NCT
The National Championship Tournament (NCT) was held annually by the College Bowl Company, Inc., to determine its format's national title during the company's affiliation with ACUI from 1977-1978 to 2007-2008. Occasional matches appeared on radio or TV during that time.
The College Bowl-ACUI program was discontinued after 2008. College Bowl continued to offer products to limited markets such as the HCASC and the 2021 College Bowl TV Show, but has not staged a competition for the general college level since the end of the ACUI partnership.
Tournament/field quality
Due to the inferior quality of the questions, game format, and officiating at College Bowl, informed quizbowl community members considered the tournament 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. Other than 2006 UCLA, the last year in which a serious ICT or ACF title contender sent its best player lineup to College Bowl NCT was Chicago's 1998 team.
ACUI Regional System
During the time of the ACUI/College Bowl affiliation, ACUI was divided into 16 geographical regions. Regions 1-15 covered all areas of the United States and Canada. Region 16, for Australia, New Zealand, and "the Far East," never participated in College Bowl.
Generally, each region held a tournament and the champion qualified for NCT. Except in 2003 (when only the 15 regional champions were invited), 1986 (when an intermediate "sectional" stage was used), and 1980 and 1981 (when 9 wild cards were invited to create a 24-team, multi-stage national tournament) the NCT field selected a 16th team by picking one regional runner-up as a wild card. The process for choosing the wild card was purported to be a random draw, though some questioned whether teams were actually chosen for other reasons. Though almost all NCTs had a 16-team field, the specific tournament format varied often, as noted below.
From 2005 to 2007, the region 3 and 4 tournaments were combined in one, single-site event, with the highest-finishing teams from each region in the overall field each receiving NCT bids.
ACUI's region system continued to influence tournament placement and nationals qualification during ACUI's affiliation with NAQT from 2010-2013, though with significantly less rigidity than during the College Bowl era. Since the end of ACUI involvement in quizbowl in 2013, they have reorganized into an 8-region system.
College Bowl NCT top finishers/locations
- ↑ Formats used for old NCTs: https://web.archive.org/web/19970506201422/http://www.collegebowl.com/archives/archnct.html
- ↑ This team is denoted "Harvard-Radcliffe" in some sources. Harvard and Radcliffe began a formal affiliation in 1977 and merged into one university in 1999. Most likely, some students who began their university careers at an independent Radcliffe College did in fact play on this team.
- ↑ This was one of the two years in which the NCT used a 3-stage, 24-team format. The additional teams invited besides the 15 regional champions were Earlham, Harvard, Marshall, Oklahoma Baptist, Texas Christian, Georgia, Iowa, Notre Dame, and Vanderbilt.
- ↑ This was one of the two years in which the NCT used a 3-stage, 24-team format. The additional teams invited besides the 15 regional champions were Davidson, Marshall, Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Temple, Ohio State, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Wichita State, and Yale.
- ↑ "Georgia Southern University-Armstrong Campus" is the current full name of the school that was known as "Armstrong State College" at the time of this tournament.
- ↑ This year used a "sectional" stage between the RCT and NCT. Only the top four teams, presumably the sectional champions, actually participated in the final national stage. Whether any teams beyond the 15 regional champions were invited to participate in the sectionals has not been determined; thus, it is possible there was no wild card in this year.
- ↑ The Williams team attended the NCT site but was not permitted to participate in games due to their faculty sponsor failing to arrive.
- ↑ There was no wild card team in 2003. The tournament ran with 15 teams.
- ↑ Florida State no-showed to the NCT. All of their games were recorded as losses with FSU scoring 0 points and each opponent scoring their tournament average PPG.