Virginia deaffiliates from CBI

[Andrew Yaphe]

The University of Virginia will not be defending its CBI national
championship. If you would like to know why we have decided it is
no longer worth our time and money to participate in CBI tournaments,
please read on.

The questions at CBI nationals were as bad, if not worse, than they have
been in past years. There were misleading tossups, tossups with
little to no substantive information, many, many single-part, single-
answer boni, 30-20-10 questions where the 30 was almost invariably
a giveaway, bizarre category distributions (much more geography
than literature or history, for example), and more that does not leap
immediately to mind. At the CBI forum, company officials made it
clear that they have no problem with certain aspects of the questions:
we were told that the continuing prevalence of single-part,
single-answer boni was non-negotiable, and that only "50 to 65 percent"
of the questions were meant to be answerable early by the player
with more knowledge (a figure that seems higher than the actual statistic,
but anyway ...)

Given the continuing low quality of the questions, it seems like a
waste of time to compete at CBI tournaments. In my opinion, the
questions at CBI nationals did not effectively differentiate between
the top teams; as long as CBI chooses to value game "flow" and
appearance over producing valid results, CBI nationals will be a
pointless exercise for the teams there.

Let me say that I personally appreciate the efforts of the volunteers
who help make CBI such a good show; whatever dissatisfaction we felt
at nationals was aimed at the consistently poor questions. I hope
that other teams will consider deaffiliating from CBI as long as it
remains company policy to produce questions that hamper players in
order to appeal to a presumed audience, and which do not produce
meaningful game results. I am disappointed that we did not get to
compete against excellent teams like Harvard, Oklahoma, Chicago, Cornell,
and the others at nationals on questions that would better indicate
who the best teams really were.

Andrew

--

[Matt Larson]

1) There were misleading tossups. Go figure.

2) I have yet to meet anyone who actually enjoys one part bonus questions,
yet Mary Oberampt (and I'm sure I misspelled that) made it clear that they
would remain a part of the game...even though none of the players want
them...but that's neither here nor there...

3) Yeah, I played for Iowa. We finished 14th. We didn't play well.
However, I enjoyed the trip. I enjoyed (for the most part) being able to
play against such a high level of competition.

4) Some moderators were quite good. Others made mistakes. One mistake
helped us lose a match. Taking nothing away from the team which beat us
in that match, the way the protest was settled annoyed me. It was the
tossup with the answer of Mozambique...and in the end, rather than saying
"on the Indian Ocean", the moderator said "in the Indian Ocean". They
rang in and said Madagascar. They protested at half time, and the
decision was to give them a tossup off the clock, and then a bonus.
Suddenly, we were being penalized for the moderator's mistake. Woo hoo.
Go CBI.

5) Should packets be read out of order at a tournament as "important" as
the CBI NCT?

6) The forum. Oh dear. First of all, let me say that many of the
questions from the crowd were very confrontational in the way they were
being asked - which isn't the way to solve problems. HOWEVER - did the
CBI people actually answer a question about their relationship with ACF or
NAQT, aside from saying they had no business relation with them? And did
they actually answer any questions about copyright issues, aside from
claiming a copyright on the rules of the game? No. My favorite point was
Johnathan Edwards suggesting he could go down to the Library of Congress
and look up the copyright. He asked what name the copyright to the rules
of the game was listed under. And did that answer him? Of course not.

7) The Finals. Maybe playing the circuit in the Midwest has me living
under a rock, but was there a particular reason for Rostrom's display at
the end of the first match? I personally thought it was a very juvenile,
childish thing to do. I mean - come on. NCT Final or not - it's College
Bowl. I'm not entirely certain it should be taken so seriously as to jump
off a platform pointing at the other team in triumph after you've come out
on the right end of a protest.

7a) The protest. They should have bloody well just taken 2 minutes, come
back, said "INC is correct" and given the match to Virginia. What an
absolutely horrible way to settle a protest (in my opinion). In the end,
Virginia got the replacement bonus part, and the championship, so it
turned out the same way, but c'mon.

That would be about it. Good thing they did - got Herb Stempel to come
in. Of course...was that CBCI/ACUI, or was that Montclair State that got
him in? I'd like to find out, just because I'm curious.
Hee. He biffed "Marty" again.

Matt Larson

mala...@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu | http://www.leepfrog.com/~brog/matt.html

Matt's Latest Favorite Dead World Leader...

Aethelred the Unready

[Tom Galloway]

In article <E91x2...@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> jc...@aeolus.evsc.Virginia.EDU (Clay D.) writes:
>specifically called for a prompt in that situation. No problem. The comment
>was my anger at a tossup in the game which began "He recently donated X
>million to Harvard..." which Harvard quickly got, a comment I felt obliged
>to make though I knew it was unprotestable.

I'd agree with Clay's comment here. While I wouldn't have any problem with
such a question being in intermural, or maybe even regional packets, for
a national championship where the sixteen teams are known in advance,
all questions should be written or edited such that no questions specific
to any participating school are included, and I'd probably go as far to
include major school rivals, and fairly geographic specific questions
for the cities the schools are located in (i.e. name the mayors of
Boston and Chicago).

tyg t...@netcom.com

[Tom Galloway]

In article <5jirmp$o...@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu> km...@cornell.edu (Kenny Peskin) writes:
>parties. The correct answers being "Labor" and "Congress". Virginia
>answered with "Labor" and "INC" (Indian National Congress) and was awarded
>only the ten points for Labor. With ten seconds left on the clock and
>Harvard up by ten points, a tossup was begun and Harvard's Mark Staloff
>buzzed in, looked at the clock, and said "I have no idea" (in an attempt to
>run down the clock). Staloff was assessed a -5 and the clock expired.
>Harvard was leading by 5 points. But Virginia protested the Nehru question

Interesting. Looking at the rules on the CBI website, I note that protests
can only be made at the end of a half. Thus, Harvard couldn't have known
that there'd be a pending protest, and thus got messed over by doing the
early buzz-in strategy. Based on my memory of a certain game in the 1989
regionals, this has changed in the last few years. It'd seem now that for
CBI games, the deliberate -5 in the last few seconds strategy is much more
dangerous than one might think.

tyg t...@netcom.com

[Shawn Pickrell]

First off, congratulations to you and your team for winning the ACF and
CBI national crowns. It is a shame that Virginia will be unable to defend
either of its national titles.

Over the past two years, Region 5 has seen too many schools deaffiliate.
Formerly, Region 5 was the strongest and deepest region in the country, bar
none. Now, it is a shadow of its former self.

I suggest that CBI do the following in order to re-establish itself:

(1) Cut its prices to 1/3-1/2 of what they are now.
(2) Actively move and pitch CBI to ACU-I members (and non-members). The
lowered price certainly makes CBI more attractive to a new school. $200 or
so can be had more easily than $600 or so. Heck, the SGA here at R-MC would
be willing to help fund *that*.
(3) Move to help establish programs at new schools. They should make them-
selves known at the high school level ... any students interested in starting
a program at the college level should be able to call CBI and get a "Start
Your Own Program" kit.
(4) Listen to players' concerns. Remember, the customer is KING.
(5) Eliminate the fee to enter the RCTs. Schools are already paying
enough for the IM questions.

CBI, are you listening? If not to me, then to the sounds of schools not
coming in (UMBC, Loyola, us) or to schools going away (Virginia, Yale, Penn,
etc., etc.??) I've mentioned 6 schools right there. That's $3,600 OF LOST
REVENUE TO YOU. Not to mention other schools.

Even the once-a-year schools seem to be leaving. There was declining
attendance at nearly all regions this year ... AREN'T YOU NOTICING??

What is being done about this??

More below.

Andrew Yaphe (ad...@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU) wrote:
: The University of Virginia will not be defending its CBI national

: championship. If you would like to know why we have decided it is
: no longer worth our time and money to participate in CBI tournaments,
: please read on.

: The questions at CBI nationals were as bad, if not worse, than they have
: been in past years. There were misleading tossups, tossups with
: little to no substantive information, many, many single-part, single-
: answer boni, 30-20-10 questions where the 30 was almost invariably
: a giveaway, bizarre category distributions (much more geography
: than literature or history, for example), and more that does not leap

: immediately to mind. At the CBI forum, company officials made it
: clear that they have no problem with certain aspects of the questions:

: we were told that the continuing prevalence of single-part,
: single-answer boni was non-negotiable, and that only "50 to 65 percent"
: of the questions were meant to be answerable early by the player
: with more knowledge (a figure that seems higher than the actual statistic,
: but anyway ...)

To address Andrew's concerns:

1. Misleading toss-ups: BAD. They need to be play-tested and edited out.
CBI needs to have a committee of experienced, good players play-test those
games. (waves hand here)
2. TU's with little to no substantive info: BAD, but not as much. What's
the point of vague, vague, vague, everyone ring in now toss-ups?? Why not
just be honest and say, For a quick 10 points, everyone ring in now??
3. Single-part boni: BAD. You either get impossible boni or gift boni (in
which case you may as well award 30 points for a toss-up).
4. Bizarre catergory distributions: BAD. Why not make it public. Say, "In
each packet of 30 toss-ups and 28 boni, there are ... " It's not a state
secret ... is it??

But also remember, what's a giveaway to you is not necessarily so for the
rest of the world. You got to be national champs because you knew more and
you knew it more quickly than the rest of the teams there. Therefore, a
giveaway 30 to you might only be answered after 20 by me, or after 10 or not
at all by a once-a-year school.

: Given the continuing low quality of the questions, it seems like a

: waste of time to compete at CBI tournaments. In my opinion, the
: questions at CBI nationals did not effectively differentiate between
: the top teams; as long as CBI chooses to value game "flow" and
: appearance over producing valid results, CBI nationals will be a
: pointless exercise for the teams there.

I can see CBI's point if they *WERE* producing a game show. I'd get bored
pretty quickly, watching people ring in after seven words. But at this
point, they're not. So why not make the game more pleasing to the one
customer at this point -- NAMELY, the PLAYERS??

This does not mean, however, that these questions should be unanswerable.

: Let me say that I personally appreciate the efforts of the volunteers

: who help make CBI such a good show; whatever dissatisfaction we felt
: at nationals was aimed at the consistently poor questions. I hope
: that other teams will consider deaffiliating from CBI as long as it
: remains company policy to produce questions that hamper players in
: order to appeal to a presumed audience, and which do not produce
: meaningful game results. I am disappointed that we did not get to
: compete against excellent teams like Harvard, Oklahoma, Chicago, Cornell,
: and the others at nationals on questions that would better indicate
: who the best teams really were.

Again, CBI, are you listening??? Aren't you the least bit concerned???

Shawn Pickrell
Randolph-Macon College

[Doug O'Neal]

In article <5jj913$c6...@ha2.rdc1.md.home.com> spic...@cc1000469-a.twsn1.md.home.com (Shawn Pickrell) writes:

> First off, congratulations to you and your team for winning the ACF and
> CBI national crowns. It is a shame that Virginia will be unable to defend
> either of its national titles.

Ditto.

> Over the past two years, Region 5 has seen too many schools deaffiliate.
> Formerly, Region 5 was the strongest and deepest region in the country, bar
> none. Now, it is a shadow of its former self.

Indeed.

> I suggest that CBI do the following in order to re-establish itself:

> (1) Cut its prices to 1/3-1/2 of what they are now.

This is unlikely, given that they are a company and do have employees (if
only a few) to pay. Pat Matthews has, in the past, gone through a rough
financial argument.

> (3) Move to help establish programs at new schools. They should make them-
> selves known at the high school level ... any students interested in starting
> a program at the college level should be able to call CBI and get a "Start
> Your Own Program" kit.

One problem with CBI is that they _don't_trust_students_, in most cases.
They have to get over the mentality that students are either (a) incompetent
or (b) cheaters. Now, I know the legal arguments about having a "coach"
at CBI tournaments, but CBI traditionally doesn't like to deal directly
with students.

> (4) Listen to players' concerns. Remember, the customer is KING.

Except that CBI is more likely to see the student activities administrator,
not the player, as the customer.

> (5) Eliminate the fee to enter the RCTs. Schools are already paying
> enough for the IM questions.

This is an eminently reasonable suggestion.

> CBI, are you listening? If not to me, then to the sounds of schools not
> coming in (UMBC, Loyola, us) or to schools going away (Virginia, Yale, Penn,
> etc., etc.??) I've mentioned 6 schools right there. That's $3,600 OF LOST
> REVENUE TO YOU. Not to mention other schools.

Possibly add Penn State to that list ... nothing is official yet, and I'm
not speaking on behalf of our quiz bowl organization. But our new president
has no great love (if indeed, any at all) of CBI, and the student activities
people who have always given us money to buy the CBI IM packs are likely
to react VERY favorably when we tell them about the NAQT IM questions --
more of a better product for less money.

> Even the once-a-year schools seem to be leaving. There was declining
> attendance at nearly all regions this year ... AREN'T YOU NOTICING??

Region IV had as many teams as usual, so perhaps it's an exception.

> 1. Misleading toss-ups: BAD. They need to be play-tested and edited out.
> CBI needs to have a committee of experienced, good players play-test those
> games. (waves hand here)

More than this, they need to get rid of the little league, "let's be fair
to everyone regardless of ability" attitude. Some people will continue to
write and support misleading tossups BECAUSE it will hurt the better team
and give the lesser team more of a chance.

> 2. TU's with little to no substantive info: BAD, but not as much. What's
> the point of vague, vague, vague, everyone ring in now toss-ups?? Why not
> just be honest and say, For a quick 10 points, everyone ring in now??

Although this problem isn't unique to CBI. For instance, I had this
criticism of many of the tossups at the last ACF tournament I attended
(this spring).

> 4. Bizarre catergory distributions: BAD. Why not make it public. Say, "In
> each packet of 30 toss-ups and 28 boni, there are ... " It's not a state
> secret ... is it??

Has anyone ever done a study of CBI packs to see if they do have a consistent
category distribution?

> I can see CBI's point if they *WERE* producing a game show. I'd get bored
> pretty quickly, watching people ring in after seven words. But at this
> point, they're not. So why not make the game more pleasing to the one
> customer at this point -- NAMELY, the PLAYERS??

But this seems like an argument in favor of harder questions!

> Again, CBI, are you listening??? Aren't you the least bit concerned???

My impression of CBI is that of a business who's not doing nearly enough
to keep up with the (evolving) needs and expectations of its clientele.
The world of collegiate quiz bowl is much different than, say, when I first
got involved 10.5 years ago. CBI does need to listen to players' concerns
and change their product accordingly.

Doug

[jpg...@students.uiuc.edu]

On Tue, 22 Apr 1997 09:10:00 -0500, Matt Larson
<mala...@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu> wrote:
[...]

>5) Should packets be read out of order at a tournament as "important" as
>the CBI NCT?

Just out of curiosity--what does this mean?

>7) The Finals. Maybe playing the circuit in the Midwest has me living
>under a rock, but was there a particular reason for Rostrom's display at
>the end of the first match? I personally thought it was a very juvenile,
>childish thing to do. I mean - come on. NCT Final or not - it's College
>Bowl. I'm not entirely certain it should be taken so seriously as to jump
>off a platform pointing at the other team in triumph after you've come out
>on the right end of a protest.

Thanks for posting the good dirt on CBI nationals we've been waiting
for. I would, however, like to take just a moment to defend the right
of players to engage in immature behavior when playing college bowl.
People who play other sports can upset the chess board, spike the
football, spit on the umpire, or engage in a bench-clearing brawl. So
let's leave oursevles a little room for bitterness, spite, and anger.

>7a) The protest. They should have bloody well just taken 2 minutes, come
>back, said "INC is correct" and given the match to Virginia. What an
>absolutely horrible way to settle a protest (in my opinion). In the end,
>Virginia got the replacement bonus part, and the championship, so it
>turned out the same way, but c'mon.

Could you, perhaps, give a little more information on this protest for
those of us who weren't there?

Jonathan Green
UIUC Minister of Rage

[andy tin-an wang]

I used to be the Minister of Rage for the UIUC ABT, then a shadow
officer, now I'm president, go figure. But Mr. Green is a good person
for the job of Minister of Rage, he's not just another Mormon BYU
expatriate, he's a killing machine. He was taught by that BYU veteran of
many wars Norm Gillespie (who I heard single-handedly fought off 100,000
ChiCom PLA troops to save the Marines at the Chosin Resevoir, and
captured 130 Germans at the Battle of Meuse-Argonne, but that cheatin'
Sgt. York stole the credit).

[Kenny Peskin]

In article <335cd0b...@news.cso.uiuc.edu>, jpg...@students.uiuc.edu
says...

>
>On Tue, 22 Apr 1997 09:10:00 -0500, Matt Larson
><mala...@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu> wrote:
>[...]
>
>>5) Should packets be read out of order at a tournament as "important" as
>>the CBI NCT?
>
>Just out of curiosity--what does this mean?

Before round 14, the moderators were given two question packs (evidently one
was a packet intended for use in round 15). The moderator in the
Harvard-Oklahoma match (and possibly one other room) read the round 15
questions instead of the round 14 questions. This was discovered by Cornell
and Oklahoma (we were playing in round 15) when we realized none of the
questions we played from the previous round were similar. So we got John
Palmatier (the tournament co-director), he relayed the information to the
central room, and the entire tournament played round 15 on a backup pack
(written for this very contingency).

