Re: ACF superiority

mju47 · Mon, 05 Nov 2001 15:34:10 -0800

Earlier on in this thread, Stan, I was at least
partly agreeing with you--speaking as an experienced
player, it seemed like the effect of the tossups being
more "accessible" was that I would tend to know them
midway through while less experienced players still
didn't, with the results being absurdly overinflated
stats for myself (my ppg was almost 50% higher than it
had been at any other tournament) and other
experienced players, and victory margins that I can very
easily imagine being more demoralizing for inexperienced
teams than they would have been if the questions had
been harder and the scores accordingly
lower.

But what you're saying here is just absurd. In two
straight posts, you bemoan the presence of players who are
"spending [their] *ENTIRE* lives playing quiz bowl" and not
doing anything for the circuit other than detracting
from your experience. It's kind of hard to tell who
you have in mind here--I'm admittedly not familiar
with most of the people who were at the Midwest ACF
Fall tournament, but the oldest person I know of who
was playing there is Ed Cohn, who I believe is a
second-year grad student, not a 38-year old who has been
playing since your teammates were in grade school. Maybe
you think second-year grad students shouldn't be
playing, but in that case people like the praiseworthy
Chris Romero couldn't play either.

There are, of
course, "dinosaurs" in various parts of the country who
are closely associated with ACF, but pretending that
these people don't give a damn about the circuit would
be laughable if it weren't so insulting to them.
Again, I don't know exactly who you're thinking of, but
pretty much all the older players that I can think of
whose names I've occasionally heard associated with ACF
elitism have busted their asses on multiple occasions to
bring the circuit high-quality tournaments. I know
people like Kelly and Roger enjoy quizbowl enough that
they'd much rather play in events like the ACF Fall
tournament or ACF Nationals than edit them, but they care
enough about the circuit to take on the very heavy task
of editing for a format that almost certainly has
the highest question standards that you'll find
anywhere. And in both this year and last, ACF's editors
have made a profound effort to provide a tournament
that is accessible to even very inexperienced
teams--again, this is not how they would behave if they didn't
care about providing an enjoyable product for
everyone.

I can imagine that the Midwest--which in the last
couple years has probably been the most intense region
quizbowl has ever seen--is a difficult place for a
fledgling team to be. But while losing a lot of games may
be frustrating, insulting all the teams that beat
you is not an acceptable response.

-Mike Usher