The challenge of Dwight Kidder was to lay out a vision of quizbowl. Here's mine. I want to see circuit expansion, both the addition of new schools and the deepening of the benches of existing squads in order to accommodate the a certain degree of fragmentation in the circuit which allows the overlapping existence of various formats, distributions, and difficulties. The creation of NAQT Division II or more novice-friendly events such as ACF Fall, the burgeoning trash circuit, and an increased number of masters' events are part of this fragmentation. This expansion must be viewed long term. One starting point is the high school circuit. Groups such as NAQT and PACE have sought to affect the HS circuit. My long-term view when all that began was that it would take 4-5 years to establish name recognition of such groups and be able to see clear expansion that is not merely the shifting around of existing teams from preference of questions deemed inferior to questions deemed superior. Eight to ten years from the beginning, hopefully there would be signs this effect filtering into the circuit. I'm not talking about the normal spurts that accompany any growth phenomenon; I'm talking about sustainable development of the circuit, to be measure not by the quality of the teams at the top but on the achievements of the teams in the middle. [I know that some people attempt to facilitate circuit growth by collecting contact info for HS students entering college. Someone should do somewhat of a reversal of that and find people who are playing in college and get from them contact information from their high school teams who are in college but are not playing.] Even longer term, you would want to see the involvement of people who go into teaching and back into high schools or who go to grad school and on to faculty and administrative positions at colleges. This phase would hopefully start to have noticeable quantities of people in positions of authority in 12-20 years ab initio. First things first, I suspect that circuit development along these lines will ebb and flow. Rather than a clear linear increase, it might more resemble punctuated equilibrium, with plateaus for a few years followed by huge spurts. This may be followed by occasional backsliding, but hopefully with a general upward trend. This plan includes a role for grad students. I don't think the problem is too many grad students. I think the problem is not enough of them. Some people upon going to grad school plan to sever their ties with quizbowl completely. I think these are people who should be encouraged to remain involved with our game on at least some levels. A lot of these people are, quite frankly, mediocre players at best. There's no shame in that. Whether its due to different cognitive maps or just not being interested in most facets of the canon, some reasonably intelligent people will be a 10-15 ppg niche player at if all their quizbowl potential is maximize. The influx of a grad student with some organizational ability has helped sustain a flagging program or helped start a new one on occasion. I would want a circuit which encourages such people to remain linked to the circuit by giving them a chance to play every once in a while. Finally, I want to repeat my assertion that there is no Platonic form of quizbowl. Of course, forms are a bogus concept, but my point is that my vision of a circuit is one that is large enough to accommodate different preferences. And, frankly, yes, that means that I don't mind if people want to play College Bowl. Whatever floats your boat. As Jason Keller noted, some experienced teams submitted questions to BRRR that had flaws that some consider typical of CBI. I can only assume that some teams actively want to play on questions like that. The growing trend is a desire for questions to be "accessible for everyone." As noted by others, there is a growing divide between the most experienced and the true novice who never even heard of quizbowl in high school (and yes, such people exist and should be encouraged). While one-size-fits-all may theoretically work in the condom industry (or perhaps not), I don't think it works as well in quizbowl. I have a suspicion that for the upcoming ACF Fall, high-powered teams will split the A squads that they would bring to nationals because those questions are less suitable for the number one foursome in the nation, whoever that may be, than for a middlin' team that aspires to respectability. Hopefully, the TRASH Junior Bird (which, in the interest of fair disclosure, included a decent number of questions by me) was interesting to people new to trash, but the only way it might have been interesting for hardcore trash dinosaurs would have been as a singles one-on-one set. Maybe. Anthony de Jesus, author of perhaps the least-read blog by a quizbowler (thanks for reading, Tim)
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