The packets being out of order was a moderator mistake, not a tournament
mistake.
>
[text deleted]

>
>>7a) The protest. They should have bloody well just taken 2 minutes, come
>>back, said "INC is correct" and given the match to Virginia. What an
>>absolutely horrible way to settle a protest (in my opinion). In the end,
>>Virginia got the replacement bonus part, and the championship, so it
>>turned out the same way, but c'mon.
>
>Could you, perhaps, give a little more information on this protest for
>those of us who weren't there?
>

In Game 1 of the final, there was a 20 point bonus question, in two parts,
that discussed some historical background on the political parties of
Ben-Gurion and Nehru and then asked to identify their respective political

parties. The correct answers being "Labor" and "Congress". Virginia
answered with "Labor" and "INC" (Indian National Congress) and was awarded
only the ten points for Labor. With ten seconds left on the clock and
Harvard up by ten points, a tossup was begun and Harvard's Mark Staloff
buzzed in, looked at the clock, and said "I have no idea" (in an attempt to
run down the clock). Staloff was assessed a -5 and the clock expired.
Harvard was leading by 5 points. But Virginia protested the Nehru question

and the question was eventually thrown out for not having any correct answer
(although Eric Tentarelli--and I generally tend to defer to factual
statements that Eric makes--noted that the INC was not a political party and
was more of a political organization; but that is another discussion).
Virginia was given the next 10 point part of a bonus (off the clock). It
talked about a rift that extended across the northeast US and eastern Canada
and eventually separated Georgian Bay from what Great Lake. Virginia
correctly answered Huron, was awarded ten points and won the match by five.

---Kenny Peskin

[Clay D.]

In article <335cd0b...@news.cso.uiuc.edu>,

<jpg...@students.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
>>7a) The protest. They should have bloody well just taken 2 minutes, come
>>back, said "INC is correct" and given the match to Virginia. What an
>>absolutely horrible way to settle a protest (in my opinion). In the end,
>>Virginia got the replacement bonus part, and the championship, so it
>>turned out the same way, but c'mon.
>
>Could you, perhaps, give a little more information on this protest for
>those of us who weren't there?

Late in the first playoff game, Virginia was trailing 270-250 and playing a
20-point bonus.

The bonus stated, in brief, that the parties who were the first to rule in the
nations of Israel and India were voted out of power in 1996. FTPE, name
them.The answer given by Virginia was "INC" and "Labor".

"Labor" was immediately ruled correct for the Israeli part of the answer, for
10 points. The answer given on the card was the "Congress" party, and so the
answer "INC" was denied.

Harvard buzzed in with three seconds left to kill the clock, taking a neg five
in the process, and the game apparently ended with Harvard ahead 265-260.

Virginia made two protests, and one comment, at this point: one was that
Harvard had been, IMO, unfairly prompted for more information for saying simply
"Valdez" on a question about the "Exxon Valdez", but the card for some reason

specifically called for a prompt in that situation. No problem. The comment was
my anger at a tossup in the game which began "He recently donated X million to
Harvard..." which Harvard quickly got, a comment I felt obliged to make though

I knew it was unprotestable. The last protest was the key one, and was that
"INC" stands for "Indian National Congress", which is the full name of the
"Congress Party" led by Nehru in 1940s and 1950s.

The eventual decision came down was that the question was "flawed": the powers
that be were unable to determine whether the INC (Congress) Party of Nehru was
the same as the Congress (I) party of Rao, because of schisms and secessions
dating back mostly to Indira Gandhi. After a "consultation of the literature"
and "speaking to an Indian citizen" (!) who happened to be the judge of the
match, they decided to allow Virginia to keep the 10 points for Labor, throw
out the Congress part, and read another 10-point-part of a bonus to Virginia. I
didn't like the ruling; they had been clearly able to establish that INC was
the name of Nehru's party as specifically mentioned in the question, whether it
fit with Rao's party or not, and I felt we deserved the points - it was clear;y
the best deal we were going to get so I took it. A quick look at the online
Encyclopedia Britannica confirms that they, at least, consider the two the
same, listing Rao's 1996 defeat under the "Indian National Congress" article,
and prompting me to wonder just what sources they did turn to during their
discussion. Fortunately we got Lake Huron for the question that was read in its
place, resulting in a 270-265 Virginia win, and one of the greatest "what-if"
questions in CB history regarding the deliberate neg 5.

Had the questions and answers been handled properly, the finals would be fondly
remembered as a classic by any who saw it, as opposed to the bitter taste that
is probably left instead. The round robin game between Virginia and Harvard had
been a 5-point game, with Virginia getting a tossup at the buzzer for a 295-290
win. In the playoff, Virginia got off to a slow start, and trailed 180-60
after 8 questions. They had closed to 190-130 by halftime, and got four of the
first five questions of the second half to take a 225-200 lead. Virginia then
had two straight neg 5s which Harvard failed to convert (VA 215-200). Harvard
got the next two tossups to take a 235-215 and 270-215 lead; Virginia closed to
270-240, from which point I've already described the rest of the game.

The final game was just about as close. Virginia opened to a 95-20 lead,
watched Harvard come back to 90-90 after 7, and opened a 140-125 lead at the
half. Virginia didn't take full advantage when Harvard negged three of the
first four questions of the second half, and only led 180-150. Harvard then
took a 185-175 lead on question 15, expanding to 215-175 on the next one.
Virginia's tossup and 30 tied it at 215; Harvard's tossup and 30 made it
255-215. Virginia closed to 255-235 on the next one; took advantage of a
Harvard neg to take a 270-250 lead; got the next tossup and ran out the clock
during the bonus to win by 290-250. Brian Rostron, demonized for his emotional
displays during the protest and after the final end of game 1, recovered to go
9-0 during the final game, only two on bouncebacks (the other Virginia players
contributed just one non-bounceback tossup between them in the final).

It will probably be one of the most memorable finals ever, and its a shame that
other events are going to distort the recollection of this suprememly exciting
performance by both teams.

--
Clay Davenport jc...@virginia.edu
University of Virginia Meteorologist
Coach of UVA's 1997 College Bowl and ACF National Championship Teams
Author, Baseball Prospectus '97 www.baseballprospectus.com 1-800-906-7680

[James Quintong]

Finally we're seeing some comments about nationals. I wanted to hear
some players' reactions before I chimed in.
FWIW, I was an RTA (reset-timer-announcer) at Nationals and saw a
handful of good matches: Harvard-Cornell and Chicago-Oklahoma.

Matt Larson <mala...@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu> wrote:
>1) There were misleading tossups. Go figure.

What a surprise. I didn't catch as many as I would have expected, but
they were still there.
And as for one-part boni, I don't like them at all, either. The
problem with too many of them is that they're just toss-ups with
"harder" answers. Not much consistency with boni in general, either.
Actually consistency was a huge problem in general:
-there were about 5-6 questions about Malaysia, most sounding alike
-some packets were academic heavy, others trash heavy
-there was still a handful of "this curved, yellow fruit" questions

>3) Yeah, I played for Iowa. We finished 14th. We didn't play well.
>However, I enjoyed the trip. I enjoyed (for the most part) being able to
>play against such a high level of competition.

I was somewhat disappointed to see that you guys didn't finish higher,
but at least you had fun and were able to see at least the New Jersey
suburbs :)
Although, seeing some of the teams here and the way the packets went,
I'm even more disappointed that the Northwestern team did not make it
to Nationals.

>4) Some moderators were quite good. Others made mistakes. One mistake
>helped us lose a match. Taking nothing away from the team which beat us
>in that match, the way the protest was settled annoyed me. It was the
>tossup with the answer of Mozambique...and in the end, rather than saying
>"on the Indian Ocean", the moderator said "in the Indian Ocean". They
>rang in and said Madagascar. They protested at half time, and the
>decision was to give them a tossup off the clock, and then a bonus.
>Suddenly, we were being penalized for the moderator's mistake. Woo hoo.
>Go CBI.

Some of the protests and protest adjudications were rather odd. There
was a lot of giving the team a bonus or tossup off the clock to solve
protests instead of deciding one way or the other on a question.

>5) Should packets be read out of order at a tournament as "important" as
>the CBI NCT?

I can't figure that out for the life of me, either. Especially since
it was during one of the last rounds of the tournament. They
supposedly had decent security measures for their questions, but
sometimes there are weird slip-ups like that. With all the game
officials in the room, I'm suprised no one caught it.
However, CBI did have a few extra packets to help in such a situation.

>6) The forum. Oh dear. First of all, let me say that many of the
>questions from the crowd were very confrontational in the way they were
>being asked - which isn't the way to solve problems.

Would someone please give me more details about the forum. I got lost
on the way to the hotel after the round robin and I just decided to
drive back home. I am interested what other questions were asked at
the forum.
However, I would imagine the forum did not go so well after hearing
CBI president Richard Reid's comments at the end of the tournament. He
was talking about NAQT and ACF as these odd organizations that
couldn't hold a candle to CBI. I could see the Virginia team cringing
at some of his comments.

>7) The Finals. Maybe playing the circuit in the Midwest has me living
>under a rock, but was there a particular reason for Rostrom's display at
>the end of the first match? I personally thought it was a very juvenile,
>childish thing to do. I mean - come on. NCT Final or not - it's College
>Bowl. I'm not entirely certain it should be taken so seriously as to jump
>off a platform pointing at the other team in triumph after you've come out
>on the right end of a protest.

I agree with you about Rostron's display after winning the match. I
suppose the saying "It's only a game" does hold true here. It was
kinda funny to see him stumble off the stage while he was pointing at
Harvard after that match.

As for the protest, I can't believe it took that much time to solve
that one. Here's the lowdown on the protest:
On a part of a question about other countries' ruling parties,
Virginia answered INC (for Indian National Congress) for India but the
answer called for the Congress Party. Virginia was ruled incorrect on
that part of the bonus and thus were down 10 points going into the
last tossup. Harvard got a neg-5 at the buzzer ... supposedly winning
by only 5. After about at least 15 minutes, Virginia was given half a
replacement bonus (they had gotten the other half of that 20 point
bonus). UVa got it right and won the match.

>That would be about it. Good thing they did - got Herb Stempel to come
>in. Of course...was that CBCI/ACUI, or was that Montclair State that got
>him in? I'd like to find out, just because I'm curious.
>Hee. He biffed "Marty" again.

Montclair State brought in Herb Stempel. That was pretty cool to hear
the scoop about the quiz show scandal from one of the primary
characters. Stempel also watched a few matches before his appearance
and was getting a bunch of questions along the way.
Stempel did miss again on "Marty." Kudos (I guess) to Eric Tentarelli
for coming up with that question.

Other observations:
Washington represented Region 14 very well this year. While they only
went 4-11, they knocked off UT-Dallas and lost to Chicago by only 55
points (including a first half with a combined score of about 400
points). They were a fun team to watch, plus they had a headless Care
Bear and Cringer (Battle Cat minus the gear) on their table during
play.
Despite having Eric Bell, Oklahoma never seemed to be considered a
factor before the tourney. After a 1-2 Friday, it seemed to hold true.
Then, they went 9-0 Saturday, including the thriller against Chicago
(which happened in my room). Hats off to Oklahoma for an amazing
performance.
As I thought, UIC was overwhelmed by the competition. I was
encouraging them over the weekend to hit the invitiational circuit, or
at least check out NAQT.

Despite some of the problems over the weekend, I really did have a
great time. I met a number of people I've read here on this group and
finally saw some of these great teams in action. While listening to
the questions, though, I wish I was on the other side of the table --
playing, instead of officiating.

--James Quintong, Northwestern University Class of '97
jam...@nwu.edu | http://www.mindspring.com/~jqsmooth

[jpg...@students.uiuc.edu]

On Tue, 22 Apr 1997 21:16:31 -0500, andy tin-an wang
<a-w...@students.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>I used to be the Minister of Rage for the UIUC ABT, then a shadow
>officer, now I'm president, go figure. But Mr. Green is a good person
>for the job of Minister of Rage, he's not just another Mormon BYU
>expatriate, he's a killing machine. He was taught by that BYU veteran of
>many wars Norm Gillespie (who I heard single-handedly fought off 100,000
>ChiCom PLA troops to save the Marines at the Chosin Resevoir, and
>captured 130 Germans at the Battle of Meuse-Argonne, but that cheatin'
>Sgt. York stole the credit).

Andy, you promised us you'd quit, now that you're team president. Do
we need to insist on a few more aversion therapy sessions before Fall?

Jonathan Green

[Bill Atkinson]

andy tin-an wang <a-w...@students.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
>

>> Jonathan Green
>> UIUC Minister of Rage

>I used to be the Minister of Rage for the UIUC ABT, then a shadow
>officer, now I'm president, go figure. But Mr. Green is a good person
>for the job of Minister of Rage, he's not just another Mormon BYU
>expatriate, he's a killing machine. He was taught by that BYU veteran of
>many wars Norm Gillespie (who I heard single-handedly fought off 100,000
>ChiCom PLA troops to save the Marines at the Chosin Resevoir, and
>captured 130 Germans at the Battle of Meuse-Argonne, but that cheatin'
>Sgt. York stole the credit).
>

Meaning no disrespect to my good friend Norm Gillespie, indisputably among
the greatest all-time BYU players, Jonathan Green was a member of two BYU
teams that went to the National Tournament before Norm appeared on the
scene in the fall of 1993 and so did more teaching of Norm than the other
way around.

[Joseph K Wright]

In article <tygE91...@netcom.com>, Tom Galloway <t...@netcom.com> wrote:
>In article <E91x2...@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> jc...@aeolus.evsc.Virginia.EDU (Clay D.) writes:

>>specifically called for a prompt in that situation. No problem. The comment
>>was my anger at a tossup in the game which began "He recently donated X
>>million to Harvard..." which Harvard quickly got, a comment I felt obliged
>>to make though I knew it was unprotestable.

Admittedly, I can see that this could be an issue, but I absolutely do
not follow current events, and I had heard about Bill Gates giving
Harvard a bunch of money. I actually thought the worst question of the
finals (and pre-reading the second final in the moderators' room, I saw
this question coming but could do nothing about it--it was bad but not
wrong) was the "bacteria" tossup that cost Harvard game 2, and thus the
match. With Harvard down about 20 inside the final minute, this question
started getting read, and it was clearly neg bait with many possible
answers--Jeff Johnson just happened to give the wrong one.

BTW, my take on the protest was that CBI had written a bad question, but
they really did try to make the best of a bad situation. My impression
is that they decided in the end (correctly, I believe) that what the
question had asked for was the name of a single entity that would identify
both the original ruling group and the current party. The decision, after
a long conference, was that there was no such entity, and therefore the
question had NO correct answer. As a result, they threw out the bonus
part and read the next 10-point bonus part off the clock. All things
considered, I think that was the correct ruling.

--
Joe Wright wri...@pitt.edu Phone: (412)-624-7187
"American society can still be likened to a 'salad', rather than a
'melting pot.' But perhaps in the future, we will be more of a 'melting
salad.'" -from an actual scholarship essay on what "America" means in 1997

[Joseph K Wright]

In article <5jj913$c6...@ha2.rdc1.md.home.com>,
Shawn Pickrell <spic...@cc1000469-a.twsn1.md.home.com> wrote:

>
>I suggest that CBI do the following in order to re-establish itself:

Just FYI, one of the things that came out of the NCT Forum was that CBI
will respond to direct comments via phone, letter, email, etc., but
not to things thrown out on this newsgroup. So if you want to get their
attention, this isn't the way to go about doing it. But anyway...

>
>(1) Cut its prices to 1/3-1/2 of what they are now.

It's not going to happen, unless CBI can get a TV contract. This was
something I hadn't considered before, and give CBI credit for this out.
One of the benefits of getting CBI on TV would be a substantially lower
cost for schools to participate, since they would have other sources of
revenue.

>(2) Actively move and pitch CBI to ACU-I members (and non-members). The
>lowered price certainly makes CBI more attractive to a new school. $200 or
>so can be had more easily than $600 or so. Heck, the SGA here at R-MC would
>be willing to help fund *that*.

See above.

>(3) Move to help establish programs at new schools. They should make them-
>selves known at the high school level ... any students interested in starting
>a program at the college level should be able to call CBI and get a "Start
>Your Own Program" kit.
>(4) Listen to players' concerns. Remember, the customer is KING.

As Doug O'Neal has pointed out, CBI sees college administrators and not
players as their customers. Most CBI and ACU-I people (with the notable
exception of the Tuttles) come from a college administration background
and not from a playing background. CBI does not see player concerns as
important as administrators concerns. (My expectation is that this will
continue to contribute to mass defections.)

>(5) Eliminate the fee to enter the RCTs. Schools are already paying
>enough for the IM questions.

Shawn, just how DO you expect CBI to make any money, as you keep proposing
they eliminate their sources of revenue? They are not like a program
running invitationals--just trying to make enough money to keep playing.
They are a for-profit company.

>
>CBI, are you listening? If not to me, then to the sounds of schools not
>coming in (UMBC, Loyola, us) or to schools going away (Virginia, Yale, Penn,
>etc., etc.??) I've mentioned 6 schools right there. That's $3,600 OF LOST
>REVENUE TO YOU. Not to mention other schools.
>
>Even the once-a-year schools seem to be leaving. There was declining
>attendance at nearly all regions this year ... AREN'T YOU NOTICING??

It was pointed out at the Forum that MORE schools participated this year
than last. It really doesn't matter to CBI whether top programs or
whether East Bufu State participate--1=1. At some point, it is possible
that too many concessions to top programs could lessen interest among
other programs (of course, I don't they're anywhere near that point).

>
>To address Andrew's concerns:
>
>1. Misleading toss-ups: BAD. They need to be play-tested and edited out.
>CBI needs to have a committee of experienced, good players play-test those
>games. (waves hand here)
>2. TU's with little to no substantive info: BAD, but not as much. What's
>the point of vague, vague, vague, everyone ring in now toss-ups?? Why not
>just be honest and say, For a quick 10 points, everyone ring in now??
>3. Single-part boni: BAD. You either get impossible boni or gift boni (in
>which case you may as well award 30 points for a toss-up).

