Now that all the important regional and national tournaments have come and gone, I'd like to share with the community some of my reflections on the Academic Competition Federation and its sponsored events. If you choose to read this, please keep in mind that I am speaking only on behalf of myself. It was an interesting year for ACF, as three new editors came aboard to continue the tradition of high-quality, low-cost submission tournaments. Kelly McKenzie, Ezequiel Berdichevsky and I sought to make ACF tournaments more accessible to the average player while maintaining its challenging aspects in order to differentiate the best teams. The extent to which we accomplished these goals might be debatable. However, I don't think anyone can legitimately argue against the fact that significant steps have been taken in the right direction. ACF has listened to its constituents and I firmly believe that ACF has delivered. In my opinion, ACF's inaugural Fall Tournament stood out as the most prominent effort at promoting accessibility. Its purpose was to ease new players into the "canon" by providing quality questions at a low level of difficulty, which Kelly accomplished masterfully. The questions were entirely accessible to almost every level of play, yet still differentiated among the best teams. I am confident that as the ACF Fall Tournament gains momentum over the years, it will become the ideal environment in which to introduce new players to quizbowl. ACF also introduced a Division II award this past year for first- and second-year players. (Texas A&M B was the recipient of the Division II trophy at ACF Nationals, by the way. Congratulations to them and apologies for not announcing it earlier.) My hope is that the lure of a separate award for "best new team" will attract quizbowl programs new to the circuit and perhaps those teams that are teetering on the edge of participating in ACF tournaments. A large part of the success of ACF Nationals this year, in my opinion, was the generous help of many contract editors who offered their expertise on subjects like history, economics, CS, and plain old grammar and spelling. Many people also submitted blind freelance questions for use, which was a great help. If you're interested in helping out as a contract editor, please send an e-mail to the particular tournament's chief editor. There's always plenty to do, so we're happy to have as much help as possible. The point of recapitulating all these developments is to emphasize the new face of ACF, one that responds to the desires of its players. However, let's not forget the aspect that has always made ACF the most pliable of all formats – the questions. Remember, there are no such things as bonus goblins and magic toss-up trees. There are only players and the packets they submit. The most immediate changes in the questions' difficulty and accessibility come from you. If you think the questions are too hard, write your packet in accordance with your own ideals regarding difficulty. If you think the linguistics questions suck ass, write better ones for us. And don't write questions you wouldn't want to be asked in return. Please keep in mind that your contribution – the questions you submit for everyone to hear – makes you an integral part of ACF. While complaints and critiques are always welcome, you should keep in mind that the greatest reforms come from the packet submissions, and that means you can do your part in helping to improve the quality. ACF is entirely what you make of it. That having been said, I would ask the following of those of you who have been shunning ACF for whatever reason: please cast off your prejudices based on previous experiences and give ACF a sincere try next year. As I stated earlier, it's not perfect, but I think it's making some serious progress as we grow in our abilities as editors and as you grow in your abilities as writers. There has been very little for people to complain about this year and I am confident that there will be even less next year. Your involvement can only improve the richness of this engaging format. Thanks and have a great summer. R. Bhan
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