Since this is turning into an extremely annoying diversion of an "I hate Matt Weiner and ACF" circle jerk, I feel compelled to respond. First off, I'm going to agree that Weiner's initial comment was out of line, and that he should have just presented his point outright instead of throwing out a sarcastic one-liner if he wanted to start a discussion. I also understand why you are upset and respect your program's right to make its own playing and hosting decisions (assuming your opinions truly are representative of your team's). That said, I find it concerning that pretty much all your format opinions seem to be based on misinformed prejudices. I seriously hope you're not basing your opinion of the format on a tournament you attended 8 years ago or on packets that are over a decade old, because that's the impression your post gives. The game has changed so much, and so much turnover has occurred since then that it's ludicrous to judge the state of the game from packets that are over 3 or so years old. For example, you make the claim that ACF/ACF-style tournaments primarily ask questions about insignificant obscurata that no normal person would know. Having just played at ACF Nationals, which has the (not completely accurate) label of most difficult tournament of the year, I can say that that notion is thoroughly wrong. For example, one round alone had tossups on such obscure subjects as the appendix, the Hittites, A Farewell to Arms, and George Washington. Indeed, it seems more likely that any normal person would consider all those examples topics that all but the most ignorant person would recognize. Clearly the Stamp Act and Brown v. Board of Education are insignificant issues that have had only the tiniest impact on the course of American history! Clearly the liver and mitochondria are things that only someone with both an MD and a PhD in biochemistry could be expected to know of! Clearly The Ambassadors and the statue of David are outside the knowledge of all but the most devoted art scholar! Those topics were all tossup answers that came up at ACF Nationals. There were, admitedly, a fair share of very hard questions (not unreasonable for a tournament that is trying to determine the best team in the nation), the overwhelming majority of the questions were on a recognizable and significant academic topics. Indeed, as Paul Litvak told me about his experience editing the questions, the majority of the work actually went to reducing the difficulty of submitted questions to make them more accessible. I don't see how anyone could accuse them of trying to make the game impossible and esoteric. That's fine if you still want to avoid ACF tournaments, but I seriously hope you're not discouraging players in your program from playing ACF or trying to influence them with inaccurate opinions on the format. I don't pretend to know anything about how people at Georgia feel, but as Weiner said, there were at least 2 Georgia-bound high school seniors who said on the hsquizbowl board that the status of the QB club there was making them not want to play in college, as well as a current Georgia player who said that the abundance of trash in the college game was a major turnoff for him. Of course, there's some reason to be suspicious when the team's head tries to make the claim that 2 academic tournaments, with not a single one of them being an indepedently-run circuit tournament, constitutes a full year's worth, especially since, to my knowledge, the only (academic) college tournament Georgia has hosted was NAQT SCT. In contrast, even a school like UCLA (no, I'm not bringing up the D2 shit again), who is located in a region with few active programs and does not have a Berkeley-esque budget or organizational complex, has attended about 10 academic tournaments this year. My own club, Princeton, who only has a few people with cars and has been scraping by without the usual $4000-5000 income from our annual high school tournament, has been able to send teams to 8-9 academic (and 2 trash) tournaments this year. Given that there are numerous tournaments hosted by Georgia Tech, the Florida schools, and UTC, it doesn't seem inaccurate to wonder about the fate of Georgia's academic team, especially considering that you're willing to expend ~6 months worth of effort into hosting a trash tournament at some remote resort island and not put in a fraction of the effort towards giving the club's newer players a chance to try ACF Fall or a packet submission tournament for themselves. I could care less about whether you personally want to play trash only, whether you want to host an unconventional tournament, or whether you refuse to go to any ACF tournament. That's your business. I think what people like Weiner care about is whether the club is allowing its players to make choices that are contrary instead of focusing only on what the trash people want. I hope when the players from Weiner's board I mentioned do come to Georgia and want to play in the academic circuit, you'll give them the chance and not drive them away.
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