Todd Gregory wrote: <You say that there is some merit to the idea of allowing a greater variety of schools to compete at the ICT. I couldn't disagree more. I don't think that's the point of the tournament. In my mind, at least, the idea of the ICT is to bring together the _best teams_ in the country. If that means that Ivy League College C qualifies over State U. A, then so be it. If they are the better team according to NAQT's magic formula, then they should be heading to the ICT, where the _best team_ should be crowned champ.> By this logic, only the few teams that have a legitimate shot at winning the title(s) should be invited to compete in the first place. Realistically, there are only about 10 teams that have any shot at the NAQT ICT at all. Why not just invite them, play a round robin and a best-of-3 championship? Why have a 40- or 42-team field at all? There are a few reasons to have a large tournament field. In the case of a single-elimination tournament, like the NCAA basketball tourney, a large field reasonably guarantees a legitimate champion--the #1 ranked team may not win, but a Top 10 team almost always does. However, NAQT's ICT format virtually insures that a low-seed dark horse can't win the tournament; there are just too many preliminary rounds and too structured a playoff format--a single loss won't eliminate a favorite. Another reason for a large field is to make sure that enough undergraduate-only teams are included to legitimate a title for teams of said composition. If one is sizing a field with this criterion in mind, though, it makes sense to insure that as many of this type of team make it into the D1 field as possible. This does not eliminate the case for B teams (since they are presumably more likely to be all-undergrad), but does make the case for the inclusion of more undergrad-only schools, like Berry, Carleton, Rhodes, etc. If B teams are passed over in favor of undergrad-only institutions, then the field for this title is diversified, if not strengthened. Inviting a large field just for the sake of financing the tournament seems disingenuous toward qualifiers 11-42, so I'll discount it as a major reason for a large field. Probably the most important reason for having a large field is that it creates a pageant atmosphere, a diverse tournament of international character, in short a celebration of quizbowl. This seems to be the only rational reason for having such a large field. In doing so, the tournament hosts *recognize* a large number of schools and provide an encouraging reward for up-and-coming programs--all aside from providing the central task at hand, an international championship. The objective of selecting a large field is thwarted in this case when schools with low quartile teams are passed over in favor of B and C teams from talented programs. It seems counterintuitive to include such B and C teams when the most rational explanation for the field size is one of desired inclusion and diversity. Now, this is not to say that there are actually a small number of B teams that deserve D1 berths. IMHO, these are B teams are truly Top 10 teams and that are composed of players 5-8 in their respective schools' programs. So often, outstanding B & C team performance is a result of spreading excellent players around as John Nam describes. In my decades of experience, I have only seen a handful of teams that meet the above criteria. Those teams should not be denied their legitimate shot at the championship; all the others are just taking up space that should--for the social and political reasons described above--be reserved for A teams from waitlisted schools. Albert Whited
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