This was sent to me by a teammate of mine to post on this board. I am posting it on his behalf and then adding a couple of points of my own: "As a long-time college bowler, I found the attitude of some contestants at Penn Bowl to be extremely unpleasant and frankly took a lot of the fun out of the competition. Forgive me for lecturing, I enjoy the come-as-you are atmosphere of college bowl immensely, and I don't resent losing to a better team, but I resent arrogance of such players on them. Here are two examples. A player on Chicago A blurted out 'you're wrong' when I gave an incorrect answer, before the moderator had a chance to. After playing Yale A, one of their players audibly disparaged us, knowing we were within ear-shot. Any college bowler can probably think of other instance of bad sportsmanship, I only bring this two as they I remember them specifically. I don't want to start a 'witch hunt' for rude teams, and I'm sure my own conduct is less than perfect, but we're all well-educated adults. We don't have to be friends, but why must there be hostility? Why must players feel that if they play a lesser team, that it is a personal insult? If you are the Michael Jordan of college bowl, be happy that you score 50 points a game, be exuberant when you get a power, protest all you want, but why if you win? I've found that harsh losses against genial teams hurt less than close games against hostile teams, and while using this term very loosely, college bowlers are a community. It's in every player's interest to have large tournaments, more players, and encourage others who enjoy this pastime. All that is necessary is to be somewhat polite for the duration of the tournament." In addition to the words of my teammates I would like to note a couple of other things. Ted Stratton had, by my stat tabulations, 45 ppg, which would have placed him 8th or 9th I believe. I wonder if his absence was a mere mistake and, assuming that, why awards were allowed to be awarded at a national tournament without double checking the leaders. While I felt the questions at the event to generally be well-written I would like to comment on the distribution and what I know from my own experience. Out of the 84 questions we submitted, I believe a grand total of 6-7 were used. Other than a few throwaway science, these questions were well-written with strong pyrimidiality. As proof of this I think one could see the minimal editing done to the questions from our packet used in the tournament (Mary Tyrone, Mt. Pelee, pre-Colombian explorers, Man at the Crossroads, El Greco and boxing greats.) There were several questions not used that were on topics that were not covered at all in the tournament despite their relative importance, such as a tossup on the two famous William Williams' and one on Galileo that would reward depth of knowledge and would still be easily gettable by the novice teams. Those are just a couple. I wonder if the fact that 80% of the packet came from Virginia was as much a product of their being held in "high esteem" by the quiz bowl elite, and our still being regarded as a team in a "rebuilding" phase (at least before the event,) and not on the quality of the questions themselves. As for distribution, I can only personally speak of the areas I know about at a level that would be acceptable to the people who read this message: baseball (and sports in general), Jewish lit (and general lit), Judaism and TRASH. Lit had a much higher South American concentration than likeable and should have been better spread amongst other continents. I don't recall any Oe or Ibuse questions and only one Japanese lit q in general (I can most certainly be mistaken on these figures.) There were 3-4 questions about Joseph Heller but not a single question about Herman Wouk, Chaim Potok or the most highly regarded of his genre, Henry Roth, (or if one dares expand the canon at the expense of gettability Allegra Goodman or a Second Philip Roth.) A teammate noted the complete absence of questions on Islam and the abundance of Norse mythology (it was like a freakin' Heimdall daisy chain.) The Judaica was titlted towards the apocrypha which unfairly rewards fringe knowlege and is likely to leave those people actually versed in the field stammering humina- humina (I made the same complaint to NAQT for almost without fail having a TU on a very minor figure in Judaism within its nationals and invitational sets of the past year.) I believe there were 6 baseball tossups, which is, in my opinion, unacceptable. It may have went in my favor, but I still feel that there should have been at most 3. People who know other major sports well should have had more of a shot (and I don't consider a punters bonus a help in that regard.) These are just examples off the top of my head. I don't think its crazy to want a tournament with the stature of Penn Bowl to try a little harder with regards to distribution. I do not say all this to be a ill-tempered person. Those who know me on the circuit know I am affable and definately do not take this game seriously, which is why I truly do love it. Most of the people we typically play against are fine people and a great joy to talk to and joke and compete with. However, that does not make the problems noted by my teammate or my comments at the end less true, although it does point to a disproportionate slice of the problem coming from the teams and people at the "top" of this somewhat insulated enclave. I welcome comments or anything you have to say in response and if you want me to foward specific comments to my teammate I can do that. Thank you very much for your time, especially if you are part of the majority that makes this game so worthwile and special. Dan Passner danpass _at_ brandeis . edu (remove spaces)
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