<<As far as decent teams who have abandoned
the CBI format, I can say that Yale and Harvard have
not attended CBI regionals in a while, which has made
Division 1 less imbalanced of a region, but still
difficult enough.>>
This would be the 8th year
in a row--at least--that Yale has competed in
invitationals but not at CBI.** I'm not going to guess at
motives of others, but I can say that when I ran the team
(fall 1995 to spring 1998), we never simultaneously had
both the money _and_ the personnel needed to make
spending that money worthwhile. So we used the cash to
send teams to other tournaments. Other factors, for
better or worse, played no role whatsoever in that
decision.
Moreover, particularly given what the Yale team has become
since I left--a large team with enough good players
(but none that I would call "extraordinary") to put
two teams in the playoffs at Penn Bowl twice in the
last three years--I suspect that unless YSAC receives
a large infusion of cash from somewhere, they may
never rejoin CBI.
--STI
**I'm fairly sure
it's been longer than that since Yale last played CBI.
But, AFAIK, for the two years or so before I arrived,
Yale did not compete in any tournaments.