Re: Who Are/Were the Best Players?

• From: Durham_Devil
• Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 23:19:19 -0800
• Message-ID: <000U0H13N.001FH3S76.12170551-quizbowl_at_...>

Well, despite the fact that I consider the whole
conversation to be a little bit of silliness, I'll
bite.

I never bothered to rank them all, as I quickly
realized in a car conversation with Gourab that to do so
without taking into account the differences of relative
competition, previous experience, etc., doesn't do any good.
For example, apparently Dr. Bob Meredith (even when
in his 60s) was an above average player, but because
he played in the "TV show era", he never had a
chance to qualify with the rest of us (much like you
only occasionally think of Josh Gibson when you think
of power hitters in baseball).

Here is a
fact: one of the great accomplishments one can make is
to play by yourself for the entire tournament and
win over at least 10 teams. To my knowledge, the list
of people in this elite group is only as
follows:

Tom Waters (Maryland Masters)
Jason King (ACF
Regionals)
Andrew Yaphe (ACF Regionals)
Rob Hentzel (tournament
unknown)
Eric Hillemann (Either Iowa or Iowa St.
invitational)

Now, certainly, no short list of top quizbowlers
couldn't include people to pull this feat. Several have
tried to do this at times, and while some come very
close (Edmund Schluessel, Mike Wehrman, and Eric Smith
within the past twelve months), only these five have
succeeded. If anyone knows of any other examples, I'd like
to hear them.

As for other greats, I'd like
to toss these names out for reference. Some are on
my list, some aren't.

Mike Musgrove; Al
Whited; John Kenney; Matt Colvin; Kelly McKenzie;
Ezequiel "Zeke" Berdichevsky; Dom Ricci; Tim Young;
Michael Starsinic; Vishnu Jejjala; Gourab Bhattacharjee;
Charlie Steinhice; Mike "Scottie Pippen" Zarren; Long
Nguyen; Richard Mason; Gaius Stern; Jon Pennington; Jesse
Molesworth; Brian Rostron; John "Howard" Edwards; T.C. Ford;
Roger Craig; Jeff Hoppes; Dwight Kidder; Ed Cohn; Seth
Kendall; Julie Singer; Robert Trent; Emily Pike; Steve
Watchorn.

This is a list of people I know off the top of my
head. Some are truly great. Some are good but not
legendary. All of them could kick my mental ass and not even
have to apologize for it. This is why I feel kind of
silly ranking them -- I don't know enough to know how
worth knowing someone's knowledge is.

Besides,
I'd rather just play with or against them and enjoy
the game.

Andy Goss
Most Mediocre QB Player
Ever