RE: Can you handle it?

ltcoldubois <*no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com*> · Tue, 25 Feb 2003 06:49:48 -0000

I'm afraid I can't summon much enthusiasm for this 'quizbowl as 
sport' argument.  In basketball you have a court, and a standard 
regulation ball.  In quiz bowl we have questions that are supposed to 
conform to a certain distribution.  Basketball might more resemble 
quiz bowl if 5 minutes were played with a basketball, 5 more with a 
soccer ball, 3 with a bowling ball, and 2 with a tennis ball.  

As silly as the analogy is, not all rounds are created equal.  A 
tossup on "Death of a Salesman" is not equal to one on "The Iceman 
Cometh."  That being said, every year a number of people try their 
best to come up with a number of rounds with roughly equal 
difficulty.  Even the best effort cannot match the equality of the 
basketball court or the football field.  

If you agree that there cannot be a perfect question set, then it 
would seem that the goal of a tournament director to arrange a 
schedule to minimize the effect of round-to-round variations in the 
questions.  Ideally, the team with the best performance will win.  
Hence the periodic discussions on various tournament formats.

I've been on teams that won tournaments; I've been on teams that 
finished last.  I've had my share of adrenaline rushes, and I've also 
been in situations where I've felt screwed.  Everyone talks 
facetiously about handing Michigan the trophy.  Certainly, their 
performance has been the best in the past.  If their performance is 
superlative again, then they deserve yet another trophy.  
However, I certainly wouldn't want to see them as champions merely as 
a result of a scheduling quirk.  Rather I expect a masterful 
performance out of whatever team walks away first in a national 
championship.

Paul Tomlinson
"God will make you pay.  Smite them!!" Family Guy

--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, "Craig, Stephanie Erin" 
<secraig_at_k...> wrote:
> I think that you all are forgetting one key thing: this is supposed 
to be
> fun and exciting. What exactly is fun about playing an 
excutiatingly long
> round robin, and having two teams get to play an extremely long and 
boring
> finals round in which the team who is already seated first is the 
only
> acceptable winner. If the team seated second wins, obviosly 
there 'is
> something wrong with the format.' 
> 
> I know I've only played in college for one year, but I've been 
extensively
> involved with quizbowl for the last 7 years of my life. I promise 
you if the
> round robin format had been used at most of the tournaments I 
played in in
> the past, I would not have cared enough to help create a collegiate 
team.
> There is absolutely nothing exciting about the preferred format at 
this
> level. It's too safeguarded, too formulaic, and too concerned with
> statistics. Why do I want to spend all of my energy working within 
the
> boundaries of the quizbowl formula. IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE A GAME. It's
> supposed to be challenging, and rewarding, and crazy, and 
unpredictable. If
> you know who the winner is supposed to be before you go to a 
tournament,
> then why put in the time and money to go??
> 
> And you guys have completely eliminated any excitement. You're 
supposed to
> get an adrenaline rush in the elimination rounds of a tournament, 
not a
> calculator to figure out if its mathematically acceptable for you 
to win.
> What happened to the thrill of stepping up for the elimination 
round? This
> isn't a lecture series-it's our sport. And yes,  all those NCAA 
tournament
> and Superbowl analogies are right on. Just because the camera isn't 
there to
> sell the frenzy to an audience doesn't mean the player shouldn't 
get to
> experience it. Part of the magic that accompanies doing well at a 
tournament
> is knowing that it was all or nothing. Knowing you went in and did 
what you
> had to do. Playing it safe with an overly buearocratic way to 
determine a
> winner takes away all of the winner's glory. And just because you 
believe
> you would have won a true elimination round finals doesn't mean you 
would
> have. It's about stepping up when the time comes. And there are 
plenty of
> players who choke when the pressure is on. Being good and winning 
prelim
> games is a lot easier than winning in quarters, semis, or finals. 
The
> competition might be the same team you faced earlier, but now 
they're
> hungrier and fiercer. It's about finding out if you can handle the 
pressure.
> And I believe that the overwhelming majority of college quizbowlers 
who hate
> single elimination tournaments are afraid to see what they're made 
of. But
> what else is the point of traveling long distances to face random 
teams from
> other universities. What else do we take away from the competition, 
if not a
> better knowledge of who we are and what we can handle?
> 
> No guts, no glory. 
> 
> -Stephanie Craig, acknowleding the tremendous amount of typos and 
spelling
> errors and wishing she had used a lot of expliatives. 
> VP Kansas Academic Team