Re: Michigan State Tournament

etchuck · Sun, 30 Jan 2000 09:42:43 -0800

Nate had said:

<<< Oh, and if I
may, one more gripe about the tournament: there are a
moderator and a scorekeeper in every room, and that's
great, but they are the *only* people to protest to. And
their decisions are final. So if you're protesting a
history question in a room with a science teacher and a
random person from Dan LeGrow's staff, you're out of
luck. (last year: "amnionic sac" was deemed
unacceptable for "amnion" because they just didn't know
anything about it). >>>

Well, that's
obviously not ideal. However, I don't think that people who
are not knowledgeable about the information could do
anything about. The name of the game for a TD is to be
able to execute a tournament fairly and quickly. I
think that the reason why your state tournament is set
up this way is simply because Dan Legrow doesn't
want to bog the tournament down with protests and
ruling protests correct or not.

For Ohio, the
state format says that you have a protest committee.
However, if you do bring up a protest and it is ruled
against you, you actually forfeit a game as a
disincentive to bring up any frivolous protests. Since it's a
double elimination tournament, it makes no sense to
bring up a protest when you lose your first game
because if you lose, you automatically are eliminated. I
don't like that effect of the rule, although I admit, I
don't get to hear too many problems with
protests.

"Yeah, I would like to see a broader Port Huron canon
with less: repeats, social science, grammar, vocab
definitions, African geography, geology, binary math, etc.,
etc."

The questions are purchased from Academic Hallmarks
(you know, those Auk people). I don't know what you
can do about that since it's an outsourced company
that writes the questions, presumably to whatever
specifications that Dan et al agreed to.

"Oh, and we just
qualified for States again today (we'd only been to two
tourneys this year)... so watch out. :)"

With all
due respect, until you DCD guys make a trip to
Cleveland and play against some of our guns over here, I
remain skeptical. :) :b