MACF
mACF is a term applied to academic tournaments that follow the ACF format without being official ACF events. They may occasionally deviate from ACF Rules, such as by having powers or supers.
Usefulness of term
Since every full-length tournament in collegiate quizbowl besides actual NAQT events involves untimed tossup/bonus format, it is unclear what helpful information is communicated by dubbing a collegiate tournament mACF as opposed to not doing so. (However, as recently as 2005 there was a major independent tournament in NAQT format -- Michigan MLK). It is, however, quite helpful to distinguish good housewritten high school tournaments from bad ones with consummate ease. Generally, high school sets that are good and used in multiple states are in mACF format, while high school sets that are bad and used in single states are not in mACF format. mACF is starting to be used by some middle school tournaments. Some middle school and high school (especially novice high school) tournaments are called mACF even though they do not have neg penalties.
Notable mACF Tournaments
- Michigan MLK (from 2006 to 2008)
- Terrapin Invitational Tournament
- Western Invitational Tournament
- Penn Bowl
- Chicago Open
- Illinois Open
- Bulldogs Over Broadway
- Cardinal Classic
- PARFAIT
- Deep Bench
- Early Fall Tournament
- actually, pretty much every tournament
Tournaments with Doubtful mACF Status
Tournaments run by Charlie Steinhice usually advertise themselves as "mACF" despite not using the ACF format, distribution, or question style. This tenuous semantic connection may be why Charlie Steinhice, who has previously accused ACF of being poison and repeatedly told his teams that ACF is impossible, continues to claim that he is a "supporter of ACF."