Mike Bentley
| Mike Bentley | |
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| Noted subjects | Visual arts, technology, modern world, history |
| Current college | Washington (2014) |
| Past colleges | Maryland (2005-2008) |
| High school | West Chester East (2003-2004) |
| Stats | HDWhite • NAQT |
Mike Bentley is the VP of Editing of PACE and a past President and Treasurer. He formerly played quizbowl for the University of Maryland, where he also served as President of the club. He's most famous in the quizbowl world not for his quizbowl ability but for recording the Quizbowl Cast, formerly hosting the Quizbowl Wiki, and his massive writing and editing work, including ten visual arts tournaments (Eyes That Do Not See), the well received We Have Never Been Modern and sequels and the trash tournaments Chris McCray and CULT.
PACE
Mike has been a longtime member of PACE, serving in various roles as President, Treasurer, and Head Editor of the NSC. He regularly is a major contributor to the NSC.
High School
Mike played for the West Chester East High School Academic Team in 2003 and 2004. As part of the Varsity Team in 2004 he was on a team that placed 4th at the National Academic Championship. His Typing of the Dead skills allowed him to serve as a moderately successful typist for Chip's Quiznet league, although those were counterbalanced by his terrible spelling skills.
Mike only competed in Chip-style questions in high school, although his team was slated to go the Princeton's NAQT tournament but bad weather intervened.
University of Maryland
Mike formerly attended the University of Maryland, where he was a member of the Maryland Academic Quiz Team since his freshman year in 2004-05. In 2006 and 2007 he served as Treasurer of the club under club president Casey Retterer, and for the 2008 year took over as club president.
Probably his best (individual) college performance at Maryland was at the 2008's Penn Bowl.
By attaching himself to teams consisting of some of the better members of the Maryland team, Mike has "won" tournaments like 2008's Cardinal Classic and ACF Regionals at Delaware.
Seattle
After graduating from Maryland, Mike moved out to Seattle with Brittany Clark where he is serving as something of a coach for the University of Washington quizbowl team. He also continues to play open tournaments. In 2010, Mike played some tournaments as Bellevue College. Playing with Matt Bollinger Mike finished second at the 2019 Chicago Open. His proudest accomplishment at an open tournament was first place at the fourth iteration of Scattergories.
University of Washington
For the 2013-2014 season, Mike played on the University of Washington team that finished 9th at ACF Nationals 2014.
Writing and Editing
Mike got his start writing and editing for Maryland's many high school housewrites in the mid-2000s.
Mike has served as editor for 2008's This Tournament Goes To 11, the Maryland Fall Classic, TIT and Maryland Spring Classic. During the summer he contributed several questions to Jonathan Magin's Gaddis tournament, edited ASS II and worked on the Gunpei Yokoi Memorial Open. In 2007 he edited ASS, The Chris McCray Tournament For Academic Excellence, the Maryland Spring Classic and some of the Maryland Fall Classic.
Mike is a regular contributor to the NSC as both a writer and an editor. He was the head editor for the 2020 NSC.
Other projects include CULT and COLT, two national trash tournaments. Mike wrote a plurality of questions for the two College History Bowl tournaments. He regularly writes freelance questions for ACF Nationals and college NAQT tournaments.
Mike has created 10 iterations of Eyes That Do Not See a visual arts tournament presented in visual form and is slowly working on an 11th. He has also written a series of tossup-only tournaments on technology and business, beginning with We Have Never Been Modern. He is head editing The World As It Is, a modern world tournament scheduled for January 2021.
Mike has also written a yearly series of videogame packets and a series loosely based on the history and culture of the Pacific Northwest, both of which can be found on the HSQB question archive.
He has written two tossup-only videogame side events, VAIN and Impossible Lair.
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Other Stuff
Mike won ACF's 2018 Carper Award. He has regularly contributed freelance questions to ACF Nationals.
Mike has worked on various quizbowl-related software projects including PACEBuzz, a buzzer system using PlayStation 2 controllers, and QEMS2, a question writing system.
Since around 2006, Mike has made recordings of quizbowl matches and posted these as the Quizbowl Cast, although that project has never had a proper RSS feed and thus is technically not a podcast. He continues to make recordings of national tournaments such as the NSC.
Mike hosts Wastebin, a now-deprecated trash question archive.
Mike is married to former Maryland teammate Brittany Clark.
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