Al Whited wrote: "Now, that is not to say that there is the *rare* B team that is actually among the elite teams that can actually contend for the championship. I certainly think those B teams should be invited, but I've only seen two or three B teams that good in 20 years." You have mentioned this a few times. I don't think that saying "we should only invite a B in special cases" would produce a very easily quantifiable method for inviting B teams to the ICT. I think that the system that NAQT has in place right now serves the community pretty well. If I'm not mistaken, that is one of the main points of what you have been saying. The ICT should be a community event, one that celebrates the activity in which we all take part. Look at the ICT field this year. It is solidly geographically diverse, with schools both large and small. I don't really think that it can be improved upon all that much, in terms of diversity. I happen to differ from your viewpoint of the ICT of being mainly a celebration. I see it mainly as a tournament that serves the function of recognizing an (inter)national champion. And don't get me wrong, I am all in favor of diversity of schools at the ICT. The two main reasons I look personally forward to it is the chance to compete for a national championship and the opportunity to play teams from other parts of the country. But I don't think that B teams attending is a bad thing in any way. In fact, it adds more diversity to the field: Teams from say, the Southwest will not only get to face the top schools from the Northeast, they also get to face the top _teams_. That is to say, if Harvard or BU or Princeton or whoever has a good B team that they have been hearing about all year, they will get the chance to face them at the tournament. And I do think that year in and year out, there are at least a few B teams that are good enough that they would be worth playing. -Todd Gregory
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