2000 NAC

2000 National Academic Championship
Edited by	Questions Unlimited
Champion	Manheim Township
Runner-up	Horace Greeley
Third	Booker T. Washington
Fourth	Plymouth Canton
High scorer	Tim Youker of Chaska (MVP)
Site	Loyola University in New Orleans (June 1-4), Marymount University in Arlington, VA (June 8-11), and Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA (June 15-18)
Field
Stats

The scandal-ridden tournament was won by Manheim Township, who defeated Horace Greeley 445-320 in the final. The semifinals saw Manheim Township beat Plymouth Canton 350-315, and Greeley knock out Booker T. Washington 410-355.

Tournament events

The winners of the New Orleans and DC phases were to receive free travel to Malibu to compete for the overall championship, although the actual winner of DC was denied this offer, and two teams who had been knocked out were both flown to LA. Manheim Township and Horace Greeley ended up taking the top two spots in the tournament despite being eliminated in the playoffs. See below for details.

Future collegiate players at this tournament included Ben Heller and Matt Lafer of the Plymouth Canton team, Angelo Malabanan of the Booker T. Washington team, and Eric Kwartler of the Bellaire team.

Beall noted that "Manheim Township left little doubt, with their convincing (if not landslide) victory in the Finals, that they are the best academic team in the nation," despite their earlier loss in the playoffs to Grand Junction, and despite State College's steamrolling of the NAQT and PACE titles in the same year showing that MT was a far cry from even being the best team in Pennsylvania. $2500 was given as a prize to Manheim Township.

A category round written for the 1985 tournament and offered without any takers in every subsequent year, "Coats of Arms," was selected by Plano East in this tournament.

Edmond North was named the "Most Improved" team, moving up from 73rd in 1999 to 13th.

A "Comedy Sportz evening" was held at the DC site, though details are sadly unknown.

Only one of the six teams which finished in the top four of the NSC or HSNCT bothered to participate in the NAC; this was Dorman, whose NAC participation also ended after 2002. Combined with the successful 52-team HSNCT in Atlanta and the multiple scandals and question quality issues which plagued this event, 2000 was probably the tipping point for the legitimacy of the NAC.

Questions

Some of the questions from the tournament:

"Between which mountains on the west and which mountains on the east is Tacoma located?"

Audio tossup: "Name this common household appliance." (Answer: a blender)

Incomprehensible protest

This passage appeared in the tournament summary, referring to the first preliminary round at New Orleans, and became somewhat emblematic of the weirdness and subterfuge that defines a Chip Beall tournament:

“	Booker T. Washington was one of the best-balanced teams seen at Nationals in the past decade. But they had an inconspicuous start, defeating Cooperstown (NY) 335-320, on the strength of a "Supreme Court" decision that was so difficult to make (i.e. whether to accept "ferrule" for the definition of "bushing") that America's premier Vibration Engineer, Arthur R. Crawford of Manhattan Project Fame, had to be consulted, resulting in a narrow ruling that ferrule should not be accepted.	„

Quizbowl aficionados have noted several problems with this writeup:

The concept of a tossup on "bushing."
Accepting a wildly wrong answer for no apparent reason, and requiring the opposing team to use the sole protest it is granted for the entire tournament under the NAC rules in order to reverse that decision.
Asking a "vibration engineer" a question involving watchmaking, trivia about the names of pencil parts, and vocabulary.
However, research has confirmed that noted vibration engineer Art Crawford was indeed involved in the Manhattan Project as a graduate student, so suspicions about that appellation are unfounded.

Matt Lafer's tournament writeup

Plymouth Canton was named "Rookie of the Century" for finishing fourth in their school's first year at the NAC. A team member later expressed his opinions about the tournament:

“

I attended the Los Angeles leg of the tournament last spring, playing on Plymouth-Canton Educational Park. This is my only experience with Beall's tournaments. How was it? Possibly the worst tournament I've ever been to as far as the actual running of the tournament and questions are concerned.

About question plagiarism - Beall does not just rip off questions from Stanford Packet Archive. One of my teammates noticed that some of the questions he asked actually came from a "Jeopardy!" desk calendar that he had seen once. Also, some other questions were actually taken off of the "Jeopardy!" TV show. Most prolific question writer? Probably, but only because he steals from every single source he can get his hands on.

Image. This man obviously has some delusions of grandeur...Beall has his own theme music that he comes out to at the beginning of each game. He then introduces himself and his cronies (before EVERY match...this is about 10-15 times a day). Then we have to go through the tedious introductions of each member of each time, even if said teams have already played each other before. Correct answers are denoted by a ringing bell, wrong answers by a strange buzzing noise, and the end of the round by a crony blowing on a train whistle. It's all very kitschy and lame.

Moderation. Beall is a terrible moderator, and is biased, as mentioned before. For example, one team answered "earmuffs" when the correct answer was "earplugs" (bad enough that the answer to a question was actually earplugs). He also gave a question to a kid who answered "Bryce" when the answer was Bryce Canyon. However, when there was a question speaking of 17th century French mathematician/philosophers, I got an early buzz and said Pascal and Descartes, but it was deemed incorrect because they weren't in that order on the answer sheet. Also, Ben (Heller) rang in early on a question asking to "sing the first line of Julia Ward Howe's..." gave the correct line, but got "buzzed" because he didn't SING it. This was the game we lost in, BTW. The guy from Manheim Township buzzed in and sang the line and got it right. The eventual gap in our point totals was about 25 I believe.