CBI made it very clear in the NCT Forum that they conceive the game very
differently than the players in top programs do. They first said 50-65%
and later 80% of tossups should be interruptable (which I'm sure they
define more broadly than players--buzzing in before "FTP name him" is
not really interruptable). They feel that misleading and vague tossups
along with tossups from analogy and (though they didn't explicitly say it)
multiple-choice tossups [cold shiver] somehow mix the game up and make it
more unpredictable and, presumably, more fun for the TV audience.

My reaction to this is mixed. On the one hand, it is comforting that what
we have been complaining about for several years in terms of question
quality has not persisted because CBI is ignorant of the complaint, but
because of sincere philosophical differences. It was good to at least
get that on the table for everyone to see. On the other hand, this
sincere philosophical difference has alienated several programs already,
and I would expect that this revelation that CBI knows players hate many
of their questions but are unwilling to change will lead to a slew of
defections now that it has been revealed. This coupled with NAQT's
cheaper and presumably more in-line with the players' question-quality
philosophy intramural questions spells trouble for CBI among top programs.
20 defections this year alone would not stun me--they've already lost
their champion.

>4. Bizarre catergory distributions: BAD. Why not make it public. Say, "In
>each packet of 30 toss-ups and 28 boni, there are ... " It's not a state
>secret ... is it??

Because that would force consistency they don't believe is necessary. It
is my distinct impression that CBI feels a question is a question is a
question. For instance, when fact-checking, we pulled an American history
tossup from the finals due to some ambiguities. Was that replaced with
another American history or even history tossup? No, it was just removed.

>
>: Given the continuing low quality of the questions, it seems like a
>: waste of time to compete at CBI tournaments. In my opinion, the
>: questions at CBI nationals did not effectively differentiate between
>: the top teams; as long as CBI chooses to value game "flow" and
>: appearance over producing valid results, CBI nationals will be a
>: pointless exercise for the teams there.
>
>I can see CBI's point if they *WERE* producing a game show. I'd get bored
>pretty quickly, watching people ring in after seven words. But at this
>point, they're not. So why not make the game more pleasing to the one
>customer at this point -- NAMELY, the PLAYERS??

In CBI's sincere view, they ARE producing a game show--one that just
doesn't happen to appear on TV at the current time. Everything they said
at the Forum made it very clear their primary (if not only) long-term
goal is to get back on TV. I can understand that they would want to make
the game as close to the eventual TV version as possible, so that when
(if) producers ever come to watch, they can show them the actual product
and not have to say, "Well, for the TV version, you'd have to imagine
easier and more unpredictable questions, and lots of other changes too."
So it is probably not in CBI's interest to change the game away from a
TV style until it can get on TV--it will be easier to get on TV if they
have a TV-ready game. However, you could make the point that they have
to survive long enough to get on TV--and maybe that's where the problem
lies if they keep alienating players.

[David C. Tuttle]

wri...@pitt.edu (Joseph K Wright) wrote:

> Shawn Pickrell <spic...@cc1000469-a.twsn1.md.home.com> wrote:
>>
>> (5) Eliminate the fee to enter the RCTs. Schools are already paying
>> enough for the IM questions.
>
> Shawn, just how DO you expect CBI to make any money, as you keep proposing

> they eliminate their sources of revenue?...

In fact, the regional fee goes to the ACU-I region, not to College Bowl.
CB provides the questions for free to the Regionals, and only charges
a nominal fee to get extra copies of packets if requested.

--
David C. Tuttle, Biomathematics -----> d...@odin.mdacc.tmc.edu <-----
The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center +1 (713) 792-2606
Mail Stop 237, 1515 Holcombe Boulevard, Houston, TX 77030-4096 USA
Today's anagram of "David Charles Tuttle" is: THAT DAREDEVIL'S CULT

[ad...@faraday.clas.virginia.edu]

In article <5jj913$c6...@ha2.rdc1.md.home.com>,

spic...@cc1000469-a.twsn1.md.home.com (Shawn Pickrell) wrote:
>
> First off, congratulations to you and your team for winning the ACF and
> CBI national crowns. It is a shame that Virginia will be unable to defend
> either of its national titles.
>

Don't be so sure of that.

> Over the past two years, Region 5 has seen too many schools deaffiliate.
> Formerly, Region 5 was the strongest and deepest region in the country, bar
> none. Now, it is a shadow of its former self.
>
> I suggest that CBI do the following in order to re-establish itself:
>
> (1) Cut its prices to 1/3-1/2 of what they are now.
> (2) Actively move and pitch CBI to ACU-I members (and non-members). The
> lowered price certainly makes CBI more attractive to a new school. $200 or
> so can be had more easily than $600 or so. Heck, the SGA here at R-MC would
> be willing to help fund *that*.
> (3) Move to help establish programs at new schools. They should make them-
> selves known at the high school level ... any students interested in starting
> a program at the college level should be able to call CBI and get a "Start
> Your Own Program" kit.
> (4) Listen to players' concerns. Remember, the customer is KING.
> (5) Eliminate the fee to enter the RCTs. Schools are already paying
> enough for the IM questions.
>
> CBI, are you listening? If not to me, then to the sounds of schools not
> coming in (UMBC, Loyola, us) or to schools going away (Virginia, Yale, Penn,
> etc., etc.??) I've mentioned 6 schools right there. That's $3,600 OF LOST
> REVENUE TO YOU. Not to mention other schools.

If there was one thing made clear at the CBI forum, it was the fact that
prices would not be lowered (unless, of course, CBI makes it back on TV
... let's not hold our breath). As long as enough schools keep buying
those pricey IM packets, CBI will stay afloat; losing a real circuit team
here or there doesn't really affect their financial outlook.

> To address Andrew's concerns:
>
> 1. Misleading toss-ups: BAD. They need to be play-tested and edited out.
> CBI needs to have a committee of experienced, good players play-test those
> games. (waves hand here)
> 2. TU's with little to no substantive info: BAD, but not as much. What's
> the point of vague, vague, vague, everyone ring in now toss-ups?? Why not
> just be honest and say, For a quick 10 points, everyone ring in now??
> 3. Single-part boni: BAD. You either get impossible boni or gift boni (in
> which case you may as well award 30 points for a toss-up).
> 4. Bizarre catergory distributions: BAD. Why not make it public. Say, "In
> each packet of 30 toss-ups and 28 boni, there are ... " It's not a state
> secret ... is it??
>
> But also remember, what's a giveaway to you is not necessarily so for the
> rest of the world. You got to be national champs because you knew more and
> you knew it more quickly than the rest of the teams there. Therefore, a
> giveaway 30 to you might only be answered after 20 by me, or after 10 or not
> at all by a once-a-year school.
>

To address this point (on top of all the other terrible questions that
were thrown at us):

30 point clues on 30-20-10 questions included "This 1924 E. M. Forster
novel has sections in mosques, in caves, ..."; "Bardeen, Brittain, and
Shockley won the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing this device";
"He was the former lead singer of Them who had a hit with 'Gloria.'" At
any tournament, these might be suspect as candidates for the most obscure
clues; at an (alleged) national tournament, these are ridiculous.

> I can see CBI's point if they *WERE* producing a game show. I'd get bored
> pretty quickly, watching people ring in after seven words. But at this
> point, they're not. So why not make the game more pleasing to the one
> customer at this point -- NAMELY, the PLAYERS??
>
> This does not mean, however, that these questions should be unanswerable.
>

No one is saying they should be unanswerable -- just a whole lot better.

> Shawn Pickrell
> Randolph-Macon College

Andrew

-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet

[Chris Sloan]

wri...@pitt.edu writes:
>
> Just FYI, one of the things that came out of the NCT Forum was that CBI
> will respond to direct comments via phone, letter, email, etc., but
> not to things thrown out on this newsgroup. So if you want to get their
> attention, this isn't the way to go about doing it. But anyway...

That was not the fact last year. After last year's NCT I
emailed a lengthy letter expressing my concerns to every
single person at CBI that had a listed email address that I
could find anywhere. I got only 1 response and it was a month
later from someone who is only very indirectly affiliated with
the company. Basically I was ignored.

Chris Sloan

> --
> Joe Wright wri...@pitt.edu Phone: (412)-624-7187
> "American society can still be likened to a 'salad', rather than a
> 'melting pot.' But perhaps in the future, we will be more of a 'melting
> salad.'" -from an actual scholarship essay on what "America" means in 1997

--

Chris Sloan ca...@virginia.edu
UVa Class of '96 (615) 421-8279
Vandy School of Law '99 GO 'DORES!!

[Phil Groce]

First off, it's good to see the newsgroup in good shape again. I wish
I could say the same for the AC community

spic...@cc1000469-a.twsn1.md.home.com (Shawn Pickrell) wrote:
>Over the past two years, Region 5 has seen too many schools deaffiliate.
>Formerly, Region 5 was the strongest and deepest region in the country, bar
>none. Now, it is a shadow of its former self.

Speaking as former president of The Incredible Vanishing College Bowl
Team, I can empathize.

>I suggest that CBI do the following in order to re-establish itself:
>(1) Cut its prices to 1/3-1/2 of what they are now.
>(2) Actively move and pitch CBI to ACU-I members (and non-members). The
>lowered price certainly makes CBI more attractive to a new school. $200 or
>so can be had more easily than $600 or so. Heck, the SGA here at R-MC would
>be willing to help fund *that*.
>(3) Move to help establish programs at new schools. They should make them-
>selves known at the high school level ... any students interested in starting
>a program at the college level should be able to call CBI and get a "Start
>Your Own Program" kit.
>(4) Listen to players' concerns. Remember, the customer is KING.
>(5) Eliminate the fee to enter the RCTs. Schools are already paying
>enough for the IM questions.

These are all valid suggestions, assuming that:
1. CBI markets its product at students.
2. CBI intends for College Bowl to turn a profit.

Regarding the first point, CBI has always marketed to the school, not
the students. They sell school administrations on the positive
benefits of holding intramural tournaments with their questions. The
concept of representing the school in regional and national
competition is probably a selling point, but for school
administrators, it is probably more important to have an entertaining
and popular activity that requires relatively little work from them
(writing questions would make an IM prohibitively time consuming, from
this POV). The "finer points" of good question writing (as we discuss
them here) are not relevant -- fast, interesting, story-like questions
that entertain students at an intramural level are.

Since CBI makes what money it does off of the IM's, so teams that go
to regionals and (especially) nationals are actually consuming more
CBI resources than schools that may buy the questions and not go to
either tournament (I suppose they exist, don't they?). This is not to
say that CBI doesn't care about putting together a good tournament;
IMHO, they do. However, if three Virginas -- or thirty --
deaffiliated, it would probably be more cost-effective to mass mail or
cold call 300 new school administrations and hope for a 10% return.

The second point: let's do a little math. Assume 225 schools (15
teams in 15 regions -- a little optimistic) spent their $600 and went
to regionals. CBI has made a whopping $135,000.00, before taxes. Don
Reid could've made better money as a successful lawyer. Furthermore,
figuring in the money they've spent on the RCT's and NCT, plus
compensating question writer(s), and they probably run a hefty loss.

So how does CBI support even one employee, let alone the ten or so
plus receptionist required to pull off 17 tournaments each year?
Well, I'm not privy to CBI's ledger, but I imagine they leverage the
prestige that College Bowl gives them in other ventures (HCASC and
University Challenge come to mind -- the licensing money Channel 4
pays probably exceeds the total revenue from College Bowl). That
image was made over 30 years, and even if it were tarnished in
potential clients' eyes by deaffiliation of the upper echelon (which I
doubt), it would take another several years for the tarnish to
seriously hurt them.

So how does that impact our perception of them? First, it means,
that, yes, they could probably drop prices to almost nil and not feel
much bite (well, $135,000 or less worth of bite). But why? If every
school who doesn't like it deaffiliates, CBI will still be left miles
ahead of its nearest competitor in schools affiliated. Furthermore,
if they're selling clients on their ability to run tournaments (or
tournament-like events), it doesn't much matter if Harvard plays
Virginia or Hampden-Sydney plays UC-Santa Cruz (no offense to either).
What matters is the entertainment value and smoothness of the
tournament, and even Andrew says they had that in spades.

If there is a lesson to be learned here, it is that an organization
can't be profitable doing academic competition, unless that is the
crown jewel (read: loss leader) used to win other, more lucrative
contracts. I can't say for sure, but I think ACF's success was
indicative of this. They scrupulously avoided any pretense of making
money; theirs was a labor of love. And now it's defunct, because its
momentum was entirely volunteer-generated.

I hope, incidentally, that NAQT will prove me wrong on this one. :)

>Shawn Pickrell
>Randolph-Macon College

Phil Groce
(in) Memphis

[Shawn Pickrell]

Joseph K Wright (wri...@pitt.edu) wrote:
: In article <5jj913$c6...@ha2.rdc1.md.home.com>,
: Shawn Pickrell <spic...@cc1000469-a.twsn1.md.home.com> wrote:

: >I suggest that CBI do the following in order to re-establish itself:

: Just FYI, one of the things that came out of the NCT Forum was that CBI
: will respond to direct comments via phone, letter, email, etc., but
: not to things thrown out on this newsgroup. So if you want to get their
: attention, this isn't the way to go about doing it. But anyway...

Where can I send e-mail, then? I'm not 100% familiar with their e-mail
system; I do wish for them to at least address my concerns.

: >(1) Cut its prices to 1/3-1/2 of what they are now.

: It's not going to happen, unless CBI can get a TV contract. This was
: something I hadn't considered before, and give CBI credit for this out.
: One of the benefits of getting CBI on TV would be a substantially lower
: cost for schools to participate, since they would have other sources of
: revenue.

OK. So I think that we on the circuit ought to work really hard to see
that CBI get on TV. Then, we can all see ourselves on TV, and more schools
can play (since it'll cost less.)

: >(2) Actively move and pitch CBI to ACU-I members (and non-members). The

: >lowered price certainly makes CBI more attractive to a new school. $200 or
: >so can be had more easily than $600 or so. Heck, the SGA here at R-MC would
: >be willing to help fund *that*.

: See above.

If (1) and (2) are done enough, CBI will increase participation to cover
for that lost revenue. Has quizbowl been actively sold to new schools, other
than the form CBI letter that goes out all over the country??

The demand for quizbowl is pretty elastic, I think, among SA directors. So
if CBI cuts its prices to 1/3-1/2 of what they are now, more schools
can participate. Also, CBI officials might wish to actively involve themselves
in getting schools to affiliate (e.g. "lobbying kits" for SA boards and
SGA's.) More customers means more money.

: >(3) Move to help establish programs at new schools. They should make them-

: >selves known at the high school level ... any students interested in starting
: >a program at the college level should be able to call CBI and get a "Start
: >Your Own Program" kit.
: >(4) Listen to players' concerns. Remember, the customer is KING.

: As Doug O'Neal has pointed out, CBI sees college administrators and not
: players as their customers. Most CBI and ACU-I people (with the notable
: exception of the Tuttles) come from a college administration background
: and not from a playing background. CBI does not see player concerns as
: important as administrators concerns. (My expectation is that this will
: continue to contribute to mass defections.)

But if the pressure is put on SA directors from BELOW AND ABOVE (i.e. from
CBI and the students), SA directors or SGA's are more likely to provide
the money to affiliate. CBI ought to realize that they are not the only
party than CAN put pressure on SA directors and SGA's.

: >(5) Eliminate the fee to enter the RCTs. Schools are already paying

: >enough for the IM questions.

: Shawn, just how DO you expect CBI to make any money, as you keep proposing
: they eliminate their sources of revenue? They are not like a program
: running invitationals--just trying to make enough money to keep playing.
: They are a for-profit company.

See above. More customers means more revenues.

: >CBI, are you listening? If not to me, then to the sounds of schools not

: >coming in (UMBC, Loyola, us) or to schools going away (Virginia, Yale, Penn,
: >etc., etc.??) I've mentioned 6 schools right there. That's $3,600 OF LOST
: >REVENUE TO YOU. Not to mention other schools.

: >Even the once-a-year schools seem to be leaving. There was declining
: >attendance at nearly all regions this year ... AREN'T YOU NOTICING??

: It was pointed out at the Forum that MORE schools participated this year
: than last. It really doesn't matter to CBI whether top programs or
: whether East Bufu State participate--1=1. At some point, it is possible
: that too many concessions to top programs could lessen interest among
: other programs (of course, I don't they're anywhere near that point).

Correct. In that case, I think that top programs ought to adopt a more
"play and have fun" mentality. I don't think that there was much doubt
that Virginia and Harvard were the best teams there, and that Virginia
is probably the best team in the country right now. (BTW, they are the
3rd school to unify the ACF and CBI crowns.)

: >To address Andrew's concerns:

: >1. Misleading toss-ups: BAD. They need to be play-tested and edited out.
: >CBI needs to have a committee of experienced, good players play-test those
: >games. (waves hand here)
: >2. TU's with little to no substantive info: BAD, but not as much. What's
: >the point of vague, vague, vague, everyone ring in now toss-ups?? Why not
: >just be honest and say, For a quick 10 points, everyone ring in now??
: >3. Single-part boni: BAD. You either get impossible boni or gift boni (in
: >which case you may as well award 30 points for a toss-up).

: CBI made it very clear in the NCT Forum that they conceive the game very
: differently than the players in top programs do. They first said 50-65%
: and later 80% of tossups should be interruptable (which I'm sure they
: define more broadly than players--buzzing in before "FTP name him" is
: not really interruptable). They feel that misleading and vague tossups
: along with tossups from analogy and (though they didn't explicitly say it)
: multiple-choice tossups [cold shiver] somehow mix the game up and make it
: more unpredictable and, presumably, more fun for the TV audience.

