Before I start, let me dispense accolades to the CBI staff, both on regional and national level, for responding to my initial asterisk concern promptly and accurately. Also, let me congratulate them on just outright running an excellent tournament that followed everything they stated in the guidelines. BTW, the Region 12 All- Stars were Andy Wehrman from Arkansas (congrats on his first and well- deserved individual scoring title); Adam Hill from SMU; Ronald Bailey from Midwestern State; Draper Johnson from LSU; and Wilton Bateman from Houston-Downtown. Congrats to all of them. Now, for the substance of this post. About the aforementioned guidelines, the Depauw-Notre Dame game most closely resembled Situation A in the College Bowl Rules (pg. 5 of the PDF file). I heard the question in question (no pun intended), and IMO, I don't think Zaire should have even been prompted. However, it was a prompt on the paper; thus, the argument is substantiated. Following this situation, Notre Dame should have been given back the neg and read a tossup for only Notre Dame to answer. They got it; thus, they should get a bonus. They got 20 on the bonus. So, the award for Notre Dame would have been 35 instead of 45, but still enough for the championship. On to the next subject. Personally, I agree with Matt Weiner (definitely not to be confused with Mike Wehrman) on one point: about the fact that if preliminary round robins are to be used, then the brackets must be equal in strength. Region 12, IMHO, had that problem, in that I believe Rice and maybe SMU were both stronger teams than UH-D. On other points, Matt's argument was flawed. I agree with Amber from Rice in believing that playoffs are very important in determining the champion. After all, if the stronger team ALWAYS wins, then we should just award Michigan the triple crown. This would save lots of time and money. (I know that Berkeley and Yale are also very good, but in my eyes, the #1 team remains #1 until they're knocked off, and no one's done it yet, so I'm using Michigan in this example.) Here's an even better sports analogy: giving the championship outright to the team with the better overall preliminary record would be like giving the jug of milk at Indy to the driver that wins the pole. On PAPER, the pole car is the fastest, so why even run the race? Therefore, I am in favor of playoffs. (quotes Jim Mora with distorted face: PLAY-offs??? You're talking bout, pl-AYOFFS??? PLAYOFFS?!?!?) Speaking of playoffs, I can surely find two stupid negs I made (negging Houston with San Francisco and negging Don Shula with Joe Namath, there ya go) or a tossup I sat on (geodesic dome, but the whole squad sat on that one) that kept me out of the All-Stars, but I'm much prouder of being far and away the highest scorer when it counted: in the playoffs. PLAY-offs???? Plus, I did get the tiger question, which in my eyes counts for 100 tossups. Besides, CBI had their format for this year's RCT posted on their website ever since *last year's* NCT. This is exactly why I am cool with Notre Dame winning its region despite having a worse record than DePauw. Dick Trickle could start 43rd at Daytona, but if he passes everyone, he wins. Right? I'm not sure what Matt's motivation was in making such full-hearted gripes at CBI (maybe sour grapes?), but personally, I think CBI's format gives teams a chance to knock off semi-omnipotent Michigan head-to-head and win a title without playing scoreboard-watcher. Therefore, I like CBI's "pl-AYOFFS???" --Josh, P. t. altaica
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