Question quality. Unacceptable. Execrable. The Jeopardy! calendar questions were probably the best out of the bunch. There were actually questions where Beall reads off various ingredients from a product, and the correct answer is that product (e.g. "carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, caramel color...BZZ...'coca-cola'"). The worst of all, however, were his gimmicky audio clues, which would have been alright if there weren't so many of them, and they weren't so ridiculous. There was actually a question that read "Name this common household appliance" and then an audio clip of that appliance (a blender) was run...

Judges. His "crack team of professionals" consisted of a Russian immigrant, a country music DJ from Kentucky, and his own son.

„

Grand Junction retroactive forfeit scandal

Grand Junction stormed through the playoffs at the DC phase, knocking off Horace Greeley in the semifinals and Manheim Township in the finals. However, the players who participated at DC had already committed to play in the Panasonic Academic Challenge the following week, and could not travel to Malibu to contend in the NAC final four. Their coach informed Beall that the B team would be claiming the travel prize and playing for the title. In response, Beall retroactively forfeited all of Grand Junction's prelim and playoff games and declared that both Manheim Township and Horace Greeley were now "undefeated" and would both be transported to Malibu for the championship rounds.

In addition to the implications of this action for the legitimacy of the tournament, several Yahoo board posters wondered if Beall's withdrawal of the offered prize for the DC competition (the free trip to LA) might constitute fraud or a similar legal offense.

The tournament summary refers to Manheim Township as going undefeated for the tournament, and Grand Junction's scores were changed to 0 in all of their games. The playoff bracket notes that "The NAA, along with a commitee of team coaches who come to Nationals every year and who themselves run tournaments, regrets to announce that forfeit-status has been ascribed to all Grand Junction games." The membership of this "commitee [sic]" and its procedures for operating has never been discovered.

The NAC rules now include this:

“	6. GRAND JUNCTION RULE. The top teams from the first two phases of the tournament are required, at the expense of the N.A.A., to travel to the third phase to compete in the semifinal and (if successful) final rounds of the tournament.	„

As this does not address the issue of switching players, and requiring people to be transported against their will is legally unenforceable, it is questionable whether this rule will have any impact on a similar situation in the future.

Matt Cushman of the Manheim Township "championship" team stated that "grand junction was by far the strongest team there."

Beall wrote, in an e-mail to Nate Meyvis, that Grand Junction would have to pay a fine in order to participate in the NAC again, and the teams who lost to them in the playoffs (Detroit Country Day and Streator) would receive a portion. However, Grand Junction has not played in the NAC after this incident, so the question of enforcing or distributing such a fine has not come up.

Suspicions of favoritism or match fixing

This tournament attracted a higher-than-usual number of complaints about questions mysteriously going missing or being tailored to certain teams, on top of the other scandals.

Chris Frankel of the St. John's team posted about a game with Chaska in which a long search for a "missing" lightning round turned up a set of questions on "Italian opera," perfectly matching the known interest of Chaska captain Tim Youker, who swept the category to lead his team to a comeback win.

Matt Lafer of the Plymouth Canton team described choosing a lightning round labeled "mystery round," which Chip then claimed he could not read because he had "given away the mystery," and replaced with a "children's literature" category that Canton only scored one correct answer on.

Field

The 119-team field, as ranked on the QU website:

1. Manheim Township
2. Horace Greeley
3. Booker T. Washington
4. Plymouth Canton
5. Irmo A
6. Walton
7. Bellaire
8. Chaska
9. Streator
10. Hibbing
11. Dorman
12. James Island
13. Edmond North
14. Plano
14. St. John's (TX)
15. Andrean
17. Coronado
18. Plano East
19. Collegiate
20. Detroit Country Day
21. Waramaug
22. Nazareth
23. St. John's Prep (MA)
24. Sylvania Southview
25. Rye Country Day
26. St. Joseph's (NJ)
27. Ardsley
28. Caddo Magnet
29. Clear Lake
30. Klein
31. Jesuit
32. White Plains
33. Auburn
34. St. Andrew's A
35. Kellenberg Memorial
36. Rye
37. Salem
38. Loyola
39. Ward Melville
40. Fort Worth Country Day
41. Warwick
42. Middletown
43. Owosso
44. Claremore
45. Thornton
46. Rye Neck
47. Edgemont
48. Jackson Prep
49. Riverside
50. Archmere
51. Haddon Township
52. Lamar
53. John Cooper
54. Redwood Valley
55. Andover
56. Cold Spring Harbor
57. Kinkaid
58. Shawnee
59. St. Mary's Memorial
60. Coatesville A
61. Vandebilt Catholic
62. New Rochelle
63. Hastings
64. Notre Dame
65. Huntsville
66. Edmonson County
67. Boone
68. Bromfield
69. Flora
70. Coatesville B
71. Eureka
72. Shelton
73. Altamont
74. White Cloud
75. All Saints
76. East Brunswick
77. Hancock
78. St. Joseph's (IN)
79. Klein Forest
80. Cooperstown
81. Fisher Catholic
82. Aiken
83. Lancaster Mennonite
84. Sycamore
85. Johnson Central
86. Madison Central
87. Big Spring
88. Tatnall
89. Edwards County
90. Defiance
91. Murrah
92. Kent City
93. Williamson
94. Broad Ripple
95. Alief Hastings
96. Kennewick
97. Oshkosh West
98. Washington
99. Lenape
100. St. Andrew's B
101. Tri-Valley
102. Wallenpaupack
103. Geneva
104. Ripley
105. Turpin
106. Temple
106. Ysleta
108. Carter
109. Isle of Wight
110. Horseheads
111. Delaware Valley
112. Benicia
113. Ozen
114. Forest City
115. Riverside Poly
116. Campo
117. Irmo B
118. Timber Lake
119. Grand Junction

Links

2000 National Academic Championship

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