain should represent an entire team, not just himself, and the assertion that one person can beat Oklahoma, Washington, Rolla, Kansas, and the rest of Region 11 without his experienced and loyal (even amidst the obnoxiousness) teammates is not the assertion that a true team captain would make, even if the assertion were true (which, in this case, it is definitely not.) By the way, qbtunagirl (who does not have the courage to post without the perceived security of anonymity), as evidenced by recent posts, I am not sure that a beatdown by a few hundred points, not even the 475- 80 smackdown laid on him at Rollapalooza by a team whose school I won't mention "again," can bust the egotistical bubble of Mizzou's captain. Before I close, I would like to note that, at least last I checked, one person cannot "fail" to win a state championship in a TEAM sport, not even in high-school quiz bowl. Of course, a large ego might lead one to think otherwise. Thanks for reading, Joshua Hill Arkansas Quiz Bowl Panthera tigris altaica And last I checked, we will be attending Mizzou's SCT, an event that I look forward to. That will be Mizzou and Memphis down; LSU, Auburn, and Clemson to go... hehe
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