Perhaps. I think that players AND the audience would have more fun with
direct, one-sentence questions. Yes, the infamous, "For 10 points, who
wrote Paradise Lost?" Plenty of people know that's Milton. They can keep
up with the game. You can adjust the difficulty level to prevent the
questions from being total buzzer races. For example, you could ask,

But a typical ACF-style toss-up about the man that would go like:

"This British author was blind from age (??). He is the author of the
Dunciad ... "

(fill in blank -- I would know this from that) "Milton."

"Correct."

Now how many people outside of academic competition would know that? Not
many. Who'd want to watch a game full of that? I want everyone to think
about that for a second. Remember, AC should not be for a select few. It
should be a truly mass-participation game.

: My reaction to this is mixed. On the one hand, it is comforting that what

: we have been complaining about for several years in terms of question
: quality has not persisted because CBI is ignorant of the complaint, but
: because of sincere philosophical differences. It was good to at least
: get that on the table for everyone to see. On the other hand, this
: sincere philosophical difference has alienated several programs already,
: and I would expect that this revelation that CBI knows players hate many
: of their questions but are unwilling to change will lead to a slew of
: defections now that it has been revealed. This coupled with NAQT's
: cheaper and presumably more in-line with the players' question-quality
: philosophy intramural questions spells trouble for CBI among top programs.
: 20 defections this year alone would not stun me--they've already lost
: their champion.

I also predict, if I can get my way after graduation, the rise of several
programs that will choose not to affiliate with CBI. They may work to keep
the difficulty level down on the invitational circuit, but they will not
affiliate, so long as the cost stays so high.

If I might exercise my bias for a few seconds, Jon Lazar and the gang at
UMBC :) exemplify this "new" thinking. They aren't fans of CBI, by any
stretch of the imagination. Yet, they aren't fans of the ACF let's-make-
questions-really-hard philosophy either (notice their non-attendance at
ACF regionals? I asked really politely. :) R-MC exemplifies this new
thinking as well ... maybe that's why I get along with them so well. :)

: >4. Bizarre catergory distributions: BAD. Why not make it public. Say, "In

: >each packet of 30 toss-ups and 28 boni, there are ... " It's not a state
: >secret ... is it??

: Because that would force consistency they don't believe is necessary. It
: is my distinct impression that CBI feels a question is a question is a
: question. For instance, when fact-checking, we pulled an American history
: tossup from the finals due to some ambiguities. Was that replaced with
: another American history or even history tossup? No, it was just removed.

Well ... maybe abide by a "Rule of Three": In each packet, there will be
at least three history, three literature, three science, etc., etc.

: >I can see CBI's point if they *WERE* producing a game show. I'd get bored

: >pretty quickly, watching people ring in after seven words. But at this
: >point, they're not. So why not make the game more pleasing to the one
: >customer at this point -- NAMELY, the PLAYERS??

: In CBI's sincere view, they ARE producing a game show--one that just
: doesn't happen to appear on TV at the current time. Everything they said
: at the Forum made it very clear their primary (if not only) long-term
: goal is to get back on TV. I can understand that they would want to make
: the game as close to the eventual TV version as possible, so that when
: (if) producers ever come to watch, they can show them the actual product
: and not have to say, "Well, for the TV version, you'd have to imagine
: easier and more unpredictable questions, and lots of other changes too."
: So it is probably not in CBI's interest to change the game away from a
: TV style until it can get on TV--it will be easier to get on TV if they
: have a TV-ready game. However, you could make the point that they have
: to survive long enough to get on TV--and maybe that's where the problem
: lies if they keep alienating players.

If enough circuit schools decide to defect, and enough new schools enter
the circuit and do not affiliate, then total attendance WILL go down.

There is so much CBI can do ...

... Shawn Pickrell

[Alceste]

Matt Larson <mala...@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu> wrote:
>
>7) The Finals. Maybe playing the circuit in the Midwest has me living
>under a rock, but was there a particular reason for Rostrom's display at
>the end of the first match? I personally thought it was a very juvenile,
>childish thing to do. I mean - come on. NCT Final or not - it's College
>Bowl. I'm not entirely certain it should be taken so seriously as to jump

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Boy, this is so wrong that I just have to laugh.

While neither I (nor Mr Rostron himself) will deny that jumping up
was rude, his reasons for the "display" have been very much mis-
interpreted. Starting with the accusation that he was taking the
game too "seriously," I have to say that I can hardly think of anyone
else who holds CBI and its questions in more of the contempt they so
richly deserve than Brian Rostron, nor anyone who finds his own
national championship more meaningless.

When Brian got up and then slipped (not jumped) off the platform
and said "Justice" several times, this was not directed against any
individual or any team. What he was expressing was his feeling of
triumph over the dolts at CBI who were doing their best to give UVa
another chance not to win, but rather to lose the game that should
have been awarded to them outright.

Brian apologized to Harvard afterward, so they would know that he
hadn't meant to insult them; I hope everyone else out there will better
understand his actions and not be so quick to pass judgement on one
of the nicest guys in the game (and believe me, I've met a lot of
them).

>Matt Larson

Alice
after consulting with Brian. Ask him yourself.

--
Alice Chou - ac...@faraday.clas.virginia.edu

"It was usually damp and sticky for it wept a great deal."
--Edward Gorey, _The Beastly Baby_

[Eric S. Bell]

jqsm...@mindspring.com (James Quintong) blessed our newsgroup with
this bit of wittiness:

>Despite having Eric Bell, Oklahoma never seemed to be considered a
>factor before the tourney. After a 1-2 Friday, it seemed to hold true.
>Then, they went 9-0 Saturday, including the thriller against Chicago
>(which happened in my room). Hats off to Oklahoma for an amazing
>performance.

I appreciate the compliment, although, as usual, I insist that
anoybody who thinks that Oklahoma lives or dies by me has missed the
point. OU will have some serious rebuilding to do next year, even
with three starters back, as we export Louis Gill to Wisconsin-Madison
and Emily Moore (temporarily) to Russia for study abroad.

(I'm not sure if Louis is planning to keep playing or not; the last
I'd heard from him on the subject, he was not, but Stephen and I are
working on it. He'd better play; I've been trying to convince people
for years that Louis is one of the most underrated players in AC
today; now he has a chance to play out of my (and Dan Beshear's)
shadow and prove it and he's thinking about retiring. Aargh.)

Eric Bell

Eric Bell (eb...@ou.edu) Oklahoma Academic Team
http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Quad/9209 World Anti-Marriage League
"Computers are a passing fad on the way Eric on OKB/Avistar on IRC
to the inevitable global dominion of the Post-It note." -- L. Gill

[Tom Michael]

Joseph K Wright (wri...@pitt.edu) wrote:

{deletia}

: I actually thought the worst question of the

: finals (and pre-reading the second final in the moderators' room, I saw
: this question coming but could do nothing about it--it was bad but not
: wrong) was the "bacteria" tossup that cost Harvard game 2, and thus the
: match. With Harvard down about 20 inside the final minute, this question
: started getting read, and it was clearly neg bait with many possible
: answers--Jeff Johnson just happened to give the wrong one.

I can't comment on the actual question, since I didn't hear it. But I must
disagree with the principle the poster seems to have expressed. Buzzing in
when many possible answers abound is a risk a player takes.

The fictional ideal that a question must lead to a uniquely indentifiable
answer from the get go is very seldom achieved. It is a rare question
indeed that leads to a single answer without other possibilities from the
first phoneme, or even the first few words as the players hear them. Yet
every sound the moderator utters is a potential clue for the player, and
can only be understood in the context of what has been uttered before;
since a player cannot *know* (but can sometimes anticipate) to what answer
the question is leading.

From the outset a player is trying to reduce the Universe of All Possible
Answers into the One Correct Answer. And while some questions pin that
answer down quickly, others may take a while. Patience is a skill academic
competition players must learn. While it is not as important in the
overall scheme of things as pure knowledge, the reality of the game
situation makes patience one of the distinct skills of the Sport. I see
nothing wrong with occasionally providing questions that test some
specific skills more than others: calculation, spelling, inductive
reasoning, deductive reasoning, association, etc. are all skills that some
questions test more than others, and that some questions are deliberately
written to put a premium upon. I see nothing wrong the the concept that an
occasional toss-up can test the skill of patience.

Some College Bowl (tm) questions put a premium on patience; perhaps more
than I or the poster would like. But that is a matter of preference.
Although I agree with many of the other posts regarding flaws in what CBCI
does and writes, I feel the blanket dismissal of questions that test
patience that some authors seem to have is overly simplistic.

If a player, as Mr. Wright has stated, buzzed on a question that was
"clearly neg bait with many possible answers" then the player may have
had a poor buzz because of an incomplete focus on the question, may have
deliberately taken a risky buzz when many answers were still possible, or
may have inadvertently signalled and had to come up with something. In any
event, the player shouldn't have buzzed until the answer was pinned down
unless he was willing to risk the guess.

Tom Michael - Auburn University Montgomery
M.Ed. Candidate, Counseling & Development; Captain, Academic Competition Team
"How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity
of ducks" (Dorothy Sayers, _Gaudy Night_)

[George Pen-Wen Huang]

: One problem with CBI is that they _don't_trust_students_, in most cases.
: They have to get over the mentality that students are either (a) incompetent
: or (b) cheaters. Now, I know the legal arguments about having a "coach"
: at CBI tournaments, but CBI traditionally doesn't like to deal directly
: with students.

: Except that CBI is more likely to see the student activities administrator,

: not the player, as the customer.

These two points raise a question to me. Given that most of the regular
posters on this newsgroup are the people who make the buying decisions at
their respective schools, why aren't our comments taken more seriously?
I don't know of any schools where the CB is motivated entirely by the
administration saying "Oh yeah, let's pay $600 and send some of our
students to a regional tournament."

I would like to take a survey. How many teams showed up at each Regional
tournament again? In our Region 4, eight teams showed. Surely we can figure
out the economic situation from data at hand.

: Region IV had as many teams as usual, so perhaps it's an exception.

That may be so, but still only 8? Heck, we got more schools to show up for
our college tournament than that.

: More than this, they need to get rid of the little league, "let's be fair

: to everyone regardless of ability" attitude. Some people will continue to
: write and support misleading tossups BECAUSE it will hurt the better team
: and give the lesser team more of a chance.

I think fairness is fine, what isn't is vagueness.

: Has anyone ever done a study of CBI packs to see if they do have a
consistent
: category distribution?

I don't think category distribution is all that important to CBI. Nor do
I think it MUST be. We all know that in order to play CBI well, all we
have to do is read our weekly newsmagazines- that's where they get all
their questions from (saffron just jumps to mind). But they should be
used for inspiration, not as the question itself. Try playing on a CBI
packet from 1988 and see how well you do on it now. I threw out five
years' worth of packets last year b/c they were useless to us now.

: got involved 10.5 years ago. CBI does need to listen to players' concerns

: and change their product accordingly.

I just want to mention (again) that CBI says they're looking for a current
player to serve on some question committee. If you're interested and care
enough to put some time into it, drop them email. From the comments about
the forum, it sounds like we do have a lot of complaints and maybe this
will be one way of getting heard.

george

[Joseph K Wright]

I've edited out a few points I want to discuss, the rest have been
deleted.
(Stupid newsreader insists on more new text than old)

In article <5jitvs$c...@news.acns.nwu.edu>,

James Quintong <jqsm...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Matt Larson <mala...@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu> wrote:
>>1) There were misleading tossups. Go figure.
>What a surprise. I didn't catch as many as I would have expected, but
>they were still there.
>And as for one-part boni, I don't like them at all, either. The
>problem with too many of them is that they're just toss-ups with
>"harder" answers. Not much consistency with boni in general, either.

The misleading tossups were addressed in the forum (more on that below).

I personally don't have a problem with every single-part single-answer
bonus. In fact, the type of s-p s-a bonus you have cited is fine, IMO.
The type of s-p s-a bonus that is not fine is a 20- or 25-point tossup
that is not harder than the 10-point variety and which includes a bona
fide giveaway clue. If a s-p s-a bonus is harder than a tossup and does
not have a giveaway clue (and does not waste a lot of time on super-
obscure clues before getting to the reasonable ones), then it can be
a perfectly legitimate way of rewarding some depth of knowledge.

Of course, writing a good s-p s-a bonus may be the most challenging
type of question to write, because so many factors go into it being
any good. (And FWIW, while most of CBI's s-p s-a boni are not that
good, they would almost invariably be excellent tossups.)

>>6) The forum. Oh dear. First of all, let me say that many of the
>>questions from the crowd were very confrontational in the way they were
>>being asked - which isn't the way to solve problems.
>Would someone please give me more details about the forum. I got lost
>on the way to the hotel after the round robin and I just decided to
>drive back home. I am interested what other questions were asked at
>the forum.
>However, I would imagine the forum did not go so well after hearing
>CBI president Richard Reid's comments at the end of the tournament. He
>was talking about NAQT and ACF as these odd organizations that
>couldn't hold a candle to CBI. I could see the Virginia team cringing
>at some of his comments.

The forum started with Ron Loomis discussing the history of College Bowl
for about 10 minutes. Then, serving as moderator, he took down a list of
topics people wanted addressed. You can pretty much recreate the list of
10-12 topics if you know what people are interested in on this group
(HCASC, copyright issues, question quality, etc.).

I won't try to recreate the Forum blow-by-blow, but I think it is fair
to say no punches were pulled. (There's a reason I keep subconsciously
dropping in boxing metaphors.) Regarding copyright, they noted that
nothing currently going on circuit-wide has been hit with a lawsuit,
though the implication was that they are most concerned with NAQT. They
didn't want to talk copyright much, because their lawyers have told them
not to (understandable, I guess).

Some of the more inflammatory moments dealt with HCASC segregation. When
they elaborated the reasons HCASC schools have been left off the circuit,
they continually cited the same logistic nightmares involved in getting
ANY team onto the circuit, while somehow asserting that these concerns
are "different" for HBCUs. No one was buying it, and every dodge was
duly noted by someone in the audience. Finally, when it was clear that
this line was getting nowhere, we moved on.

Question quality was the final major topic. CBI made it very clear that
they are interested in hearing about bad questions and hearing player
concerns, but that some things (s-p s-a boni, vague tossups, non-
pyramidical tossups) are non-negotiable. One good point they made is that
when complaining to them about bad questions, it is best to cite some
examples so they can take a look themselves. I have compiled a by-no-
means exhaustive list of 20- and 25-point tossups from a few nationals
packs, for instance, and plan to send them in when I get a chance.

The single most important thing that came out of the Forum, I think, was
the revelation that CBI understands what we think makes a good question,
and they philosophically disagree that all questions should follow that
model. They continually expressed a desire to keep the game
"unpredictable", which most of us would call "unfair" or designed not to
reward being a better player. This disagreement is very directly related
to CBI's overriding goal: to get back on TV. It is this philosophy that
I anticipate will continue to drive away the best teams.

>>7) The Finals. Maybe playing the circuit in the Midwest has me living
>>under a rock, but was there a particular reason for Rostrom's display at
>>the end of the first match? I personally thought it was a very juvenile,
>>childish thing to do. I mean - come on. NCT Final or not - it's College
>>Bowl. I'm not entirely certain it should be taken so seriously as to jump
>>off a platform pointing at the other team in triumph after you've come out
>>on the right end of a protest.
>I agree with you about Rostron's display after winning the match. I
>suppose the saying "It's only a game" does hold true here. It was
>kinda funny to see him stumble off the stage while he was pointing at
>Harvard after that match.

It looked like some weird half-stumble, half-jump; I was waiting for him
to yell "sic semper tyrannis". It was quite a display, and had I been a
game official it would have gotten him at least a conduct warning if
not ejected. Taking the game seriously does not bother me at all; such
a strong act of obvious unsportsmanship, however, is very disturbing. I
especially felt sorry for John Harris, a true class act who appeared to
be very embarrassed over his teammate's over-reaction. I think it is
telling that not even his Virginia teammates have come on the newsgroup
to try to defend or even explain away his actions.

>
>As for the protest, I can't believe it took that much time to solve
>that one. Here's the lowdown on the protest:

I'm just glad the took the time to adjudicate it properly, which I
believe they did.

>
>>That would be about it. Good thing they did - got Herb Stempel to come
>>in. Of course...was that CBCI/ACUI, or was that Montclair State that got
>>him in? I'd like to find out, just because I'm curious.
>>Hee. He biffed "Marty" again.
>Montclair State brought in Herb Stempel. That was pretty cool to hear
>the scoop about the quiz show scandal from one of the primary
>characters. Stempel also watched a few matches before his appearance
>and was getting a bunch of questions along the way.
>Stempel did miss again on "Marty." Kudos (I guess) to Eric Tentarelli
>for coming up with that question.

FYI, Eric's question was: "What is the only film to win both Best Picture
and the Cannes Festival's Palm d'Or (sp)?"

I should also mention that Eric won a well-deserved Pat Moonen award for
sportsmanship, enthusiasm, and the like. He also pulled off a triple-
crown of coolness/excellence by being putting on a most impressive
performance in the All-Star game. CBI might not be the best format for
rewarding knowledge, but you'd never know it by looking at the amazing
list of all-stars: Yaphe, Margolis, Tentarelli, Sheahan, Johnson,
Staloff, Bell, and Rogers.

>
>Despite some of the problems over the weekend, I really did have a
>great time. I met a number of people I've read here on this group and
>finally saw some of these great teams in action. While listening to
>the questions, though, I wish I was on the other side of the table --
>playing, instead of officiating.

I'd have to agree on all counts.

