I should first note that at no point did I call anyone unreasonable or ignorant. I should also state that, yes, I do have a bias against CBI. So do a lot of people. These biases, however, were earned. Ask around: get Dwight Kidder to tell you his story about bad Mexican food; ask the old guard at Swarthmore about their bowling record; ask Williams, BYU, or Rick Grimes how they feel about the chaperone rule or tournament scheduling. Teams don't need leave CBI out of a sense of eliteness; CBI is perfectly effective at alienating its own customer base just by the way it operates. I haven't even mentioned the questions or the recognition rule or the fees. Any organization can set itself up and call itself a National or International Championship. Some rise, some fall; if a national can be created and rise to legitimacy, just as NAQT and TRASH have come into existence in recent years, then, clearly, a self-styled National can lose legitimacy in the eyes of the players who confer that legitimacy on it. The legitimacy of a league is its blood, and CBI has been hemorraging for a few years now. My feeling is that, while I recognize that for many years the CBI National was the only game in town, it's been supplanted. People complain about NAQT, ACF, TRASH to varying degrees. Never once have I heard of any of those organizations doing something like what CBI has pulled in the past. Atop that, NAQT, ACF, and TRASH are, on some very immediate level, of QB players, by QB players, for QB players. CBI is none of these; furthermore, despite repeated public outcry, it has shown itself to be inflexible -- inertial -- unwilling to respond effectively to what the players ask for. Now the threat looms that things will get even worse. The rumors I hear being put around don't bode well; frankly, I feel we "elitist" rats are only making the choice of leaving a ship before it sinks. Edmund
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