Speaking for myself here, I don't think that we were angry that BU is running a tournament against us. Tournament conflicts are sometimes inevitable. (Our spring tournament is going to conflict with another established tournament, but that conflict is unavoidable IMHO). We realize that it happens. But we have a frustration that a growing number of teams cannot effectively plan the tournaments they announce. Over the summer, a half-dozen of us (from the Cornell team) decided that we wanted to host 2 tournaments this year, one in each semester. At this point, quite a few schools had announced dates for their upcoming tournaments. Looking at the schedule, we selected October 21 for the Rumble b/c it was the only good date open in the middle of the fall. And we announced the tournament on the Yahoo club, followed by the qb-announce and qb-canada lists. Shortly after the first announcement, Western Ontario announced that they didn't realize their tournament (Oct 14) conflicted with CWRU and they would be changing their tournament to the 21st. After a series of emails to Western and on the qb-canada list, it eventually became clear that they wouldn't be hosting a tournament on that date and would instead postpone until the winter, so we thought we were clear. And we weren't really mad at Western, since it was clear that the problems were from miscommunication and a very young and inexperienced team in London. Then BU announces that they are moving their tournament, because they can't get rooms on campus. (Aren't they co-hosting the tournament with Harvard? Why can't they host it at Harvard? Harvard has hosted tournaments in the past.) Which aggravates me, because in observing tournament announcements this year, it seems that far too many schools have been extremely irresponsible in making public announcements about upcoming tournaments. When the first schools announced dates for this year, a great number of them announced multiple dates as possible weekends. I can think of 3 established tournaments, including Penn Bowl (and another that traditionally occupies the weekend next to Penn Bowl), that announced a 2-3 week window for their tournaments. Which does nothing to help other schools plan for the upcoming year, except to allow for a tenuous claim in the event some other school schedules in that weekend. It blocks off multiple weekends, so a team can take their time making the decision of when to host and when to travel. That is irresponsible and aggravating to teams that have the need to plan their schedule (and the ability to travel to other tournaments in other regions). Then a number of schools have changed announced dates for a variety on reasons. Sometimes, this is fine (if a tournament would need to be moved due to circumstances outside the teams control). But there doesn't seem like people are doing their due diligence before publicly announcing their plans. When schools are flip-flopping from one weekend, to another, then back again--it is ridiculous. I made sure we knew when Homecoming was, the entire home football schedule, and our Fall Break. I know that for big football schools (like PSU and Michigan) they have to make those checks in order run a tournament. Why don't other schools do so? It is plain irresponsible to not check if a major event--especially one that appears on the academic or athletic calendars--conflicts with a proposed tournament. It's not just that BU and Harvard are going to be drawing novice players away for the Rumble. It's that Cornell can no longer expect a turnout from the more experienced players from those teams (who will now be staffing the Crimson Puppy Chow). Not to mention the experienced players from MIT, Williams, Dartmouth, and Yale that may now accompany the freshmen and stay east instead of driving the 300 miles from Boston to Ithaca. --Kenny Peskin (continued in next post)
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