[Joseph K Wright]

In article <5jmqbu$4...@news.jhu.edu>,

George Pen-Wen Huang <g_h...@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu> wrote:
>
>: One problem with CBI is that they _don't_trust_students_, in most cases.
>: They have to get over the mentality that students are either (a) incompetent
>: or (b) cheaters. Now, I know the legal arguments about having a "coach"
>: at CBI tournaments, but CBI traditionally doesn't like to deal directly
>: with students.
>: Except that CBI is more likely to see the student activities administrator,
>: not the player, as the customer.
>
>These two points raise a question to me. Given that most of the regular
>posters on this newsgroup are the people who make the buying decisions at
>their respective schools, why aren't our comments taken more seriously?
>I don't know of any schools where the CB is motivated entirely by the
>administration saying "Oh yeah, let's pay $600 and send some of our
>students to a regional tournament."

First of all, are comments aren't taken more seriously because active,
week-in-week-out players are not the CBI norm--once a year players are.

Also, the vast majority, I would bet, of participating schools are
motivated by exactly what you claim does not motivate them. Yes, it's
slightly more complex, but when dealing with CBI we must always remember
that active, student-run clubs are a loud minority. Most programs ARE
run by college union administrators, and so CBI is not entirely wrong
in focusing on them as customers.

Where CBI is short-sighted is that they see question quality as an issue
of what the top programs want vs. what the other programs want, with the
latter being the majority. I'd assert that the top programs care a lot
what the questions are like, while the other programs are oblivious to
question quality and would not be more or less happy with higher question
quality.

>
>I would like to take a survey. How many teams showed up at each Regional
>tournament again? In our Region 4, eight teams showed. Surely we can figure
>out the economic situation from data at hand.

Huh?! There were 8 teams in your bracket, George, but 17 overall.

>: More than this, they need to get rid of the little league, "let's be fair
>: to everyone regardless of ability" attitude. Some people will continue to
>: write and support misleading tossups BECAUSE it will hurt the better team
>: and give the lesser team more of a chance.
>
>I think fairness is fine, what isn't is vagueness.

It's the constant issue of fairness means equal opportunity or equal
outcome. At least in AC, the player consensus among those who care
is that questions should be equally accessible to all, but not equally
answerable by all. AC is a pure meritocracy in this view. CBI has a
more levelling, Harrison Bergeron-like approach.

[Mark Staloff]

For what it's worth, the question ran, "He gave $5 million to Stanford,
and $18 million to (*bzzt*) Har-", with Matt Caywood ringing on at that
point, He's a CS major, and claimed to know it off the Stanford clue--
whether one accepts that or not, it is important to remember that there
was the initial clue, and Harvard gets so many donations, two recently at
$70 million and $100 million, that none of the rest of us had any idea
where it was going.

How do you propose to correct this? Blatant university-specific questions
are one thing, but if we try and yank geogrpahy questions which favor one
area, that's a slippery slope... for example, in our match against
Oklahoma, one question read, "The <blank> and Raritan canal", and I rang
in immediately, because the Delaware and Raritan is a few minutes from my
mother's house... and that gave me a definite unfair advantage, because
there's no conceivable way anyone not from New Jersey could get that so
quickly, as the D&R isn't that significant. Should we yank those
questions? Should we yank any question which includes "This Yale
graduate...?" How about any question which mentions Thomas Jefferson?
Where do people believe we should draw the line?

Mark

[ad...@faraday.clas.virginia.edu]

In article <5jm47h$c6...@ha2.rdc1.md.home.com>,

spic...@cc1000469-a.twsn1.md.home.com (Shawn Pickrell) wrote:
>
> Perhaps. I think that players AND the audience would have more fun with
> direct, one-sentence questions. Yes, the infamous, "For 10 points, who
> wrote Paradise Lost?" Plenty of people know that's Milton. They can keep
> up with the game. You can adjust the difficulty level to prevent the
> questions from being total buzzer races. For example, you could ask,
>
> But a typical ACF-style toss-up about the man that would go like:
>
> "This British author was blind from age (??). He is the author of the
> Dunciad ... "
>
> (fill in blank -- I would know this from that) "Milton."
>
> "Correct."
>
> Now how many people outside of academic competition would know that? Not
> many. Who'd want to watch a game full of that? I want everyone to think
> about that for a second. Remember, AC should not be for a select few. It
> should be a truly mass-participation game.
>

I really do not understand what Shawn is saying here. Speaking purely as
an observer of academic competition, I have extremely little interest in
watching two teams buzz on "FAQTP, Who wrote Paradise Lost?" (Speaking
as a player, of course, I have zero interest in competing on such
questions.) I much prefer to watch top players buzz in on early clues
when you might have no idea how they knew that -- to me, the excitement
of an incredibly early buzz (not everyone buzzing in on the word
"Paradise," but someone buzzing right in on a clue that will be unknown
to most people) is much greater than the excitement of the speed race
won.

If you hear a tossup that begins "In his early work, _Windsor Forest_"
and somebody buzzes with "Pope," that (to me) is more thrilling than
"FAQTP, name the author of _The Rape of the Lock." The buzz resulting
from the second question is rather banal; the first reflects some
in-depth knowledge (which I, at least, find more interesting).

And as to this being a "mass-participation" game -- a tossup on Pope is
just as answerable if it begins with _Windsor Forest_ as if it goes
"FAQTP, etc." The answer is still Pope, and the giveaway clue is the
same. If you're talking about a "mass audience" that has never heard of
Pope, then we might as well skip this discussion and just concentrate on
pandering to the lowest common denominator of society; assuming this is
_academic_ competition, and some sort of knowledge is meant to be
involved, then we may assume that Pope is fair game and we might as well
write tossups on him that differentiate between players with significant
knowledge and those who have only a bare acquaintance with the subject.

[Kenny Peskin]

In article <5jm47h$c6...@ha2.rdc1.md.home.com>,
spic...@cc1000469-a.twsn1.md.home.com says...

>
>Joseph K Wright (wri...@pitt.edu) wrote:
>: In article <5jj913$c6...@ha2.rdc1.md.home.com>,
>: Shawn Pickrell <spic...@cc1000469-a.twsn1.md.home.com> wrote:
>
>: >I suggest that CBI do the following in order to re-establish itself:
>
>: Just FYI, one of the things that came out of the NCT Forum was that CBI
>: will respond to direct comments via phone, letter, email, etc., but
>: not to things thrown out on this newsgroup. So if you want to get their
>: attention, this isn't the way to go about doing it. But anyway...
>
>Where can I send e-mail, then? I'm not 100% familiar with their e-mail
>system; I do wish for them to at least address my concerns.

The CBI and ACU-I folks said at the forum that their addresses are posted on
the web page (http://www.collegebowl.com). The people to whom I would try
to direct comments are John Palmatier (CBI NCT Co-Director), Mary Oberembt
(CBI Vice-President), Richard Reid (CBI President; though he seems absent
from the day-to-day management because he is also a television producer),
and Frank Gencur (ACU-I College Bowl Committee Chairman).

>
>: >(1) Cut its prices to 1/3-1/2 of what they are now.
>
>: It's not going to happen, unless CBI can get a TV contract. This was
>: something I hadn't considered before, and give CBI credit for this out.
>: One of the benefits of getting CBI on TV would be a substantially lower
>: cost for schools to participate, since they would have other sources of
>: revenue.
>
>OK. So I think that we on the circuit ought to work really hard to see
>that CBI get on TV. Then, we can all see ourselves on TV, and more schools
>can play (since it'll cost less.)

One interesting piece of information that I discovered at the tournament was
that Richard Reid is a television producer. He and his brother are involved
in producing most of the televised rodeo on ESPN and TNN (as well as other
stuff that I cannot currently recall). So I think that CBI has the
prodution knowledge and network contacts neccessary to get College Bowl back
on the air. What they don't have is a sponsor. That is far more important
than anything else in getting College Bowl (or any other competition on the
air). ESPN2 shows the National Spelling Bee (sponsored by Scripps-Howard),
and PBS broadcasts (or used to broadcast) one of the major high school
academic championships (which are ssponsored by Panasonic and Texaco). BET
used to show the HCASC (sponsored by Honda). Without corporate sponsorship,
College Bowl will not get back on the air.

>
>: >(2) Actively move and pitch CBI to ACU-I members (and non-members). The
>: >lowered price certainly makes CBI more attractive to a new school. $200
or
>: >so can be had more easily than $600 or so. Heck, the SGA here at R-MC
would
>: >be willing to help fund *that*.
>
>: See above.
>
>If (1) and (2) are done enough, CBI will increase participation to cover
>for that lost revenue. Has quizbowl been actively sold to new schools,
other
>than the form CBI letter that goes out all over the country??
>

Somebody (I cannot remember if it was a player or a CBI/ACU-I rep) commented
that CBI cannot--by terms of its contract with ACU-I to execute an academic
tournament--try to recruit the non-ACUI schools into the College Bowl fold.
So schools like Harvard (which isn't an ACUI school) play College Bowl
because they seek out CBI, not because they got a sales pitch from CBI.
There are plenty of schools in major metro areas (like U of Cincinnati, I
believe) that are not affiliated with the ACU-I and CBI is not able to
recruit them.

[text deleted]

>There is so much CBI can do ...

One thing that was said at the Forum (and which I think deserves to be
repeated) is that ACU-I is revamping the committee that oversees the College
Bowl competition. As a part of the changes ACU-I wants a student/player to
become a member of the committee that develops and oversees the tournament
on all levels. Though you may not be a candidate because your program is a
non-CBI program, there are plenty of players who would do well inthis
capacity. You can email Frank Gencur (ACU-I committee chair) for
information.

---Kenny Peskin
Co-President, Cornell Academic Quiz Organization

[Adam Fagen]

t...@netcom.com (Tom Galloway) writes:

>Interesting. Looking at the rules on the CBI website, I note that protests
>can only be made at the end of a half. Thus, Harvard couldn't have known
>that there'd be a pending protest, and thus got messed over by doing the
>early buzz-in strategy. Based on my memory of a certain game in the 1989
>regionals, this has changed in the last few years. It'd seem now that for
>CBI games, the deliberate -5 in the last few seconds strategy is much more
>dangerous than one might think.

Interesting point. Waiting on "game reviews" until the end of the half
may make things run smotthly, but certainly affects strategy. In
addition, Clay's post was the first I ever heard about the protest
regarding the Exxon Valdez. One would think that all concerned would have
to be informed about what's going on.

--Adam
Harvard Coach

--
Adam Fagen \\ afa...@fas.harvard.edu
Harvard University GSAS // http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~afagen/

[Adam Fagen]

t...@netcom.com (Tom Galloway) writes:

>I'd agree with Clay's comment here. While I wouldn't have any problem with
>such a question being in intermural, or maybe even regional packets, for
>a national championship where the sixteen teams are known in advance,
>all questions should be written or edited such that no questions specific
>to any participating school are included, and I'd probably go as far to
>include major school rivals, and fairly geographic specific questions
>for the cities the schools are located in (i.e. name the mayors of
>Boston and Chicago).

A question: how far do you extend this? What about questions about
players' hometowns? What about questions about alumni from the school or
faculty members? Even if they don't mention the school? The point is
that it's very difficult to figure out what an advantage is.

And eliminating all references to 16 schools/cities might be somewhat
constricting, depending on who the teams are.

[Shawn J. Borisoff]

: These two points raise a question to me. Given that most of the regular

: posters on this newsgroup are the people who make the buying decisions at
: their respective schools, why aren't our comments taken more seriously?
: I don't know of any schools where the CB is motivated entirely by the
: administration saying "Oh yeah, let's pay $600 and send some of our
: students to a regional tournament."

: I would like to take a survey. How many teams showed up at each Regional

: tournament again? In our Region 4, eight teams showed. Surely we can figure
: out the economic situation from data at hand.

The situation in Region 3 was pretty bleak this year. I think it was 5
teams from last year did not show up this year, and they only had 6
schools in the tournament. The most notable deaffiliations as everyone
knows were Penn and Columbia.

: : got involved 10.5 years ago. CBI does need to listen to players' concerns

: : and change their product accordingly.

You are 100% correct on this issue. CBI does not care, though. If a
couple schools here and there deaffiliate, it doesn't really hurt them
that much. In my opinion, the only way that they would possibly listen
is if there was a sort of mass exodus, which I was surprised didn't
happen this year. There was a lot of talk behind the scenes between a
bunch of school, Penn included, regarding deaffiliation.

: I just want to mention (again) that CBI says they're looking for a current

: player to serve on some question committee. If you're interested and care
: enough to put some time into it, drop them email. From the comments about
: the forum, it sounds like we do have a lot of complaints and maybe this
: will be one way of getting heard.

This is just some sort of gesture on their part, in my opinion.
Unfortunately, they probably won't select any of the people that we would
all feel could do a good job, and they most likely wouldn't give the
person selected very much, if any say, in the way they do things. As
disheartening as this may sound, its most likely how things will work out.

Shawn

[George Pen-Wen Huang]

: can only be made at the end of a half. Thus, Harvard couldn't have known

: that there'd be a pending protest, and thus got messed over by doing the
: early buzz-in strategy. Based on my memory of a certain game in the 1989

This is true if you assume Harvard did not know that INC and Congress were
synonymous. Considering the collective intake of breath and disbelief
from the crowd, I am amazed if they didn't know the decision was wrong
and was going to be protested. Although an argument might be made that
they weren't looking at the score. The boards looked like they were at an
angle away from the players. All in all, I think most people were amazed
when Staloff buzzed in before time and then didn't give an answer, which I
think would have been accepted if correct and rendering the protest moot.

george

[Alceste]

On behalf of John Edwards, I bring you this message:

-----begin forwarded message-----

Where to begin? Well, I guess the "Forum" (aka a bunck of plants asking
meaningless questions with some substance thrown in) would be a good place
to start. BTW, this is going to be a long post.

I. CBI Forum

a) Interesting Fact: Did you know that it was the Vietnam War that drove
College Bowl off the air? Well, that was only one of the neat tidbits form
College Bowl 301: Advanced History, that you may have missed. To think, I
had thought the roots went all the way to the Civil War. I guess I was
mistaken.

b) HCASC schools: I was the only participant there from a HBCU and the topic
of HCASC came up. What did I learn, courtesy of Ron Loomis and the CBI
staff? HBCUs are administratively deficient, its students are not capable of
playing on the academic circuit for some "decades perhaps" (that was Mary
Oberempt), and that the school's relative poverty requires that it only play
in CBI-sanctioned events. First off, I was incredibly insulted by the
condescending, insulting, and unnecessary disparagement of HBCUs. Obviously
from what I gathered, the only schools with bureaucratic messes, low funds,
and circuit-inexperienced players are HBCUs, therefore they need special
"protection". This is a patently absurd and false conclusion. As Joe Wright
commented, CBI could offer no answer (and indeed, tried to duck it all
together) on the disparate treatment. CBI only showed me this weekend how
insensitive and misguided they are on insisting that HBCUs (varsity squads
of teams) only play in sanctioned tournments. As John Sheahan said, there is
no special magic in paying the fee that makes the tournament more accpetable
than an invitational event. But the bigger problem is that the sanction
means acknowledgement of the copyright...

c) Copyrights and other nonsense: I won't go into the legal arguments on why
I and many, many other knowledgeable people (including lawyers) feel the
copyright claim is bogus. CBI asserts that it has a copyright on the format
of academic competition. The issue could have been settled Friday: copyright
info is public domain, and anyone can get their hands on this stuff. So what
harm is there in showing us that they have the copyright? CBI doesn't even
need to reveal all info- just show us the copyright, and leave all other top
secret stuff alone. I even volunteered to look up the info and asked under
whose name the copyright was located. Basically, I was told to go to hell
(not in these words, but the effect was unmistakable). I plan on this
project soon, after exams are over. But I feel it will be a fruitless
search. I won't find anything probably (if you send for Circular #22 from
the Copyright Office- Searching the Status of a Copyright- you will be
frustrated in that a game format does not logically fit into any recognized
categories of copyrightable material). And when I announce I have not found
it, CBI will say I did not look in the right place. C'est la vie.
Richard Reid (who looks a lot like Marshall Applewhite for my tastes) said
it best when he said "College Bowl is an idea...". Yes, Richard, it is an
idea. And I can tell you that copyrights don't extend to ideas, but
expressions (I won't go into it, but if you read Nimmer on Copyright- a copy
of the material was given to Reid- you'll understand. And Eric Hillemann was
written a in-depth analysis of this issue which even CBI partisans have
given great weight to).

d) NAQT and ACF: Can CBI shut down the circuit? They said they won't, but
they hinted they could. It is inexcusable (and a probable violation of
Section 2 of the Sherman Act) to try to create such a monoploy. CBI said all
weekend that it was a business. But what business constantly ignores its
customers' demands? CBI has a different philosophy: the customer is always
wrong and we are right. And if CBI is a business, then I feel ACUI has a
duty to seek out other businesses to bid for its contract. If NAQT can
provide a similar, better, cheaper product, then ACUI should accept bids. To
do so is quite unbusinesslike. I hope maybe Frank Gencur (who seems
knowledgable and approachable) can open the gates of capitalism and bring
competition back to the game. After all, dollars are scarce.

Whew! Now on to other matters...

II. Univeristy of Virginia

Lots of comments are being made about UVA and some actions over the weekend.
I think that misses the point for several reasons. First, no one talks about
what they did was so bad. Yes, Brian got a little excited, but his reasons
for doing so were not aimed at Harvard, but at CBI, whom he felt (with good
reason) wanted Virginia to lose. His anger was directed solely at them. What
else did (some, not all) of the team did? Some said they were rude for not
answering inane buzzer checks, and others felt they were rude not to see
Herb Stempel. Call Miss Manners! Not answering buzzer checks! How rude!
Please...there are more important things to consider.

Some UVAers don't like CBI or its staff or its sycophants. Big deal- who
says they have to like them? No one has discussed that tournament staff was
rude and insulting to UVA behind their back. Staff have reported that
anti-UVA talk was prevalent in the backrooms- supposedly from people who
should at least attempt to be somewhat impartial as they are referees. But
no one critizes this. That's OK for CBI to do it behind closed doors when
others have the balls to do it in public. I hope all the Rostron bashing
will take notice of CBI's unprofessional attitude, but unfortunately, it was
kept well hidden and only some leaks have brought it to light.

