My Trashinals Comments

• From: mikeburger5
• Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2001 10:47:49 -0700
• Message-ID: <000TCK365.000HQ0FFB.12170551-quizbowl_at_...>

Before I start, let me say that 90% of my
experience this weekend was wonderful. I could spend 90% of
this message saying what was great and what wasn't,
but that just wouldn't be a very effective message.
Therefore...

1. Let me state this now. I proposed the NASL
scoring system for last year's Cancel Bowl as a joke. Now
it's been used for real twice. Whatever happened to
those foreign things as "wins" and "losses". If we're
not concerned about that, why just play a round robin
and add up straight points and mimic PBA qualifying
or curling leagues. Oh, oh, I bet I'll see either of
these soon. Also, what was the point of having a
round-robin and one half, then rearranging by record, and
then not playing three of those teams while having to
play two a second time? 

2. The questions
didn't seem to be from a diverse pool of writers that
previous tournaments have been, leading to many of the
problems you may have read about already: too much
antebellum hockey (if a team with me, Craig Barker and Anne
Mitchell can't 20 a hockey bonus, it's too hard), too much
knowledge of music off the album name, way too much geek
trash (one a packet is enough, two is too much, three
is torture) and an overall lack of a pyramidial
structure. I don't want to make an accusation I can't back
up, but it seems that two writers who have written
many questions in the past didn't contribute much to
this set. If this is true, this may have contributed
to what I felt was an average set of
questions.

3. On a positive note, I did like the increase in
the comic strip questions (or an increase in their
answerability) and I felt there were fewer bonuses this time
that were going to be 0's off the bat. Question length
seemed better this time along, although some of the
bonuses still went on way too long. The staff was great,
the stats were timely (except for the end -- I'd
still like to know how our teams finished), and for the
most part, the questions were fine.

--Mike
Burger (who really did have a good time this week,
honest, I'm just a whiner at heart)