In what many will call a momentous day in quiz bowl history, I have to agree with Matt Weiner. Okay, quit your gasping. The reasoning is the same. Graduate students are good for the game (Take Kellie for instance, he does a really good job at ACF Fall) and, well, I hate to say this but having a Ph.D. in English Literature does not guarantee domination in quizbowl. It boils down to experience in play, not educational level, as well as a lot of learning what comes up and knowing it. If a question ever came up that a physics Ph.D. remarked "that's what my thesis is on" the question was either too hard or the guy's Ph.D. was on something already thoroughly researched (nobody's writing discertations on Maxwell's equations anymore that I know of). --- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, "Matt Weiner" <darwins_bulldog1138_at_y...> wrote: > > A suggestion for next time (and for every academic tournament): > > Perhaps division II should be made up of undergraduate only teams > > instead of 1st or 2nd year only. As an undergraduate player at the > > very beginning of my 3rd year, it sucks to play against postdoctoral > > students. I know that is supposed to make me better, but so would > > playing against people at my level of experience. Losing by 400 > > points to a 30 year old with 2 phd's is a lot less useful than a > > competitive match against other undergraduates. > > Where does it end? Maybe people who only have masters degrees can play > Division II? After all, it's unfair to make them play against doctors. Or > maybe the people with one doctorate can play D2 to stay away from the people > with two. At some point you have to accept that > 1) there are undergrad-only tournaments out there if you really want them > 2a) it's been indisputably shown that grad participation is a good thing so > 2b) if grads are going to be around, you'll need to deal with them sooner or > later > 3) presumably not every team in D1 had "a 30 year old with 2 phd's" so you > got a lot of games against people of your own level of education, and > complaining about one or two losses that can be attributed to a disparity in > experience level is somewhat unseemly > 4) undergrad teams beat grad teams all the time.
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