Well, I'm not a 40 year old dinosaur, but here's my bits. I started my quizbowl time at 26 on the Junior College Level. Imagine showing up at an ACF Tourney with a Junior College Team! We were playing in a region dominated by Eric Bell and Robert Margolis, that mythic figure from UT-Dallas, the single greatest player I have ever competed against. We won four games at that tourney, held at OU, and one was over Rice, at the time, a strong team in the region. We won on the last question. Imagine how we felt, beating a four-year school. Drinks all night long. After transferring to OU, things have certainly changed. Right now, the club favors Trash, because we're better at it right now than anything else. Obviously, that was different during Eric, Dan, and Emily's regime. We still play ACF, but it is getting harder to get younger players involved. Along the way, I've watched Chris Romero turn Texas A&M into the strongest team in this region, with a class of younger players that continues to grow. Chris' work is a model for other teams to follow. After last year's fantastic Regionals, I had hoped that, somehow, ACF had finally managed to balance difficulty with a reasonable amount of accessibility. ACF Nationals, however, was completely different. I felt only a few teams really were able to compete on those questions -- two of them from Michigan. I sat and talked to members of the Texas team -- an extremely strong squad last year -- and heard them complain about the difficulty. That's when I knew I wasn't just seeing things. We felt bewildered and our confidence was shaken, a bit. Difficult is one thing, but when Charlie Steinhice admits over drinks not knowing half the subject matter at a tourney, you know it's a monster. However, all I've heard are great things about the set of questions this weekend. I can't wait to see them. Actually, I'd like to have played on them -- I miss the inexplainable joy of nailing an ACF question. I've found that -- unlike the dinosaur myth indicates -- as I've gotten older, I've had to focus my studies on the specifics related to my degree, unlike undergrads, who get to take a variety of classes. That means I'm not as good a player as I used to be. Older does not necessarily equal monster player. ACF is the hardest format; it always has been, in part because the questions are written by other academic teams. My problems with ACF are when the questions are so difficult that even if you're a decent player, you begin to feel stupid for not knowing some of the answers. Even then, however, when they're written well, you can still admire the writing. I remember at last year's SLO, telling Roger that I'd had the worst tourney of my life (4 toss-ups in 12 rounds), but felt they were some of the best written questions I'd heard. Still, being a buzzer rock hurts sometimes. I see Stan's point that ACF needs to work to get younger teams into the fold, but a Div II section won't always work, since younger teams and players have begun to shun it, meaning that there might not be enough teams for a Div II bracket. At OU, we've noticed that as we've become dependent on outside writers for questions, our ACF playing abilities have shrunk. There seems to be a defnitie connection with the amount of questions you write versus the level of playing you can maintain. That seems to be the only answer that fits all the areas -- question writing. For younger players, it's a way of learning new material, especially if you have to write outside your own special categories. Newer teams should concentrate on question writing, and convincing younger members that ACF isn't just for dinosaurs, but is a difficult, but ultimately rewarding format -- especially when you finally win big against somebody you should have gotten smoked by. David Murphy, Dinosaur _at_ Univ. of Okla.
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