I noticed that as well at the HS tournaments I've
been at. The coaches as a group disliked strongly the
presence of pop culture questions. The students generally
liked them, whether or not they were amused by them.
At the Ben Cooper at GDS this year, the pop culture
questions served the additional purpose of being much more
gettable for most teams than the academic material, for
whatever that's worth. I'm sure there are other
tournaments for which that happens as well.
I made
sure to tell them that, in addition to the fact that,
yes, they do this in college, too, that they have
tournaments whose entire contents are pop culture. (Which
they like hearing, as it turns out.)