NCT

The National Championship Tournament (NCT) was held annually by the College Bowl Company, Inc., to determine its format's national title.

College Bowl conducted the NCT from 1978 to 2008, with occasional matches appearing on radio or TV during that time. Various formats were used to determine the field in the initial years. From the mid-1990s on, the champions of each of the fifteen ACUI region tournaments, as well as one second-place finisher chosen at "random," were invited to the NCT, held on a different ACUI-affiliated college campus each year.

Due to the inferior quality of the questions, game format, and officiating at College Bowl, the tournament was considered less legitimate than good quizbowl events such as ACF Nationals and, ultimately, the NAQT ICT. Compounding the inherent issues in determining a fair champion out of the College Bowl field was the rapid withdrawal of elite quizbowl teams from College Bowl participation from the 1990s onward. Early defections by Maryland and Georgia Tech were followed by the exit of nearly all contending ACF programs by the end of the 1990s save for Chicago and Michigan, who themselves did not compete after the 2003-2004 season. Of the last five champions of College Bowl NCT, only one, 2006 UCLA, was good enough to even make the championship playoff bracket of the ICT or ACF Nationals.

The College Bowl program was discontinued after 2008 due to its decades-long unprofitability for the College Bowl Company.

College Bowl NCT top finishers/locations

Year Champion Second Place Third Place Fourth Place Host 1978 Stanford Yale Cornell Oberlin Somewhere in Miami 1979 Davidson Harvard-Radcliffe Oberlin Cornell Somewhere in Miami 1980 Fresno State WUSTL MIT Washington State Marshall and WUSTL 1981 Maryland Davidson Marshall Michigan State Marshall 1982 North Carolina Rice WUSTL Vassar Somewhere in New York 1983 no tournament 1984 Minnesota WUSTL Princeton Vassar Ohio State 1985 no tournament 1986 Wisconsin Princeton Georgia Tech Utah Georgia Tech 1987 Minnesota Georgia Tech NC State Western Connecticut State Disney World, Orlando 1988 NC State Emory Princeton Kent State UIC 1989 Minnesota Georgia Tech Kent State George Washington DuPage 1990 Chicago MIT George Washington Rice Minnesota 1991 Rice Cornell Minnesota Wisconsin UIC 1992 MIT Stanford Penn Cornell George Washington 1993 Virginia Michigan Chicago Harvard USC 1994 Chicago Virginia BYU George Washington Florida 1995 Harvard Chicago Michigan BYU Akron 1996 Michigan Virginia Princeton Cornell Arizona State 1997 Virginia Harvard Oklahoma Chicago Montclair State 1998 Michigan Cornell Stanford Chicago Texas-Dallas 1999 Chicago Michigan Minnesota Virginia Tech Florida 2000 Michigan Arkansas Williams Florida Bentley 2001 Michigan Chicago Texas Cornell Cal State-LA 2002 Michigan UCLA Florida Providence Kansas State 2003 Chicago Florida Rochester UCLA Penn 2004 Minnesota Michigan Florida Georgetown Auburn-Montgomery 2005 Minnesota Rochester Stanford Truman State University of Washington 2006 UCLA Illinois WUSTL Minnesota Hartford 2007 Minnesota USC Williams Baylor USC 2008 Rochester New Mexico Minnesota Ohio State Macalester Formats used for old NCTs: https://web.archive.org/web/19970506201422/http://www.collegebowl.com/archives/archnct.html The format did not change from 1991 until the demise of the tournament in 2008. The 16 teams played a full round robin, then the top two teams after the round-robin played a best 2 out of 3 finals series. This was regardless of how far ahead the top team was in relation to the second place team. Ties for second were broken on points.