The most interesting event was the choice for the moderator for the first
game. This is a moderator UVA strongly said they did not want; not because
of his ability, but because of his clear anti-UVA bias which the team felt
he had. One may disagree with the sentiment and maybe he actually has no
animus (although one could feel the disappointment from him when UVA won the
first game) against the team, but UVA's wishes should have been honored. It
was a telling moment when it was denied.

I won't talk about the protest adjudication. It seems to me the question was
flawed (shocker!), and perhaps a new bonus should have been given. Why it
took almost twently minutes to give a rather strange ruling is beyond me.
Although I must admit I learned one thing- being the citizen of any country
makes you an authority of its entire political history. The joys of
citizenship.

III. The Questions

This is long, so I won't say more right now. Although I must say this...
If you think a 25-point bonus in which the answer is "free lunch" in which
you are given Milton Friedman and "there ain't no such thing as..." is an OK
question, then you are out to lunch. Same goes to the 25-point Endymion
bonus (one part), the ridiculously easy 30-20-10s (lots), the Vivaldi
question ("Also known as the Red Priest..."), and the wonderfully misleading
antimony/Sb toss-up. I don't have time to write on all the disasters.

Overall, congrats to UVA and Harvard for two great games. But this past
weekend showed me why CBI is really heading on its way to becoming the
dinosaur of academic competition.

John

ps- Isn't "Image is Nothing", the CBI motto on their sweatshirts,
trademarked by Sprite? It's even the same font, for God's sake!

***************************************************************************
John Edwards
Howard University School of Law, Class of 1998
University of Chicago, Class of 1995

"The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people,
so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives"- Walker Percy
***************************************************************************

-----end forwarded message-----

[Joseph K Wright]

In article <5jm47h$c6...@ha2.rdc1.md.home.com>,

Shawn Pickrell <spic...@cc1000469-a.twsn1.md.home.com> wrote:
>
>Now how many people outside of academic competition would know that? Not
>many. Who'd want to watch a game full of that? I want everyone to think
>about that for a second. Remember, AC should not be for a select few. It

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>should be a truly mass-participation game.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Virtually all arguments regarding AC come down to one's position on this
statement, which I disagree with fairly strongly. A VERY small percentage
of people could play even CBI IM packets (the easiest packets I know of)
with any degree of success. I note that questions starting, "Everyone
know that..." have all but disappeared, and I would like to think that
this is partially because people realized that maybe 1-2% of the American
(let alone world) population would have known that original fact.

Even the true bottom feeders at invitational tournaments are VASTLY
more knowledgeable about academic and other trivia than the average
college student, let alone the average person. AC, done right, will
never have very much appeal to people who aren't good players or are
somehow involved in the game otherwise, and any attempt to make AC
widely appealing will either make the questions insulting or unfair
to the players, and will still probably not make for true mass appeal.
Even J! is only appealing to a certain sliver of the population; most
people watch it and wonder how those people could ever get so smart.
If AC were ever to be back on TV, it would have to be cleverly target
marketed to the J! crowd, or even a smaller subset of that crowd.

[George Pen-Wen Huang]

: >4) Some moderators were quite good. Others made mistakes. One mistake
: Some of the protests and protest adjudications were rather odd. There

: was a lot of giving the team a bonus or tossup off the clock to solve
: protests instead of deciding one way or the other on a question.

Still one question: Where was Pat Matthews? An experienced moderator
who practically begged them to let him help out and they turned him away?
I have to say, he seriously wants to make an effort to aid the circuit by
helping CBI out (sending them a list of incorrect tossups for regionals
for example) and I am at a loss to explain why they continually refuse
him. The "He's affiliated with NAQT" excuse just does not apply; it's not
like he could sabotage them or something. After all, they're looking for a
player to serve on a committee for them and he's already doing some work
on the topic.
As an aside, I must say that all of the moderators I saw were
great. Yes, there were some slipups and some mistakes, but along the lines
of 'oops' rather than consistently poor reading style such as mumbling or
going slowly or being unintelligible. I had some reservations at
Regionals, but only one at NCT. In one room after a mistake that ended up
penalizing a team, the judge (Mary) interrupted a couple times later when
words were misread. I appreciated her effort in doing that.
I noticed a lot of discretion in protest adjudication as well. For
example, on a protest where the judge had read the word "puppet" instead
of "muppet" which turned out to be an answer, the choice was given to the
other team to hear a new bonus or just take away the affected points. The
other team chose to lost the affected points with the proviso that if they
lost by that number, they wanted a 'reprotest' because they said "we would
have gotten it anyways." Thankfully it didn't come to that.

: Stempel did miss again on "Marty." Kudos (I guess) to Eric Tentarelli

I hope Mr. Stempel took it in good humor; at the time I had thought it
was in bad taste. Though in retrospect I don't worry about it too much
since he threw it the first time.

: Despite having Eric Bell, Oklahoma never seemed to be considered a

: factor before the tourney. After a 1-2 Friday, it seemed to hold true.

Hah. We played them Friday night (we're their win) and I was quite
worried when we were up by 100 pts at the half. Then they played to my
expectations and shut us out for the second half.

george

[Doug O'Neal]

In article <5jmqbu$4...@news.jhu.edu> g_h...@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (George Pen-Wen Huang) writes:

> These two points raise a question to me. Given that most of the regular
> posters on this newsgroup are the people who make the buying decisions at
> their respective schools, why aren't our comments taken more seriously?
> I don't know of any schools where the CB is motivated entirely by the
> administration saying "Oh yeah, let's pay $600 and send some of our
> students to a regional tournament."

Actually, there are plenty of such schools. They tend to be smaller, often
once-a-year programs who don't send teams to ACF's or a lot of
invitationals. But at a lot of schools, the administration buys the
questions, runs a campus tournament, and sends the winning team to
regionals. On this newsgroup there have been plenty of stories told of
student organizations trying (sometimes successfully, often not) to wrest
control of the campus CB organization from such administrations. At your
school and mine, the students may make the decisions, but at the Cow Creek
States of the world, it's the student activities folks.

> I would like to take a survey. How many teams showed up at each Regional
> tournament again? In our Region 4, eight teams showed. Surely we can figure> out the economic situation from data at hand.

Were you at the same Region 4 tournament I was? Weren't there more like
eighteen?

> I just want to mention (again) that CBI says they're looking for a current
> player to serve on some question committee. If you're interested and care
> enough to put some time into it, drop them email.

If the "you" refers to me, Doug O'Neal, I have to say that I don't really
care enough about CBI any more to do this. Nor will I have the time,
being that I'm moving on to the postdoc realm (in Colorado, no less, not
exactly a quiz-bowl hotbed). But if the "you" is generic, and if someone
else is interested, go for it.

Doug

[Adam Fagen]

sta...@fas.harvard.edu (Mark Staloff) writes:

>How do you propose to correct this? Blatant university-specific questions
>are one thing, but if we try and yank geogrpahy questions which favor one
>area, that's a slippery slope... for example, in our match against
>Oklahoma, one question read, "The <blank> and Raritan canal", and I rang
>in immediately, because the Delaware and Raritan is a few minutes from my
>mother's house... and that gave me a definite unfair advantage, because
>there's no conceivable way anyone not from New Jersey could get that so
>quickly, as the D&R isn't that significant. Should we yank those
>questions? Should we yank any question which includes "This Yale
>graduate...?" How about any question which mentions Thomas Jefferson?
>Where do people believe we should draw the line?

And we almost got a question about the musical "Oklahoma!" against
Oklahoma. Of course, that was the wrong answer, but things like that can
happen to.

[Robert Craig Harman]

Doug O'Neal wrote:

> spic...@cc1000469-a.twsn1.md.home.com (Shawn Pickrell) writes:
> > CBI, are you listening? If not to me, then to the sounds of schools
> > not coming in (UMBC, Loyola, us) or to schools going away
> > (Virginia, Yale, Penn, etc., etc.??) I've mentioned 6 schools right
> > there. That's $3,600 OF LOST REVENUE TO YOU. Not to mention other
> > schools.
>

> Possibly add Penn State to that list ... nothing is official yet,
> and I'm not speaking on behalf of our quiz bowl organization.

Add BYU to the list. Again, it's not official yet, but we've already
discussed it as a team and paying only 1/2 of what CBI asks to get NAQT
IM packets should be an easy one to pass by the honors/gen.ed. deans.

That's $4800. Are you listening, CBI?

--
Robert Craig Harman En France, appelez 01 34 80 04 83 pour
BYU Chemical Engineering recevoir un Livre de Mormon gratuit...
Master's Candidate
LDS France Paris Mission http://www.et.byu.edu/~harmanr/mission.html

[George Pen-Wen Huang]

: Correct. In that case, I think that top programs ought to adopt a more

: "play and have fun" mentality. I don't think that there was much doubt

I would probably agree with this sentiment more if I didn't pay so much
for the questions.

: : CBI made it very clear in the NCT Forum that they conceive the game very

: : differently than the players in top programs do. They first said 50-65%

Having missed the Forum, I would say that this is a good bet as to why
we perceive the questions as poorly written. On the other hand, this also
leaves open the question of why CBI would prefer to keep finding new
customers rather than trying to keep happy the ones they already have.
Frankly, the only reason we played this year was b/c we went to Natls last
year and the school picked up the airfare/hotel. In our IMs, we don't use
CBI, we use questions that were written for high school tournaments by CB
players.

: about that for a second. Remember, AC should not be for a select few. It

: should be a truly mass-participation game.

This comment I don't agree with. There's a reason the A stands for
academic. I would agree though with the sentiment and realization that
CBI can best make money by being accessible to a wider audience, which in
essence boils to a "dumbing-down" of the questions/answers. I will be the
first to say I think ACF went a bit too far in the Academic area; I find
it very hard and not nearly as enjoyable as say CBI could be with better
writing and/or just even bonus values all the way through.
One thing to say is that It's Academic here in Maryland has been around
and ON TELEVISION for 25 years and it's more in line with our thinking
than CBI is (James Rogers and Andrew Yaphe being notable participants I
suppose). A lesson to be learned here?

: I also predict, if I can get my way after graduation, the rise of several

: programs that will choose not to affiliate with CBI. They may work to keep

: If enough circuit schools decide to defect, and enough new schools enter

: the circuit and do not affiliate, then total attendance WILL go down.

Just on a side note, I haven't seen that many new circuit schools come
out; I think RMC might be the only one I know of in the years I've been at
JHU. The easiest way for new schools to join is probably CBI-- we all
know writing questions is probably the most difficult part of being a CB
member and colleges looking to start one up will probably have heard of
them thru ACU-I. I certainly know that had I come to JHU and one did not
exist, I wouldn't have started it (that's a LOT of work).
Perhaps one other thing we should be advocating is that NAQT compile a
list of smaller schools and start sending informational packets to them.
If the school has a choice of 10 packets for $600 or 10 packets for $150,
which do you think they'll choose? Then the people starting off will
already have a better idea of what people at top programs prefer. We
certainly know Pat and Co. will not make the game easier just to get on
TV.

[Peter McCorquodale]

In article <5jmqbu$4...@news.jhu.edu>,
George Pen-Wen Huang <g_h...@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu> wrote:

[...]

>used for inspiration, not as the question itself. Try playing on a CBI
>packet from 1988 and see how well you do on it now. I threw out five
>years' worth of packets last year b/c they were useless to us now.

You shouldn't be able to find a CBI packet from 1988.
One of the Rules Governing Participation in College Bowl
(see http://www.collegebowl.com/campus/rulesgovpart.html) is:

8. In order to ensure that College Bowl questions are current, game
packets may not be retained by participating schools for more than
five years. Outdated game packets must be destroyed.

I was puzzled by this wording the first time I read it, but if you read
the rules closely you'll find that there is *no* requirement for a campus
tournament to use only the current year's IM packets.

Peter

[Timothy J Young]

Matt Larson (mala...@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu) wrote:
: 1) There were misleading tossups. Go figure.

So, what else is new? :) or :( , YMMV.
(Life is a tragedy for those who feel, a comedy for those who think.)

: 2) I have yet to meet anyone who actually enjoys one part bonus questions,
: yet Mary Oberampt (and I'm sure I misspelled that) made it clear that they
: would remain a part of the game...even though none of the players want
: them...but that's neither here nor there...

Yeah, you misspelled it. I think it's "Obrembt," but that's probably
wrong too.

The one part bonus. Blech!

: 4) Some moderators were quite good. Others made mistakes. One mistake

: helped us lose a match. Taking nothing away from the team which beat us
: in that match, the way the protest was settled annoyed me. It was the
: tossup with the answer of Mozambique...and in the end, rather than saying
: "on the Indian Ocean", the moderator said "in the Indian Ocean". They
: rang in and said Madagascar. They protested at half time, and the
: decision was to give them a tossup off the clock, and then a bonus.
: Suddenly, we were being penalized for the moderator's mistake. Woo hoo.
: Go CBI.

I'd need some context before a judgment call like that one. What else was
read before and what was after the question? I'd guess that they should
get the -5 penalty, as you said, but perhaps the question was sufficiently
ambiguous as to justify what CBI did in this case.

: 5) Should packets be read out of order at a tournament as "important" as
: the CBI NCT?

Generally, whatever else you can say about CBI packs, they are generally
fungible. One is usually as good (and/or as bad) as another.

: 6) The forum. Oh dear. First of all, let me say that many of the

: questions from the crowd were very confrontational in the way they were

: being asked - which isn't the way to solve problems.

True. Lord knows how nasty some of us are to CBI when we are having
private conversations or on some of our websites (e.g. Maryland), but
some civility is probably in order as an invitee to a forum they offered
to host.

: HOWEVER - did the
: CBI people actually answer a question about their relationship with ACF or
: NAQT, aside from saying they had no business relation with them? And did
: they actually answer any questions about copyright issues, aside from
: claiming a copyright on the rules of the game? No. My favorite point was
: Johnathan Edwards suggesting he could go down to the Library of Congress
: and look up the copyright. He asked what name the copyright to the rules
: of the game was listed under. And did that answer him? Of course not.

If CBI really wants to make what just about everyone here thinks is a
bogus claim of copyright/trademark infringment (though I suppose it's
possible that judges who know nothing about AC might not think so,)
now that CBI NCTs are out of the way and there was no mass walkout/ugly
incident that may well have happened had CBI admitted to even the
possiblity of future legal action against ACF, NAQT, or anyone else on a
claim related to the "intellectual property" of their "format." (Almost
entirely speculation on my part, BTW.)

Indeed, hanging the threat of lawsuits over another party's head may
itself be actionable in some circumstances. (But that's for another time,
another thread.)

: 7) The Finals. Maybe playing the circuit in the Midwest has me living

: under a rock, but was there a particular reason for Rostrom's display at
: the end of the first match? I personally thought it was a very juvenile,
: childish thing to do. I mean - come on. NCT Final or not - it's College
: Bowl.

Well, there's the whole Maryland/Virginia/ACF crowd's various beefs with
Jim Bales. I don't really understand them.

: I'm not entirely certain it should be taken so seriously as to jump

: off a platform pointing at the other team in triumph after you've come out
: on the right end of a protest.

There are some things you just shouldn't do. This is one of them. Most of
us know that many players (incl. yours truly) can get worked up during
matches. This goes beyond getting worked up, and crosses the line into
poor sportsmanship. (I wasn't there, but feel comfortable saying this
based on the observations of no fewer than four people of this
occurrence, some in private e-mail, others on a.c.c-b.)

: 7a) The protest. They should have bloody well just taken 2 minutes, come
: back, said "INC is correct" and given the match to Virginia. What an
: absolutely horrible way to settle a protest (in my opinion). In the end,
: Virginia got the replacement bonus part, and the championship, so it
: turned out the same way, but c'mon.

Actually, one could make the case that INC isn't really a "political
party" per se, but that point is probably too technical, since it seems
clear what the question was looking for.

: Matt Larson
: mala...@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu | http://www.leepfrog.com/~brog/matt.html
: Matt's Latest Favorite Dead World Leader...
: Aethelred the Unready

--
| Tim Young (tjy...@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu) Red Sox o-Meter : |
| GWU Law School '99 :) |
| Dartmouth College '96 |
| "I feel the need...the need for expeditious velocity!" - The Brain |

[Matthew Colvin]

I want to congratulate Virginia on winning CBI Nationals and on dominating
the ACF invitationals (Terrapin, Tech's MLK) and ACF Nationals this year.
I also want to congratulate them for finally turning their backs on the
farce that is CBI, and joining the ranks of GaTech, Tennessee, Maryland,
Berkeley, and Illinois and refusing to lend their prestige to the Company.
Now, if only a few more schools (especially Chicago and Harvard) would make
the same move, the CBI NCT would really look like the minor-league event
that it already is in the minds of academic competitors around the country.

Matt

[Kenny Peskin]

In article <ONEAL.97A...@aloha.astro.psu.edu>, on...@astro.psu.edu
says...

>
>In article <5jmqbu$4...@news.jhu.edu> g_h...@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (George
Pen-Wen Huang) writes:
>
>> These two points raise a question to me. Given that most of the
regular
>> posters on this newsgroup are the people who make the buying decisions
at
>> their respective schools, why aren't our comments taken more seriously?
>> I don't know of any schools where the CB is motivated entirely by the
>> administration saying "Oh yeah, let's pay $600 and send some of our
>> students to a regional tournament."
>
> Actually, there are plenty of such schools. They tend to be smaller,
often
> once-a-year programs who don't send teams to ACF's or a lot of
> invitationals. But at a lot of schools, the administration buys the
> questions, runs a campus tournament, and sends the winning team to
> regionals. On this newsgroup there have been plenty of stories told of
> student organizations trying (sometimes successfully, often not) to wrest
> control of the campus CB organization from such administrations. At your
> school and mine, the students may make the decisions, but at the Cow Creek
> States of the world, it's the student activities folks.
>

Even here at Cornell, the student activities folks run the campus
tournament. Over the past few years, they have fiercely defended their turf
from Richard Dunlap's, Dwight Kidder's, and my own efforts to try and advise
them on possible improvements (although they do seem to be softening).

