Bad quizbowl

Bad quizbowl is a term used to refer to various forms of quizbowl competitions and questions that do not follow the practices used in good quizbowl that emphasize rewarding greater levels of knowledge and fairness in question structure and competition formats.

Bad quizbowl may consist of any or all of the following: non-pyramidal tossups, questions which are designed to be transparent or reward lateral thinking instead of greater knowledge, formats that use gimmicks, content that emphasizes trivia, math calculation, or trash to an inappropriate degree, and tournament formats that do not seed or rank teams fairly. Hoses, speed-checks, and swerves are often hallmarks of bad quizbowl questions.

Canonical examples of bad quizbowl include the now-defunct College Bowl and the still-running National Academic Championship as well as a number of state-specific formats.

The bad quizbowl circuit in high school

Also known as the "alternate universe" for its near-complete separation from the larger quizbowl community, the parallel structure of bad quizbowl to good quizbowl remains in effect in certain geographical areas around the world -- good quizbowl has its invitationals, state championships, and national tournaments, and bad quizbowl has the same, although the latter is generally shrinking.

Large portions of the upper Great Plains and Rocky Mountains areas are still dominated by Knowledge Bowl, as are a number of international school circuits. Questions Unlimited still appears to be the dominant influence in Arkansas, pockets of New York, and in outlying U.S. territories such as the Virgin Islands and Guam. In most other regions around the country though, standard tournaments use good quizbowl practices and pyramidal questions.

Bad quizbowl at the college level

Until the early 2000s, college quizbowl was split into a segment of teams who played College Bowl, ran very poorly edited invitationals, participated in bad tournaments run by TRASH, and would not come closer to good quizbowl than the questionable first years of NAQT, and an opposing faction which was the ancestor of today's good quizbowl principles. Since then, college quizbowl has been almost completely transformed into a good quizbowl circuit, with NAQT questions improving markedly and ACF becoming more popular and the only style used in independent academic and trash tournaments.

The Format Wars

Early discussion on the hsquizbowl.org forum often featured posts debating the merits of various quizbowl formats. Over time, some question providers and writers adapted more of the principles of good quizbowl while others withdrew.

Opportunity cost of bad quizbowl

The idea that all tournaments should just run in whatever way they prefer and that there should be no attempt to persuade people to choose good quizbowl over bad was often put forth in the past. This is fallacious for several reasons:

• nearly all teams have limited time and money to devote to quizbowl, meaning that any bad tournament hurts attendance at good tournaments
• bad quizbowl was historically pitted against good quizbowl by means other than just competing fairly for attendance, such as state regulations that discouraged the use of pyramidal questions or forced teams to use certain formats
• many bad quizbowl tournaments were (or are) intertwined with larger issues (racial discrimination, bias towards certain teams, plagiarism) that made it ethically questionable to participate, all questions of question preference aside
• good quizbowl often provides teams with more opportunities to compete, especially against a similar level of competition, than comparable bad quizbowl events (due in part to the use of rebracketed round-robin formats)