These discussions are always interesting. My contribution is to say that the way I see it, Andrew and Tom are indeed the two best players in the history of our game, but that putting Andrew ahead of Tom at the top is a little perverse -- it requires one to make an argument to put aside the fact from which one starts, which is that in no tournament in which the two played together did Andrew *ever* outscore Tom as an individual. That argument can respectably be made, based possibly on Andrew's having won more titles, or on arguments having to do with teammate shadow effects, perhaps, but they did play as opponents in many tournaments over the years, and Tom was the higher individual scorer in *every single one of them*, so the argument is a steep one. (They faced each other in two singles tournaments, to my knowledge, with Tom finishing higher in both, not that that means much on only a few questions, but still. (#1 and #2 in Minnesota in 1998, and then #2 and #4 I think, in Chicago in 1999, with Rob Hentzel being the surprise winner over Tom in the final.)) The point is, there is no statistical evidence that Andrew was ever better than Tom while both were playing; there is plenty for the reverse proposition. There was no point in the several years in which their playing overlapped that Andrew was on the face of it the better player. A person might rank Andrew ahead of Tom now on the assumption that Andrew has surpassed him in the last two years, since Tom last played in a tournament, I believe, in the summer in 1999. That's a plausible assumption, as they were awfully close in ability by the late '90s, and at this point Tom hasn't played in two and a half years. Tom himself readily admitted that Andrew was immensely better than he had been at the same age. But if it's career greatness you're comparing, Tom's claim to being the greatest ever is in my opinion unmatchable. Consider the most astonishing fact about Tom: he played quizbowl on and off, but mostly on, from the late 1970s until 1999, over a period of more than 20 years, and in that time he was the top individual scorer in every single tournament in which he ever played, with a single asterisked exception. (That is a Philadelphia Experiment in which Steve Wang, playing solo or with a kid sibling, wound up with the highest straight PPG total in the tournament. But the tournament also calculated Pat Mathews' "points created" and Tom came out first by a lot there.) That exception apart, he was the top scorer in the very first tournament in which he played -- and then in every other tournament he entered over a period of more than 20 years! What figure in any sport could lay claim to being the best in his or her game continually for anything like that length of time? To me, it is taking nothing away from Andrew to acknowledge Tom as the greatest in our game to date. Eric Hillemann watching quizbowl since 1983, anyway
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