Ah, good ol' Yankee provincialism, which sucks like a newborn at its mother's nipple. I somehow doubt that NAQT bunched its athletic questions into three specific sports which Rob mentions, as the rule of quizbowl seems to be that people believe their least favorite things come up more often than they actually do. That being said, well, NAQT has had a noticable proclivity towards hockey questions, a item upon which many have remarked. And, that baseball would come up so often is not remarkable when one notes who some of the principle of NAQT are. American football is likely explained by it being recently in-season, although that would cause some to expect a preponderance of Olympics questions. I wonder how many of the NAQT sports questions dealt with events of the past two years; I was not there, so I cannot judge. I would urge those going to academic submission tournaments to consider filling your sports quotas with questions on feats occuring before your birth. Yes, I know you can't use ESPN or CNNSI websites very well for that purpose, but using the same sources over and over is a crutch. As for the international quality of sports, yes that can be a problem. True, may American players seem to not know what a "test match," nor are able to name a team in the Premier League besides the heinous Manchester United, nor can think of anyway to link a springbok to the world of sports. They do not recognize Japanese professional wrestling (ok, so technically that's sports entertainment, not sports) nor do they pay attention to Formula One. They would never be able to follow a conversation talking about the 2,000 Guineas, and not the Preakness or RBI's, when talking of a Triple Crown. The proper remedy is to cry havok, and let slip the dogs of war, by writing your own freelance packets for the consumption of American audiences. I, for one, would find it highly amusing if the finals of Trashmasters were to be written by authors with a decidedly European outlook.
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