Item #1: NAQT made a good faith error that seemed like a good idea at the time. That's hardly unique; Lord knows I've made enough decisions that seemed like a good idea at the time and came back to bite me on the butt. To their credit, NAQT admitted the error, agreed to honor the promise they shouldn't have made, but have promised to go and sin no more. I can't think of much else they could do about it now. Item #2: Yes, it could be said the decision cost another team a playoff berth at last year's ICT. On the other hand, how many times has the last qualifier for the playoffs won an NAQT event? In retrospect, perhaps what should have happened was this: once they realized UCLA would qualify for the playoffs, NAQT could have gone to them and said, "When we invited you to fill out the short-handed bracket without losing eligibility, we were thinking of you as more like an exhibition team. Now that you've qualified for the playoffs, we have a bit of a dilemma. If you wish, you can retain your D II eligibility for next year, but for that to happen we'd have to disqualify you from this year's playoffs. On the other hand, you can go ahead and consider this your D II ICT year and go for the title, Which would you prefer?" Item #3: Maybe the ICT experience did give UCLA an edge in this year's D II. But is that much of an edge compared to, say, if they'd come to NAQT as timekeepers, heard all the questions, and gotten comfortable with the format? Item #4: If we're going to continue on this thread anyway, could we at least have a "covert" revision of the typo in the header line?
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