The problem with the basketball analogy is the fact that the place where you play the game doesn't matter - the basketball court doesn't change from game to game. Teams aren't required to "play the court". A better analogy is probably golf. Here, the environment does matter and novices play on different fields (the Nike Tour and the NCAA championships are held at easier courses than St. Andrew's and Augusta National). If I were a player who was considering ACF, I might be disheartened by a game where I had only heard of three of twenty tossup answers. The circuit is developing to the point where what are universally derided as easy answers by most players are still going to flummox players fresh out of high school, and where more and more study is needed to approach basic levels of competency (imagine trying to learn golf by starting out on a course with lots of water hazards and hard shots - even if you don't finish last in a tournament, you may find it too frustrating). This is particularly important since the response of most people at recruitment fairs is "I'm not smart enough to do that" - and a format that retains the current difficulty level of ACF isn't going to help when a player goes to a tournament and knows just four answers. This will not kill ACF, but it does seem like little change from the current system that emphasizes sink or swim - which is what I believe the original poster was trying to change.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:44 AM EST EST