Re: Where have all the D1 teams gone?

fluidmosaic6 <*no_reply_at_yahoogroups.com*> · Sun, 22 Feb 2004 21:30:18 -0000

This is interesting.  The main reason might just be that CBI has no 
interaction with the circuit at all, even to the extent that at Pitt, 
nobody on our team knew when CBI intramurals was until about ten days 
before the event, when it turned out to be the day after Penn Bowl, 
right in the middle of five straight weekends with a tournament (it 
became four because there wasn't enough interest in ACF Regionals 
after all that).  We could have asked the Program Council earlier, 
but there didn't seem to be any reason to make it one of our top 
priorities, compared to Penn Bowl, MLK, NAQT Regionals, our high 
school tournament the next weekend, or ACF Regionals.

Pitt's intramurals annually have 4 to 6 teams, half of them 
containing at least one person from the circuit team.  There's one 
group of biology majors who's competed at intramurals the last 4 
years, and then 2 or 3 teams of random people who are totally 
outclassed.  This year I think there were 5 teams, including 4 
circuit people and none of our 10 circuit freshmen.  It's hard to 
explain to people at practice why they should play on semi-pyramidal, 
inconsistent questions read by people who have never read questions 
before and have never seen the questions before the tournament, with 
a rigorous format in which there are several ways to know the answer, 
buzz in first, and not get credit for it.  It's also not all that 
much fun to have circuit people competing against non-circuit 
people.  I've started feeling like circuit people are sort of out of 
place at our intramurals.

New people on the circuit team might also get a bad impression of CBI 
from hearing about incidents like Dwight Kidder's bathroom adventure, 
or the time last year when we had a bye round right after lunch, and 
the times of the matches weren't lined up properly with the matchups, 
causing two of us to think that (lunch + bye round) = 2 hours instead 
of 1.5 hours, with the end result being that Josh and I played 
against Moravian, won 270-120, and got credit for a loss thanks to 
not having enough players.

I don't know if it's the same at other schools, but at Pitt the team 
for regionals is chosen as an "all-star" team by the people who 
moderated at the intramurals, and they don't put much effort into 
telling non-circuit people why they would want to go to Susquehanna 
or Penn State over a weekend with strangers and compete in an 
academic trivia tournament.  This year the "all-star" team was two 
circuit people (Erik and Beth, who were at regionals), and three non-
circuit people, only one of whom (David, who also went to LA two 
years ago) was ever heard from after intramurals.  If only two of the 
five all-stars wanted to go, then we wouldn't have a team.  And of 
course you can't be on the team for regionals if you weren't at the 
intramurals.

As for the small number of D1 teams, that seems obvious: Why would 
you compete in D1 if you're eligible to compete in D2?  And the 
reason why these D2 people don't move up to D1 is that they are still 
D2 eligible, so why would they want to move up and decrease their 
chance of qualifying for nationals?

> How about a new rule: you can stay in D2 until you
> win or place at a tournament, even if you have older students on 
your
> team. You can move up at any time into D1, but as long as you 
haven't
> had a strong result, if you want to keep playing D2 you can. Winning
> or placing doesn't automatically bump you up to D1 unless you have
> experienced players; a team of mighty frosh can enjoy their D1
> victories all year. 

Isn't this the case now?  I think you can play D1, not qualify for 
nationals, and then drop back to D2.  I'm sure you can play D2, not 
qualify for nationals, and then play D2 the following year.  If 
that's not the case, I agree that it should be.

Don't understand the point about moving up and moving down, and "all 
year", since there's only one tournament each year that divides 
people into D1 and D2.  

I don't think it's a question of having a small number of D1 teams, I 
think it's a question of having a large number of D2 teams.  Lots of 
people want to go to NAQT regionals as D2 because A) they don't have 
to write questions, B) the questions aren't all that hard, so they're 
more likely to answer questions, and C) they aren't going to get 
crushed by Michigan A, Chicago A, or Rochester A; if they get crushed 
it's likely to be by a team with comparable experience, and therefore 
seems more fair.

Michael Davies
pittqbowl_at_...