ABC
The Academic Bowl Contest (ABC) was hosted by Vanderbilt, and it was one of the largest and longest-running high school invitational tournaments in the country. Throughout the 20 year history of ABC, there have seen many thousands of competitors from more than 1,300 teams from 15 different states across the South and Midwest compete in this tournament.
History
ABC was the brainchild of former Vanderbilt student Randy Buehler. His idea was to host a contest for a large number of teams on the Vanderbilt campus as a fundraiser for the university's quiz bowl club. The tournament format was engineered to leverage the advantages of Nashville's central location in the southeast, Vanderbilt's prestige as a university, and the organizational prowess of the team members at the time. In addition, the campus included many classrooms in a compact area that allowed for easy movement of teams and officials between buildings as needed. The first ABC was run in the spring of 1991 for 40 teams.
The tournament was so successful that the club decided to host the tournament twice each year and the second ABC followed in the fall of 1991.
ABC III in the spring of 1992 was widely considered to be a complete disaster, and is often referred to as the "Bastard Child" of ABC's. The organization was chaotic and the tournament ran extremely long. In addition, there were problems with the question set purchased from a vendor called "Triple Q". Quality and difficulty varied wildly from one question to the next. In addition, the vendor required the tournament to use a rulebook that was unfamiliar to any of the organizers or participants; among the quirks of the rules were the requirement that a team correctly answer two consecutively numbered tossup questions before earning a bonus. The rules also included a provision that if the team answering a bonus missed a part, the other team got a chance to answer. The "bounceback bonus" would become one of the most popular and enduring traditions at ABC.
The tournament really took off in the fall of 1992 with ABC IV. That installment saw the addition of a number of features and organizational elements that gave ABC it's unique feel. For the first time, the tournament began on Friday evening with four optional power-matched rounds. (The power-matching system was based on the Swiss-pairs method used for chess. It was perfected by Randy Buehler, Andy Lipscomb, and Keith Hudson while in the back seat of a car riding to a tournament. They used a stopwatch to generate the random numbers that simulated scores.) The Friday rounds allowed the organizers to efficiently sort the participating teams for Saturday morning's main event - six-team, round-robin groups with teams evenly spread across the pools based on talent and ability.
After Buehler's graduation, Darrell Frye assumed most of the responsibilities for organizing the tournament each semester, with other club members filling in as needed during his occasional absences from school. The tournament continued to grow in prestige and popularity throughout the rest of the 1990's and regularly drew 80 to 120 teams each edition.
ABC XXV was held in the spring of 2003, and for the first time a team from Tennessee, Ezell-Harding won first place.
ABC XXXVII was held March 21, 2009. Hoover A took first; Dunbar took second.
ABC XXXVIII was held November 7, 2009.
ABC XLI was held in 2011 and appears to have been the final installment.
Results
| Year | Overall Champion | Overall Second Place | Teams |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 XII | Henry Ford II A | James Island | 91 |
| 1997 XIII | Auburn A | Henry Ford II A | 89 |
| 1997 XIV | Brookwood A | Irmo | 106 |
| 1998 XV | Results Missing | Results Missing | Results Missing |
| 1998 XVI | Dunbar A | Dorman A | 111 |
| 1999 XVII | Walton A | Dorman A | 84 |
| 1999 XVIII | Dorman A | Walton A | 84 |
| 1999 XIX | James Island | Liberty B | 52 |
| 2000 XX | Irmo | Dunbar A | 83 |
| 2001 XXI | Edmond Memorial | Results Missing | 44 |
| 2001 XXII | Dorman | Results Missing | Results Missing |
| 2002 XXIII | Results Missing | Results Missing | Results Missing |
| 2002 XXIV | Dorman A | Walton A | Results Missing |
| 2003 XXV | Ezell-Harding A | Apollo A | 34 |
| 2003 XXVI | Dorman A | Walton A | 53 |
| 2004 XXVII | Brookwood | Detroit Country Day | 43 |
| 2004 XXVIII | Dorman A | Brookwood | 73 |
| 2005 XXIX | Dorman A | Detroit Catholic Central | 44 |
| 2005 XXX | duPont Manual A | Walton A | 62 |
| 2006 XXXI | duPont Manual A | Dorman A | 31 |
| 2006 XXXII | Dorman A | North Kansas City | 74 |
| 2007 XXXIII | Central Gwinnett A | Norcross | 16 |
| 2007 XXXIV | Dorman A | North Kansas City | 65 |
| 2008 XXXV | Ezell-Harding | Brindlee Mountain | 31 |
| 2008 XXXVI | Dorman A | Chattahoochee | 57 |
| 2009 XXXVII | Hoover A | Dunbar A | 21 |
| 2009 XXXVIII | Dorman A | Dorman B | 28+ |
| 2010 XXXIX | Dunbar | Hume-Fogg | 14 |
| 2010 XL | Johnson County | duPont Manual A | 37 |
| 2011 XLI | University School of Nashville | Ezell-Harding | 10 |