First, remember that the poll is designed to reflect the totality of the quiz circuit as it is, not how someone in Canada or anywhere else says it _should_ be. It was posited that a team that plays twice a year but amasses an impressive record should finish ahead of a team that gets squashed frequently. Fine, but the more consistent a teams' record is over time, the more I can be assured that a finals appearance at "X Invitational" was not a complete fluke, the result of a weak field, or something other than a genuine achievement I should pay attention to when making out a poll ballot. Regarding the Canada controversy : It was never really clear what exactly the Canadians wanted - I suppose I'd know had I the opportunity to go to a tournament in Canada. But I got the distinct impression that it was _not_ simply a matter of less Eudora Welty and more Robertson Davies. (If I'm wrong, someone please correct me.) The game they wanted to play struck me as being so far from what most of us are used to as to frustrate any attempts at useful comparison. We learn different things in school on in culture, and the expected canons are different enough (though with some overlap) as to suggest that Canada, whenever their own circuit develops to a point, needs their own poll and/or rating systems. The second-hand impressions I did get from U.S. natives going to tournaments suggested the idea of fairness meant Canadiana way out of proportion to its relative importance. We're talking about 1/6 of the United States population, with nearly 100 fewer years as an independent country. Preseason polls are strange, and are based on varying information on the part of voters. Looking at a preseason poll from the perspective of the previous season will often look strange. It looks strange from _that_ perspective that Yale, who won nothing and finished in the bottom half at NAQT ICT, would be ranked #11, ahead of (random example from the same rough area) Swarthmore, who did have a tournament win and finished 12 places higher in Ann Arbor. Until you're told that Swarthmore lost their high scorer to graduation, and that Yale added a big-name player without losing any players of note. Towards explaining GW as a Top 25 team preseason last year. GW played at NAQT ICTs with a 2-person team and ACF RCTs with a 2-person team due to scheduling conflicts. The implication is that GW deserved to be behind all the teams that beat GW the previous semester. However, Cornell and Hopkins had suffered major personnel losses whereas GW suffered none between the 1997-98 and 98-99 seasons. Both Penn State and Pitt finished behind GW at NAQT ICT despite GW being shorthanded. As for Penn, well, you can say they should have been there, and were there on the next poll and the whole rest of the year, passed by GW only after the surprise finish at Ann Arbor and Penn's CBI no-show. As for Imperial College...there was no poll being taken at any time in 1997. The period there was no poll (IIRC, Fall '96 thru Spring '98) also happens to have coincided roughly with the most active US circuit participation by Queen's College.
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