Re: 2003 NAQT ICT to be held in Los Angeles

the_packets_ops <*no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com*> · Thu, 10 Oct 2002 02:54:19 -0000

To Chris Romero:
While I have not overtly stated my/our identity, I have already said 
this similar piece in the #quizbowl IRC channel, and based both on 
that and my yahoo name, I think it's fair to say that anyone 
participating in this discussion will be able to guess who I am.

Anyway, your post seems to advocate hosting the tournament in L.A. as 
an affirmative action type measure.  The fact of the matter is that 
the logistics make this idea unrealistic to the point of absurdity.  
It drives up the costs for the overwhelming majority of teams just to 
appease 2-3 schools.  About 85% of the teams from last years ICT were 
from schools east of the Mississippi and only 3 of the 9 NAQT 
Sectionals this year will be held west of the Mississippi.  Besides, 
Oxford and Imperial send teams to ICT regularly as well, does that 
mean we should tell everyone to round up their passports and fly to 
London for ICT 2004 so both British teams don't feel bad about having 
to travel for the sake of the other 62?

It's not everyone else's fault that the West Coast region has 
significantly less participation than the other ones and the only 
ones who can fix that are the players/tournament directors in the 
West Coast.  It's a chicken/egg issue; perhaps if there were more 
success recruiting and establishing new programs on the West Coast, 
there would actually be tournaments to go to outside of Berkeley and 
Stanford.  Another thing to remember is that ICT is a national 
tournament designed for only the top teams who qualify to determine 
the best team in the nation.  Seeing as how the large majority of 
teams are located in the Midwest/East it only makes sense that the 
large majority of top-tier teams are from that region as well.  It 
does not benefit the tournament field to put the majority of 
experienced/powerhouse teams in a position where they will have to be 
at serious hardship to go or even not be able to go at all.  Sure, 
maybe you could round up a few teams in the West to increase the 
tournament enrollment, but at the cost of severely diluting the 
competition for the national tournament.  Take high school as an 
example: the NAC is the most geographically diverse national 
tournament with the largest fields and goes out of its way to court 
new teams (often at the expense of the established ones).  However, 
many of the experienced teams have grown frustrated with having their 
concerns ignored by the NAC and left, and now the field quality is so 
poor and diluted that almost nobody in the circuit would consider the 
NAC to be anything close to the definitive national championship it 
claims to be.  Hopefully such a thing will not happen to NAQT.

To Jason Paik:

A) You beg the question that Southwest Airlines flies to all the 
major cities from which college teams will be leaving.  Amazing as it 
may sound, the majority of Southwest Airlines cities are found in the 
South and in the West.  A quick look at a map of SOuthwest cities 
(http://www.iflyswa.com/travel_center/routemap.html) shows such major 
cities as Boston, New York, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Newark, 
Atlanta, and Charleston aren't even served by Southwest.  A lot of 
colleges are located around area of those cities and won't have this 
wondrous, affordable option you're talking about.  Hell, I bet a some 
teams will have trouble finding a flight that goes both in and out of 
LAX.  In our specific case, nearly every ticket option I looked at on 
numerous discount flight plan websites required us to go LAX one way 
and SNA (John Wayne airport... that's in Orange County... I've driven 
from L.A. to Orange County many times before... that's a very long 
and tedious drive).  So seeing as how Southwest doesn't even serve a 
large host of major cities, especially in the east, that effectively 
kills your point.

B) The return flight is made easier for west coast schools because 
they at least gain 3 hours back due to time zone changes, as opposed 
to all the east coast schools, who will lose an extra 3 hours of time 
in addition to the large amount of travel time required. When the 
teams are in L.A. they will pretty much have to conform to the 
tournament's Pacific Time schedule, nullifying any hours saved from 
the time zone change on the flight to L.A.  People have other things 
to do too, and 3 hours of time is not an insignificant amount.  Some 
of the flights I quoted in my initial search efforts actually arrived 
early Monday morning, and for people who have class/work Monday that 
is unacceptable, let alone considering the hassle it would be to find 
affordable transportation home from the airport when arriving at such 
late hours.

C) See my response to Chris Romero.