As for Region 2, I don't think that there is a single school (with the
possible exception of Queens) at which the students run the CBI program.
Our region is exclusively ACUI and student administrator run. And it has
been quite well run over the two years I have participated in the tournament
(though it has the highest cost of any Regional).

---Kenny Peskin

[Mike Zarren]

In article <5jnpba$oc0$1...@news.fas.harvard.edu>, sta...@fas.harvard.edu
(Mark Staloff) wrote:

> Mark Staloff (sta...@fas.harvard.edu) wrote:
> : quickly, as the D&R isn't that significant. Should we yank those

> : questions? Should we yank any question which includes "This Yale
> : graduate...?" How about any question which mentions Thomas Jefferson?
> : Where do people believe we should draw the line?
>

> Right, this sounds like I'm hysterically trying to defend a question which
> begins "this Harvard graduate", and I'm not. :)
>
> It's an open question. Where do we draw the line?

I tend to err on the side of leniency towards this sort of thing. Current
events always affect _someone_. I am a Red Sox fan, and I follow the Sox
even while I'm in Chicago. Is it then unfair to write a questions on
anything to do with the Red Sox if you know I'm going to be at the
tourney? No.

I think the only time it is unfair to write a question on some relevant
event is when you've had discussions/been talking about the event with
people on a team who are going to be playing on the questions. I would
also lean away from writing questions on one's own school if you're
sending more than one team to a tourney, as that could lead to charges of
favoritism.

Many people here at the U of C know that Robert Lucas won the 1996 Nobel
in Econ, but I don't think it would be unfair to other teams to write a
question on Lucas that described his macroeconomic theory (though it might
be a difficult question). Similarly, Carl Sagan may be associated with
Cornell, and thus people there might know more about him than people
elsewhere, but it's not unfair to write a question on him, especially if
you include stuff from his books instead of from his former street
address.

If you're not including stuff in the question which _everyone_ at a
particular university would know but _few others_ would know, it seems to
me that the question is fair game. I didn't think that the Harvard
question was blatantly unfair, though it's unfortunate that it could have
had an effect on the winner of a national championship.

This particular question (on Bill Gates) certainly could have been written
without including the info on Harvard, and it probably should have been,
for reasons of fairness. However, in general, questions which require
giving some sort of regional/school specific knowledge should still be
written unless there is so much bias towards people from that place/school
that there's no chance of others getting the question first.

-Mike

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Mike Zarren - mi...@tiac.net
Official Boot, University of Chicago College Bowl Team
1997 NAQT Champions
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

[andy tin-an wang]

>
> What I have a harder time understanding is when he was jumping
> up and down, pointing at Jeff, and saying, "C'mon, Johnson...
> you want a piece of me? Right now!"
I'm sorry but when I read this, I thought it was funnier then that 'top
ten men of the midwest' list . I nearly died laughing. We all know that
being a good sportsman is admireable and all that and that this behavior is
rude and all but, come on people, admit it, a taunting like this is funny
to read about and think about.
I am totally unqualified to give anyone a lecture on good
sportmenship, so I will give my own opinion (though you may think it
slightly twisted): I respect good players and good teams and fear them,
players like Tom Waters, John Sheahan, Andrew Yaphe, Jeff Johnson, James
Anderson,Rob Hentzel, and teams like Maryland and Georgia Tech. These
and others I failed to mention are acknowledged ass-whippers, they can
take a average player like myself and in the words of John Sheahan at
1996's Minnesota Deep Bench (as I said to him before a game ,"It will be an
honor to be bitch-slapped by you sir."), he said,"At Chicago, we call it
beating the five dollar ho." (BTW, he beat us like a five dollar ho, some
thing like 350-120). Anyway, my point is that hatred of an opponent and
taunting of an opponent is reserved to a good opponent. No one hates,
fears or taunts a patsy team with no chance of winning. You taunt a Jeff
Johnson, a Tom Waters, a Andrew Yaphe or a John Sheahan, because you know
that 4 out of 5 time they can beat your ass.
In that light, what the Virginia player did in my opinion was
understandable, something that should be discouraged, but still
tolerated. Of course one should look at the reaction of the taunted as well:
at Virginia's 1997 Wahoo War of the Minds tournament in the match for
third place between Illinois 'A' and Chicago 'A'(John Sheahan by
himself), when Mr. Sheahan got a science bonus, our Alex Corlett started
laughing and pointed at Mr. Sheahan and tauntingly said ,"You got a
science bonus"(Mr. Sheahan not being an acknowledged science expert, I
think zeroed the bonus). And then I negged on a tossup whose answer was
'Gordius' and it was all left to Mr. Sheahan, and I taunted him during
the giveaway part which mentioned 'a knot named after this person' by
saying,"Hey Sheahan, it rhymes with 'Bordian'". Mr. Sheahan proceeded to
answer with 'Gordian' and did not get ten points. Anyhow, Mr. Sheahan
took the tauntings like a gentleman and went on to beat our ass at ACF
Nationals.
Correct me if I am wrong but I think good players can see the twisted
logic of taunting. Only good feared players get taunted.
Andy Wang
speaking as a regular player and not as
president of the UIUC ABT

[Adam Fagen]

ac...@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU (Alceste) writes:

>When Brian got up and then slipped (not jumped) off the platform
>and said "Justice" several times, this was not directed against any
>individual or any team.

Even though he was clearly pointing at another team?

While I have no idea what Mr. Rostrom's motives or intents were, there was
certainly a strong appearance of bad sportsmanship and taunting.

And what Mark said.

[jpg...@students.uiuc.edu]

On Thu, 24 Apr 1997 09:44:15 -0600, Robert Craig Harman
<pa...@byu.edu> wrote:

>Doug O'Neal wrote:
>> spic...@cc1000469-a.twsn1.md.home.com (Shawn Pickrell) writes:
>> > CBI, are you listening? If not to me, then to the sounds of schools
>> > not coming in (UMBC, Loyola, us) or to schools going away
>> > (Virginia, Yale, Penn, etc., etc.??) I've mentioned 6 schools right
>> > there. That's $3,600 OF LOST REVENUE TO YOU. Not to mention other
>> > schools.
>>
>> Possibly add Penn State to that list ... nothing is official yet,
>> and I'm not speaking on behalf of our quiz bowl organization.
>
>Add BYU to the list. Again, it's not official yet, but we've already
>discussed it as a team and paying only 1/2 of what CBI asks to get NAQT
>IM packets should be an easy one to pass by the honors/gen.ed. deans.
>
>That's $4800. Are you listening, CBI?

Just a small correction here. The BYU intramural program usually
consumed 20-30 packets each year, rather than the 10 packet minimum.
At $50-$65 per packet, this is not a small chunk of change. CBI
should realize that BYU deaffiliating would be the financial
equivalent of two or three other schools deaffiliating.

And it's way overdue, if you ask me...

Jonathan Green

[Adam Fagen]

phil_...@cmcsmart.com (Phil Groce) writes:

>ahead of its nearest competitor in schools affiliated. Furthermore,
>if they're selling clients on their ability to run tournaments (or
>tournament-like events), it doesn't much matter if Harvard plays
>Virginia or Hampden-Sydney plays UC-Santa Cruz (no offense to either).
>What matters is the entertainment value and smoothness of the
>tournament, and even Andrew says they had that in spades.

One comment on this. This argument makes sense for purely economic reason
with the current set up of CBI. But CBI made it clear at the forum that
their number one priority is getting the game back on TV. That's where
the real money and publicity are. TV motivations are behind some of the
conscious decisions about question types. But it seems that CBI needs
"name" teams in order to have a hope of getting on TV. Even though plenty
of schools would play an entertaining game, I don't know how much market
there would be for some of the no-name, once-a-year schools. For whatever
it's worth, having schools with fan followings is of importance to getting
back on TV.

[George Pen-Wen Huang]

: in CBI-sanctioned events. First off, I was incredibly insulted by the

: condescending, insulting, and unnecessary disparagement of HBCUs. Obviously

Having missed the forum, it sounds as if this topic dealt mainly with why
they're in a separate category from the rest of us? What I would say is
that JHU is very close to Morgan State and Coppin State, and I believe
both of them are HSASC members. Perhaps we should make an effort to
invite them into our circuit; I certainly can't imagine any reasons not
to.

: whose name the copyright was located. Basically, I was told to go to hell
: project soon, after exams are over. But I feel it will be a fruitless

: search. I won't find anything probably (if you send for Circular #22 from
: the Copyright Office- Searching the Status of a Copyright- you will be

You might want to try http://patent.womplex.ibm.com/. IBM has a contract
to eventually put all patents online and it allows you to search on
keyword. I believe it only goes back to 1971 though.

: d) NAQT and ACF: Can CBI shut down the circuit? They said they won't, but

: they hinted they could. It is inexcusable (and a probable violation of
: Section 2 of the Sherman Act) to try to create such a monoploy. CBI said all

Well, if not shut down, probably try and get royalties from them.
Although this would at least tell us the copyright, right? I'm of the
opinion that if they haven't already, they probably won't.

: else did (some, not all) of the team did? Some said they were rude for not

: answering inane buzzer checks, and others felt they were rude not to see
: Herb Stempel. Call Miss Manners! Not answering buzzer checks! How rude!
: Please...there are more important things to consider.

That's for sure. I slept thru Herb and only woke up at the end when he
was playing people. Hey, if it doesn't interest you it doesn't interest
you.

: rude and insulting to UVA behind their back. Staff have reported that

: anti-UVA talk was prevalent in the backrooms- supposedly from people who

I'm willing to bet this was because they've been in the finals for how
many years in a row now? and they didn't like the "predictability". Or
perhaps it was because UVa showed the clear contempt they had for CBI.
Let's face it, no one wants to give a prize to someone who doesn't want
it. I can sympathize with them at least.

: he had. One may disagree with the sentiment and maybe he actually has no

: animus (although one could feel the disappointment from him when UVA won the
: first game) against the team, but UVA's wishes should have been honored. It
: was a telling moment when it was denied.

I disagree with the sentiment. I don't know if they always ask the teams
which moderators they'd like, but it seems that if one team objects, find
another one. There were certainly plenty of them there.

george

[Patrick G. Matthews]

George Pen-Wen Huang wrote:

> : in CBI-sanctioned events. First off, I was incredibly

> : insulted by the condescending, insulting, and unnecessary
> : disparagement of HBCUs. Obviously

> Having missed the forum, it sounds as if this topic dealt

> mainly with why they're in a separate category from the rest
> of us? What I would say is that JHU is very close to Morgan
> State and Coppin State, and I believe both of them are HSASC
> members. Perhaps we should make an effort to invite them
> into our circuit; I certainly can't imagine any reasons not
> to.

I dare say that almost every HCASC participant from 1996-97 is
in close proximity to an invitational circuit:

ALABAMA (7)
Alabama A&M
Alabama State
Miles College
Oakwood College
Stillman College
Talladega College
Tuskegee

ARKANSAS (2)
Arkansas-Pine Bluff
Philander Smith College

DELAWARE (1)
Delaware State

FLORIDA (2)
Bethune-Cookman College
Florida A&M

GEORGIA (7)
Albany State
Clark Atlanta University
Fort Valley State
Morehouse College
Morris Brown College
Paine College
Savannah State

KENTUCKY (1)
Kentucky State

LOUISIANA (5)
Dillard University
Grambling State
Southern-Baton Rouge
Southern-New Orleans
Xavier (New Orleans)

MARYLAND (5)
Bowie State
Coppin State
Maryland-Eastern Shore
Morgan State
Sojourner-Douglass College

MISSISSIPPI (5)
Alcorn State
Jackson State
Mississippi Valley State
Rust College
Tougaloo College

MISSOURI (2)
Harris-Stowe State College
Lincoln University (MO)

NORTH CAROLINA (10)
Barber-Scotia College
Elizabeth City State
Fayetteville State
Johnson C. Smith
Livingstone College
North Carolina A&T
North Carolina Central
St. Augustine's College
Shaw
Winston-Salem State

OHIO (2)
Central State University
Wilburforce

OKLAHOMA (1)
Langston University

PENNSYLVANIA (2)
Cheyney University
Lincoln University (PA)

SOUTH CAROLINA (5)
Benedict College
Claflin College
Morris College
South Carolina State
Voorhees College

TENNESSEE (5)
Fisk University
Knoxville College
Lane College
LeMoyne-Owen College
Tennessee State

TEXAS (6)
Huston-Tillotson College
Jarvis Christian College
Prairie View A&M
Texas College
Texas Southern
Wiley College

VIRGINIA (5)
Hampton University
Norfolk State
St. Paul's College
Virginia State
Virginia Union

WASHINGTON, DC (2)
District of Columbia, Univ. of
Howard

WEST VIRGINIA (1)
West Virginia State College

--
Patrick G. Matthews pat...@mraintl.com
Analyst voice 215.772.9748
MRA International fax 215.772.9716
Opinions expressed are my own, not necessarily those of my employer

[Doug O'Neal]

In article <Pine.A41.3.95.970425...@red.weeg.uiowa.edu> Matt Larson <mala...@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu> writes:

> I probably should have said this sooner, but I can certainly understand
> UVa's frustration with CBI.
> This was something I stumbled on when before the first match of the final,
> someone leaned towards me and said, "the moderator wants Virginia to
> lose...pass it on..."
> Which is absolutely inexcusable on the part of CBI. And to hear that it
> was a moderator that UVa specifically said they didn't want...

Waaait ... there are some fairly serious accusations being passed around
here. First racism (people have been fired from their jobs for saying things
less offensive than "historically black schools couldn't compete on the
regular circuit"), now favortism among officials. It seems to me that
perhaps someone who was present should write up these accounts, in as
impartial way as possible, and including eyewitness (or earwitness) reports,
and present them to someone official -- if not CBI, then maybe the ACU-I
people. I'm not up on all the ACU-I/CBI/etc. bureaucratic structure, but
it seems to me that we could get someone in an official capacity to listen
to these accusations and check 'em out. I'm not one to get overly excited
over hearsay, but if there's some truth to this, we have some SERIOUS
problems.

> Matt's Latest Favorite Dead World Leader...
> Aethelred the Unready

I prefer Robert the Bruce ... or maybe King Egbert ...

Doug

[Shawn J. Borisoff]

Robert Craig Harman (pa...@byu.edu) wrote:
: Doug O'Neal wrote:
: > spic...@cc1000469-a.twsn1.md.home.com (Shawn Pickrell) writes:
: > > CBI, are you listening? If not to me, then to the sounds of schools
: > > not coming in (UMBC, Loyola, us) or to schools going away
: > > (Virginia, Yale, Penn, etc., etc.??) I've mentioned 6 schools right
: > > there. That's $3,600 OF LOST REVENUE TO YOU. Not to mention other
: > > schools.
: >
: > Possibly add Penn State to that list ... nothing is official yet,
: > and I'm not speaking on behalf of our quiz bowl organization.

: Add BYU to the list. Again, it's not official yet, but we've already
: discussed it as a team and paying only 1/2 of what CBI asks to get NAQT
: IM packets should be an easy one to pass by the honors/gen.ed. deans.

: That's $4800. Are you listening, CBI?

Add Columbia to that list. So now we're at $5400 and I'm sure we're
missing a bunch of schools.

Shawn Borisoff
Penn Academic Competition Team

[Matt Larson]

I guess the thing that bothers me most is...

If Rostrum was directing his anger at CBI...why were his points and glares
directed at Harvard?

Please don't try to defend this action as in any way sportsmanlike -
because it wasn't. Had I been a game official...it would have been a
tough call what to do with that. Because of the importance of the match,
I don't think I would have favored an ejection...but you can't just let
players get away with that kind of thing.

Matt Larson

mala...@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu | http://www.leepfrog.com/~brog/matt.html

[Timothy J Young]

Alceste (ac...@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU) wrote:
: On behalf of John Edwards, I bring you this message:

: b) HCASC schools: I was the only participant there from a HBCU and the topic

: of HCASC came up. What did I learn, courtesy of Ron Loomis and the CBI
: staff? HBCUs are administratively deficient, its students are not capable of
: playing on the academic circuit for some "decades perhaps" (that was Mary

: Oberempt)

NB : U Maryland-Eastern Shore, an HBCU, appeared @ G'Town Cup this year
(CBCI licensed, so don't worry) and did not embarass themselves, actually
making a number of impressive buzzes against GW. Certainly not "decades"
from being a competitive circuit program.

: First off, I was incredibly insulted by the

: condescending, insulting, and unnecessary disparagement of HBCUs. Obviously
: from what I gathered, the only schools with bureaucratic messes, low funds,
: and circuit-inexperienced players are HBCUs, therefore they need special
: "protection". This is a patently absurd and false conclusion.

Agreed.

: But the bigger problem is that the sanction

: means acknowledgement of the copyright...

I'm not certain that this is necessarily true. I should have asked G'Town
why they licensed their tournament thru CBI, when only one other school
(Vandy, I believe) did so. It may have been for the express purpose of
allowing the HBC teams to participate, which could have been stipulated
beforehand. (I'm not saying it was, but it's a possibility.)

The reality is that HCASC schools get scholarship $$ which they are not
going to risk for the sake of going to one of our tournaments. It is a
shame, and it's essentially blackmail, but if you want to help
de-segregate AC, it may require such kowtowing.

