<<Might be fun to banter about who has the best recruiting class, in much the same was as is done with college football and the like.>> I'm in kind of a strange state right now, so take anything I'm about to say with a grain of salt. To me, that sounds really, really scary. For me one of the great appeals of QB is that its character is so un-sport-like -- even gentlemanly. A match played is not, at least not that I've ever heard, referred to as a "Terrapins versus Blue Jays" game but a "Maryland versus Hopkins" game. People don't paint their torsos and whoop when their team scores a power tossup. It's an empirical rule in QB that the more uniformed -- or even the better-dressed -- a team is, the worse it does. And people don't gasp in anticipation when retired players reemerge. Over the weekend, I was at PACE nationals. PACE is a national, academic event. One player from a Catholic high school played all his matches in a nun's wimple, and even this is really not that unusual. Of course, feel what thou wilt. I have my own biases when it comes to sporting events, and don't doubt those are tainting my opinions now. But it really makes me nervous when people try to cast QB as being like other intercollegiate competitions. We're nicer than football. We tell funnier jokes. We're more gender-diverse. We're more accessible, more tolerant, and, goddammit, less goonish. Why aspire to stoop? Edmund
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