Re: In defense of Coddling?

• From: bigflax29 <no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com>
• Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 23:32:59 -0000
• Message-ID: <c0ee3b+hnqc_at_...>

--- In quizbowl_at_yahoogroups.com, "minderbinder18" 
<professor_52_at_h...> wrote:
> So having some sort of JV mechanism at college quiz bowl is good, 
if
> for nothing else then to protect young minds from being destroyed 
by
> the forces that are grad students. I understand the grumbling about
> coddling first time college level players at a national level, but
> teams only develop through experience, and playing teams from 
across
> the country is always fun. Perhaps there should be only one 
National
> field, with teams being able to qualify a 'Div 2' squad through a 
div
> 2 field at SCT. Think of it as the weaker conferences getting bids 
to
> the big dance in NCAA basketball.

Well, let's not lay all the blame on grad students.  They get blamed 
for everything, but the fact is that excellent upperclass undergrads 
exist and could do as much damage to the ego of a first-year if 
given the opportunity.  This is rather besides the point, however.

I assume the general argument against D2 is that no such counterpart 
exists in other college sports.  This is true, but quiz bowl is not -
 with rare exceptions - a scholarship sport.  Are you going to ride 
the bench in football for a year or two when your schooling is being 
paid for anyway?  Why not?  Comparatively, are you going to keep at 
quiz bowl if you don't get to compete for a couple years?  Maybe not.

Of course, that's imperfect as a comparison because you can send 
more than one team to a given quiz bowl event, but it doesn't seem 
beneficial to the development of young players to prevent them from 
playing against similar competition, especially since it's not all 
that difficult to run a separate division.

Sure, you could just play them all together and then separate them 
in the final standings, but this would create huge, unwieldy 
tournaments that would be farther from settling things than they are 
now (think about the 2002 NAQT Midwest Sectional at Wash U - there 
would be no way to have every team play each other in a combined 
field, making the results more imperfect than they were).  The only 
other alternative to allow this, of course, is to reduce things down 
to fewer teams per school, and that would only screw younger 
players, with the rare exception of the super-frosh.

A better solution than abolishing Division II outright would be just 
to give everyone one year of D2 eligibility and then be done with it 
(which if nothing else would have precluded the current 
controversy).  I don't know that this is a great idea either, but 
it's better than revoking the entire thing.

Robert Flaxman
NUQB