As I was looking through college bowl's official results from the CBI tourneys this weekend (in our region, we have yet to play the finals; the four teams in contention are Rochester, Syracuse, Cornell, and St. Bonaventure) I was struck by how few of the circuit teams showed up. I recognize players from Florida, Arkansas, UCLA, and of course Rochester and Cornell. I assume the Michigan region will as usual feature some circuit teams battling it out. But even some "circuit" teams that showed up (Georgetown, Pitt, Chicago) seem to be composed of non-circuit players. It looks like NAQT and the circuit have clearly won out over CBI. NAQT's D2 numbers support this: over 100 teams competing for the D2 title, comparable to the number of teams playing in CBI's regionals. So why are there so few D1 teams competing at NAQT? I counted 60 at this years' regionals. I don't think that number has gone up over the last few years, either. Why is D2 so popular? Is it just "easier" for a once-a-year school to play D2 instead of D1? What happens to all these D2 players, and how come they're not moving up to D1? I will hazard another guess, which is that most junior bird tourneys attract more teams than most "standard" tourneys, for much the same reason. Maybe young players and newer teams are more competitive at their first D2 tourneys, then move on to stronger competition and get stomped at an open tourney, and get turned off? I dunno. Had a brainstorm. How about a new rule: you can stay in D2 until you win or place at a tournament, even if you have older students on your team. You can move up at any time into D1, but as long as you haven't had a strong result, if you want to keep playing D2 you can. Winning or placing doesn't automatically bump you up to D1 unless you have experienced players; a team of mighty frosh can enjoy their D1 victories all year. That doesn't directly help us gain more D1 teams, of course, except that teams would get more experience under their belts before they move up, and thus do better vs. the big boys and stick around longer. Should make the overall tourney pool bigger. Would also make D1 brackets smaller for the short term, which is a downside.
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