Re: Sportsmanship or Legal Strategy?

• From: valenciaqbowl <no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com>
• Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 12:36:40 -0000
• Message-ID: <b76cso+s2um_at_...>

--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, Patrick King <pakman044_at_y...> wrote:

> Going into the last question, my team was up 20-14,
> with the other 2 teams immaterial.  So what I decided
> to do was to interrupt, make a decent guess, and if I
> got it wrong, we still win because our score would
> only drop to 15, with no one else being able to
> answer. 

> My question is, was this a legitimate strategy or was
> this unsportsmanlike?  I've been pummeling my brain
> for the answer to this question, and I still sort've
> feel bad about it.

Well, first, it's a lamely structured game that makes an interrupt 
kill a question, but if those are the rules, and as long as the goal 
of the company's competition was to encourage teams to compete to 
win, then what you did seems not only legal but smart to me.  If, of 
course, the goal was team-building or somesuch HR nonsense, then I 
reckon you should've heard the question out.

This is interesting to me, though, as one of my Valencia players told 
me that in high school competition in Seminole County (suburbs of 
Orlando, FL), negs. also eliminate the question for the other team.  
As she and her teammates didn't like and weren't good at math (which 
makes up 20% of the competition), she would always neg. on any math 
toss-up, thereby losing five points, but keeping the other team from 
having any chance at the ten (or the boni, for that matter, which are 
in the same field as the toss-up), and saving her from having to sit 
through it.  Apparently other team's coaches sometimes complained, 
but what she was doing seems like good strategy to me--she was just 
playing within the structure of the rules, as were you.  

Of course, having negs. eliminate the toss-up entirely seems a dumb 
way to play the game.  Many teams in Div. I at ICT could've had a 
much lower loss differential to Chicago had they negged on all 28 
tosses (losing by only 140).

--chris borglum



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