While I will concede that my initial post was made in the middle of a heated knee jerk reaction to the results at 3 am, I stand firm by my concern over the existence of a completely illegitimate division 2 champion. Your needless display of pomposity aside (I'm just thrilled an exalted figure like yourself would honor my lowly opinions by expounding your wisdom at length to a topic you derided as "silly,"), there are several reasons why allowing UCLA to play D2 was a serious black mark on the ICT. The added advantage of having past experience on ICT-level questions with timed-play against the same degree of competition obviously is a factor; though yes, it's true that UCLA mainly won by virtue of superior play. However, as Matt Weiner remarked in his post, the larger issue of the D2 elligbility rule was in determining the competition that UCLA would face. Illinois, for example, easily could have dominated that field had they been able to stick Sudheer, Sorice, and Andrew on their roster, but basic elligibility rules kept them, and the other teams from playing in that division. Clearly UCLA would not have won, or likely placed highly, without having two players who were inelligible by all official definitions of the rules. Do you not see how there is a problem with how UCLA was able to field a full strength team and play against diluted competition (no disrespect to any of the D2 players, as I know there were some very good ones at ICT) by virtue of being arbitrarily exempted from the same basic rules that shut out players from the other schools? Your claim that UCLA was perfectly innocent is also untrue, because they were the ones who chose to play under such dubious circumstances. At any point in time, they could have said, "You know what? It's dishonorable to get cheap wins this way, so let's show good sportsmanship and play by the rules." Instead, Charles Meigs gave a rather shameful justification for the team's action in a post on the hsquizbowl board, to the extent of "we only care about winning a trophy" (see paragraph 5 in http://www.hsquizbowl.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=8693&highlight=#8693 ). It's not entirely their fault, but they should get at least half the blame because they could have chosen to take the high road at any time, played D1, and avoided the tarnished reputation that both their team and their "national championship" will now bear. They may not care what me and many others on the circuit think, but if they have a problem with people labelling them as "hardware whores" and "cowards," they brought it upon themselves. NAQT's part in this incident was obviously the secret bargain they made with UCLA. I say secret, because except for both teams on the west coast, few people knew what was going on. It sure as hell wasn't posted explicitly in any public announcements or on their website, and all the reactions from non-West Coasters that came were from surprised people who had no clue how it happened. I'd like to give NAQT the benefit of the doubt, but given their recent history of intentionally hiding information to avoid public criticism (dropping question writer ids), it's hard not to speculate that they wanted to keep most of the circuit from knowing about it until the deed had been done and it was too late to prevent it. While I do appreciate Hentzel admitting it was a poor decision, NAQT had the power to restore legitimacy to their D2 field by forcing UCLA's offending players to play D1. I, for one would have asked to give UCLA our D1 bid (money issues kept us from going) if it meant fixing the D2 situation; though I imagine had I proposed it formally it would have been ignored anyway. At any rate, the 2004 D2 title is basically a joke because of what NAQT allowed to happened, and while it may be a dead horse, it's important to remember what happened and express concerns so that such poor decisions won't taint the game in the future. I'm not posting this to be an ass or out of some animus for the UCLA players, whom I've never met, or for NAQT, who helps our club raise money by letting us run high school tournaments and this year's SCT. I am just a staunch advocate of honorable competition, and it's disappointing to see how low some people will stoop if it means they can get a trophy out of it. In an evironment where people constantly complain about losing to upperclassmen and graduate students in open competition, it's ironic that there isn't as much outrage when ringers break clearly defined rules to play in novice competition on a national level. I heard the ICT was one of the best ones yet, with improved questions and good matches in both divisions. I can't help but be disappointed that the D2 fiasco seems to overshadow the high points of this year's ICT, at least in my mind. I didn't want to revive the debate, just make a reminder of the mistake to avoid future reptition, and that's the last I will post of this topic on this forum.
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