<< I don't want to see UIUC and Chicago keep winning all the time. This is the whole point -- we already know those guys are good, let's design something where they have to work, too -- a more even playing field for everyone. Forgive me if my comments in this post are rambling and unfocused; anger tends to have that effect on me. Let's look at what the gentleman from Depauw has proposed. 1) Chicago and Illinois win too much. 2) Something should be done about it. 3) The thing to do about it is to change the format so that the above teams (and by extension other top teams) have to work harder. 4) The specific implementation of this plan is to combine academics with trash. Since Darwins_Bulldog already made a good basic refutation of this idea, let's look a little deeper. The vast majority of players play academic quizbowl (as opposed to only trash) for a combination of two reasons: 1) they love hearing and answering questions in which they can display (mostly) academic knowledge, and 2) they like winning. For those players for which reason 1 is important, changing the format to involve equal amounts of academics and trash would likely be a horrible thing to do, since it undermines their reason for playing. For those in camp 2 (as I suspect the poster of the above is, given his desire to keep Chicago and Illinois from winning), different teams will be affected in different ways, all bad. For those teams which are not at the top yet, but are working to become better, the playing field will be changed just as they have learned the things to make their work pay off. For those teams who are already great (which cannot happen without hard work), their years of effort to become better at the game they love will be undermined. And for those teams who are bad and will never be good due to lack of desire to put in the effort to learn new things, let me assure you that the teams who do work at the game will quickly adjust and become vastly better than you again. What then, change the format to only those things you know well without working at it? Who would want to play in that kind of game? Besides, those who did still play who worked at the game would still probably become better than the lazy teams. When someone proposes changing things to bring teams that work at the game back to the pack, as happens every few months, I want to ask them the question "Why do you choose to play an academic format like ACF or NAQT if you don't want to learn about the things that are asked about?" If you don't like academic knowledge, don't play the game, and don't try to take it away from those of us who do.
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