Modern era of high school quizbowl

The modern era of high school quizbowl is considered to have begun with the first PACE NSC in 1998. Since then, PACE and NAQT have led the way to marked improvements in question styles and tournament formats at all levels of play.

Major changes include:

• the shift to offering as many games as possible at invitational tournaments
• the use of round-robin and double-elimination playoffs rather than single-elimination, when possible
• the generally accepted importance of pyramidal tossups as opposed to speed-checks
• the defection of good teams away from the National Academic Championship and to the NSC and HSNCT

Despite what some may think, the move to modern or "good" quizbowl has nothing to do with any attempt to displace four-quarter format tournaments with exclusively tossup/bonus tournaments, and is entirely concerned with making the individual questions good within whatever format happens to be used.