Er. First of all, I'm not sure a lot of teams would have the attention span for a 50-question match-- I know my team begins to konk out after 25 on IHSA rounds. ;) But, there are a couple of ways around the situation that Shawn is describing here. One is to simply lower the points you get on a bonus-- to 20, say, which is the way most HS tournaments in Illinois does it. This has been thrown around a lot on this board, I know, but it does work fairly well-- even if you completely blow a bonus and the other team picks up all of it, you're only down 10 points-- 5 if you got the toss-up on a power-- and this gap is one that can be easily made up. (The number of times my team has come back from 80-point deficits proves it.) Besides which, it's still a matter of recalling information more quickly than your opponent-- having the first crack at a bonus is incredibly helpful, especially the way we get our bonuses: all parts in a row, followed by a 30-second consultation period. The gimmick is that the captain of the team which gets the tossup controls the clock-- when he says "time," except for a 3-second paper-passing period, no further consultation is allowed by EITHER team. This can have the same effect as "sinking" a bonus-- when you have no idea about a bonus, you just call "time" as soon as the moderator's done, and the other team doesn't have time to confer, which USUALLY leads to some dumb mistakes. Though I suppose in the college format, this wouldn't work so well, so "sinking" would be the best way to go: maybe a predetermined limit-- 3-5, perhaps--on the number of boni you could take a pass on. As for the whole upset issue... my experience is that regardless of the format, upsets aren't going to happen all that much, or at least not in the higher brackets. This year, My team has played in both bounceback and non-bounceback formats, and in all cases, the teams in the semis and in the finals were essentially the same. The fact is, if you're faster on the buzzer, you're more likely than not going to win anyway-- unless the other team read the questions beforehand, it's almost impossible that they're going to get every single part of every single bonus that you miss, and unless you have absolutely no depth (which would make no sense, because you have enough to get most of the tossups), you're going to get the majority of the points on a good deal of your boni anyway. I dunno-- maybe there are more evenly-matched teams on the college circuit, but it doesn't seem to me like the non-bounceback format provides for any more upset opportunities.
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