: c) Copyrights and other nonsense: I won't go into the legal arguments on why

: I and many, many other knowledgeable people (including lawyers) feel the

: copyright claim is bogus....

They may have sought legal advice, and whomever they hired has likely
told them not to discuss the issue. Which is probably the advice I've give
them, as "advocatus diaboli."

: d) NAQT and ACF: Can CBI shut down the circuit? They said they won't, but

: they hinted they could. It is inexcusable (and a probable violation of
: Section 2 of the Sherman Act) to try to create such a monoploy.

Such an anti-trust claim is actually not relevant until actual threats of
lawsuits are made, AFAIK.

CBI said all
: weekend that it was a business. But what business constantly ignores its
: customers' demands? CBI has a different philosophy: the customer is always
: wrong and we are right.

Q: Who are CBI's customers? I don't think we are who CBI views as
customers. I think CBI sees colleges themselves and their student
activities bureaucrat-types as their customers. Note how different that is
from invitational TDs, or even ACF and NAQT. It explains a lot, actually.

: II. Univeristy of Virginia

: Lots of comments are being made about UVA and some actions over the weekend.
: I think that misses the point for several reasons. First, no one talks about
: what they did was so bad. Yes, Brian got a little excited, but his reasons
: for doing so were not aimed at Harvard, but at CBI, whom he felt (with good
: reason) wanted Virginia to lose. His anger was directed solely at them. What
: else did (some, not all) of the team did? Some said they were rude for not
: answering inane buzzer checks, and others felt they were rude not to see
: Herb Stempel. Call Miss Manners! Not answering buzzer checks! How rude!
: Please...there are more important things to consider.

Perhaps, but it's mutual cooperation that makes our circuit run as well as
it does. (Although I guess, as CBI NCTs, this doesn't count.) People do
notice the little things.

: Some UVAers don't like CBI or its staff or its sycophants. Big deal- who

: says they have to like them?

No one. Though UVA is consequentially probably doing the right thing by
deaffiliating.

: No one has discussed that tournament staff was

: rude and insulting to UVA behind their back. Staff have reported that
: anti-UVA talk was prevalent in the backrooms- supposedly from people who
: should at least attempt to be somewhat impartial as they are referees. But
: no one critizes this.

It's probably done at every invitational. People are not always going to
get along. It's not like I haven't heard disparaging comments about
certain players (incl. the ones in question here) behind the scenes at
tournaments before. I'm sure similar comments have been made about me.
As long as they are not allowed to pollute results, which may well have
happened here.

I got the sense that some
staffers in R4 weren't terribly fond of some of the upper-tier teams for
reasons not entirely clear to me. (I don't think it affected game play at
all, mind you, which means that it was arguably a different situation.)

That's OK for CBI to do it behind closed doors when
: others have the balls to do it in public. I hope all the Rostron bashing
: will take notice of CBI's unprofessional attitude, but unfortunately, it was
: kept well hidden and only some leaks have brought it to light.

There's plenty of blame to go around here. There is certainly considerable
evidence of CBI's unprofessional conduct.

: The most interesting event was the choice for the moderator for the first

: game. This is a moderator UVA strongly said they did not want; not because
: of his ability, but because of his clear anti-UVA bias which the team felt
: he had. One may disagree with the sentiment and maybe he actually has no
: animus (although one could feel the disappointment from him when UVA won the
: first game) against the team, but UVA's wishes should have been honored. It
: was a telling moment when it was denied.

OK, here is where it is certainly arguable that CBI crossed the line. I
was not present, so I can't vouch for the moderator's impartiality or
lack thereof. BTW, if the moderator in question really did have a bias,
he should have recused himself, and it is irresponsible of him to do
otherwise.

However, given what Mark has posted (assuming it is true), and given
e-mail responses to inquiries from relatively neutral parties (I lack
a direct line to CBI and am not sure if I'd believe anything they told me)
which I made about what happened, I feel sufficiently comfortable to say
that anyone (from any team) who engaged in that kind of conduct should
consider themselves lucky I wasn't moderating.

: III. The Questions

: This is long, so I won't say more right now. Although I must say this...
: If you think a 25-point bonus in which the answer is "free lunch" in which
: you are given Milton Friedman and "there ain't no such thing as..." is an OK
: question, then you are out to lunch. Same goes to the 25-point Endymion
: bonus (one part), the ridiculously easy 30-20-10s (lots), the Vivaldi
: question ("Also known as the Red Priest..."), and the wonderfully misleading
: antimony/Sb toss-up. I don't have time to write on all the disasters.

Standard issue CBI. What I find disheartening is the statement that
single-answer, single-part boni will continue to be used. It's reflective
of who this business thinks its consumers are.

: Overall, congrats to UVA and Harvard for two great games. But this past

: weekend showed me why CBI is really heading on its way to becoming the
: dinosaur of academic competition.

: John

: ps- Isn't "Image is Nothing", the CBI motto on their sweatshirts,
: trademarked by Sprite? It's even the same font, for God's sake!

: ***************************************************************************
: John Edwards
: Howard University School of Law, Class of 1998
: University of Chicago, Class of 1995

: "The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people,
: so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives"- Walker Percy
: ***************************************************************************

: -----end forwarded message-----

: --
: Alice Chou - ac...@faraday.clas.virginia.edu

: "It was usually damp and sticky for it wept a great deal."
: --Edward Gorey, _The Beastly Baby_

--

[jpg...@students.uiuc.edu]

On 25 Apr 1997 03:04:03 GMT, sta...@fas.harvard.edu (Mark Staloff)
wrote:

>What I have a harder time understanding is when he was jumping
>up and down, pointing at Jeff, and saying, "C'mon, Johnson...
>you want a piece of me? Right now!"

Hey, this Virginia team is sounding cooler all the time.
Congratulations again for the NCT victory.

Jonathan Green

who would never dream of criticizing another player for a lapse in
decorum, especially when such a lapse is merely reported rather than
personally seen, even if the reports are from several sources, all of
whom are shocked, terribly shocked by such an outburst.

[Emil T. Chuck]

I have been trying to follow everyone's views on Virginia's deaffiliation
and CBI's obstinant disregard of what the circuit has been trying to tell
them for .. oh, what at least six years?

While everyone here is wondering how CBI could afford to turn down the
money we are offering, please remember that CBI is a multifaceted
operation. They have the Honda Campus Challenge which I am very sure
rakes in a lot of money and support from the Historically Black Campi
around the country. Having Honda subsidize a lot of the costs as a
corporate sponsor really helps. Then there is High School Bowl and other
little items which I think don't play as big a role as CB and Honda.

Consequently, I think that as long as CBI has the visibility as a company
to have this partnership with Honda, no defection is going to hurt the
company. We're naive to think that our dropping out affects their bottom
line so much. Well, it doesn't, simply because the company does target
student activities admins and has a virtual monopoly in the HBCs with
Honda. There's no known set of student-run academic comp organizations
that I am aware of that run tournaments at Historically Black Campi. And
as long as Honda remains the corporate sponsor, those teams will remain
in the CBI camp.

On a tangent: It's sad that with the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson
breaking the color barrier in baseball that this hasn't yet happened in
academic competition. I know we'd welcome a team like Howard or Florida
A&T into any event any of us are holding, whether it's NAQT-style,
CBI-registered, ACF-format, or even Buzzer Royale/Iowa Lightning/Deep
Bench format. It's just too bad there isn't a good team (or preferably
many more than one) that can try. And it's not a racist reason but one
of corporate sponsorship and the stipulations therein that CBI can make.
That's why they feel they are justified in doing the things they do.
College Bowl isn't their real crown jewel though they want it to be.
Honda is, as un-publicized as it is, because it's got a corporate sponsor
and sometimes a TV contract.

So you can deaffiliate the entire 64-team field at Penn. CBI has been
prepared for this for years. They aren't going to go away.

-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet

[Emil Thomas Chuck]

In article <5jm47h$c6...@ha2.rdc1.md.home.com>,
spic...@cc1000469-a.twsn1.md.home.com (Shawn Pickrell) wrote:
>
> Joseph K Wright (wri...@pitt.edu) wrote:
> : In article <5jj913$c6...@ha2.rdc1.md.home.com>,
> : Shawn Pickrell <spic...@cc1000469-a.twsn1.md.home.com> wrote:
>
> : >I suggest that CBI do the following in order to re-establish itself:
>
> : Just FYI, one of the things that came out of the NCT Forum was that CBI
> : will respond to direct comments via phone, letter, email, etc., but
> : not to things thrown out on this newsgroup. So if you want to get their
> : attention, this isn't the way to go about doing it. But anyway...
>
> Where can I send e-mail, then? I'm not 100% familiar with their e-mail
> system; I do wish for them to at least address my concerns.

Look em up on the WWW (www.collegebowl.com).

> : >(1) Cut its prices to 1/3-1/2 of what they are now.
>
> : It's not going to happen, unless CBI can get a TV contract. This was
> : something I hadn't considered before, and give CBI credit for this out.
> : One of the benefits of getting CBI on TV would be a substantially lower
> : cost for schools to participate, since they would have other sources of
> : revenue.
>
> OK. So I think that we on the circuit ought to work really hard to see
> that CBI get on TV. Then, we can all see ourselves on TV, and more schools
> can play (since it'll cost less.)

NO, NO, NO!!! Then you won't get any feedback at all. The audience
would then be the TV viewer and producers and sponsors, and damn what the
players think. They won't do Round Robin, because that's boring on TV.
You'd wind up with single elimination for the championship, with matches
drawn up at random. If being on TV were that important, then we're just
being pithy about our differences with CBI. And I don't think that's the
deal.

For those who understand, why do you think "It's Academic" questions and
format are the way they are? It won't be any different for CB if it gets
onto TV again.

> : >(2) Actively move and pitch CBI to ACU-I members (and non-members).
The

> : >lowered price certainly makes CBI more attractive to a new school. $200 or
> : >so can be had more easily than $600 or so. Heck, the SGA here at R-MC would
> : >be willing to help fund *that*.
>
> : See above.
>
> If (1) and (2) are done enough, CBI will increase participation to cover
> for that lost revenue. Has quizbowl been actively sold to new schools, other
> than the form CBI letter that goes out all over the country??

I'm sure it has to some extent.

> The demand for quizbowl is pretty elastic, I think, among SA directors. So
> if CBI cuts its prices to 1/3-1/2 of what they are now, more schools
> can participate. Also, CBI officials might wish to actively involve themselves
> in getting schools to affiliate (e.g. "lobbying kits" for SA boards and
> SGA's.) More customers means more money.

I don't know if they do. I think to some extent they have in Region 7,
but I can't guarantee that. But their lobbying (if you call it that)
comes through ACUI.

> : >(3) Move to help establish programs at new schools. They should make them-
> : >selves known at the high school level ... any students interested in
starting
> : >a program at the college level should be able to call CBI and get a "Start
> : >Your Own Program" kit.
> : >(4) Listen to players' concerns. Remember, the customer is KING.
>
> : As Doug O'Neal has pointed out, CBI sees college administrators and not
> : players as their customers. Most CBI and ACU-I people (with the notable
> : exception of the Tuttles) come from a college administration background
> : and not from a playing background. CBI does not see player concerns as
> : important as administrators concerns. (My expectation is that this will
> : continue to contribute to mass defections.)
>
> But if the pressure is put on SA directors from BELOW AND ABOVE (i.e. from
> CBI and the students), SA directors or SGA's are more likely to provide
> the money to affiliate. CBI ought to realize that they are not the only
> party than CAN put pressure on SA directors and SGA's.

This assumes that SADs would care about what the students think. Can we
say Oklahoma, Michigan State, and the many other colleges and
universities that have very antagonistic relationships with the union
administrators in the past? I'm fortunate that my Student Activities
Advisor knows that I could do the job for her. In fact, she's pretty
happy that our team is doing it because it's part of our charter as a
club!

Believe me, interacting with adminstrators is a skill sometimes.
Sometimes, it's another job!

[Desjardins Gabriel M]

George Pen-Wen Huang (g_h...@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu) wrote:

: I would like to take a survey. How many teams showed up at each Regional

: tournament again? In our Region 4, eight teams showed. Surely we can figure
: out the economic situation from data at hand.

Region 2 had 12 teams at the regional tournament plus 3 other schools that
bought 10+ intramural packs and didn't send a team to the regionals. I
have some older stats than show Region 2 purchasing 196 packs or so (maybe
in 1992?).

The field has remained pretty constant over the past few years with the
same 10 teams in each year. A few other school have had one-year
programs. There seem to be more teams than there were in the early 90s.
Part of the problem is that CBI is the only option in Region 2. I think
there was one invitational in the region this year and it would surprise
me if it attracted more than 3 teams from the region. We attended 3
tournaments and I would assume that we'll attend at least 5 this coming
year, but that doesn't exactly make us a travelling team by any stretch of
the imagination.

In the end, CBI, despite its cost, is still preferred by most people
associated with AC here. CBI Regionals are always during our week off and
they never involve more than a 4-hour drive for us, which is much
preferred to the 8 hours required to reach most tournaments.

CBI is certainly not without its problems and we are not satisfied with
it. On the other hand, if CBI did not exist, we would never have started
a club, formed a team or otherwise be involved in academic competition at
the university level. CBI makes it possible for programs to get started
and give the people involved enough experience that they would consider
branching out into other options. (And I hope that CBI experience will
mean Bruce Lin will get to play at Princeton next year!)

Gabe

[Frederic Bush]

> Add BYU to the list. Again, it's not official yet, but we've already
> discussed it as a team and paying only 1/2 of what CBI asks to get NAQT
> IM packets should be an easy one to pass by the honors/gen.ed. deans.
>
> That's $4800. Are you listening, CBI?

Might as well mention that Swarthmore will most likely be deafilliating.
We bought our exceedinly expensive IM packets this year despite not making
it to regionals; next year, no CBI at all.

$5400.

Fred Bush
fbu...@cc.swarthmore.edu Dream. Imagine. Wonder.
Swarthmore, PA

[Robert Craig Harman]

Bill Atkinson wrote:
> andy tin-an wang <a-w...@students.uiuc.edu> wrote:
> >I used to be the Minister of Rage for the UIUC ABT, then a shadow
> >officer, now I'm president, go figure. But Mr. Green is a good
> >person for the job of Minister of Rage, he's not just another
> >Mormon BYU expatriate, he's a killing machine. He was taught by
> >that BYU veteran of many wars Norm Gillespie (who I heard
> >single-handedly fought off 100,000 ChiCom PLA troops to save the
> >Marines at the Chosin Resevoir, and captured 130 Germans at the
> >Battle of Meuse-Argonne, but that cheatin' Sgt. York stole the
> >credit).
>
> Meaning no disrespect to my good friend Norm Gillespie, indisputably
> among the greatest all-time BYU players, Jonathan Green was a member
> of two BYU teams that went to the National Tournament before Norm
> appeared on the scene in the fall of 1993 and so did more teaching of
> Norm than the other way around.

Darn, Bill, you just beat me to setting the record striaght. Oh well.
Maybe you could confirm the Columbia de-affiliation too?

[David C. Tuttle]

andy tin-an wang <a-w...@students.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>

> No one hates, fears or taunts a patsy team with no chance of winning.

Just before the Virginia-Washington game at Nationals, someone wrote
on the blackboard names for the two teams: "VIRGINIA" and "MEAT".

I was not there, and I do not know who did it.

--
David C. Tuttle, Biomathematics -----> d...@odin.mdacc.tmc.edu <-----
The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center +1 (713) 792-2606
Mail Stop 237, 1515 Holcombe Boulevard, Houston, TX 77030-4096 USA
Today's anagram of "David Charles Tuttle" is: THUD AT DRASTIC LEVEL

[Alceste]

Mark Staloff <sta...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
>What I have a harder time understanding is when he was jumping
>up and down, pointing at Jeff, and saying, "C'mon, Johnson...

>you want a piece of me? Right now!" While we were trying to
>ignore him. Since as you say, he was just protesting the poor
>quality of CBI questions, and since his apology afterward clearly
>indicated that he hadn't meant to insult us, I don't quite see how this
>fits in. Or how that falls within anyone's definition of sportsmanship,
>for that matter.

How can you take an exclamation like "you want a piece of me" seriously?
Did you really think that Brian wanted to take Jeff Johnson outside
and rumble? Brian directed that comment specifically at Jeff because he
seemed to be the only one on your team who was easygoing enough not to
take offense. I'm sorry that the rest of you felt obliged to do so for
his sake.

I see now that it was a mistake to try to defend Brian, whom everyone
seems absolutely determined to vilify. He may have hurt your feelings,
but please, let it go. He really didn't mean to. Brian knows that he
was rude; he isn't trying to defend himself. I'm doing this because I
hate to see everyone getting the wrong impression of him. If everybody
on the circuit simply judged everyone else by their game attitude, I might
think that John Edwards was a deranged idiot on the edge of a nervous
breakdown and that you, Mark, sit grimly scowling through all your
daily life. So please, try for a little bit of forgiveness.

>Mark

Alice

[Timothy J Young]

jpg...@students.uiuc.edu wrote:

[Everything else snipped...]

: Jonathan Green

: who would never dream of criticizing another player for a lapse in
: decorum, especially when such a lapse is merely reported rather than
: personally seen, even if the reports are from several sources, all of
: whom are shocked, terribly shocked by such an outburst.

Really? Not even if another player decided to start singing mid-match in a
close game, and one happened not be there at the time?

Reductio ad absurdum... it's not just for Civil Procedure class anymore!
:)

[Matt Larson]

I probably should have said this sooner, but I can certainly understand
UVa's frustration with CBI.
This was something I stumbled on when before the first match of the final,
someone leaned towards me and said, "the moderator wants Virginia to
lose...pass it on..."
Which is absolutely inexcusable on the part of CBI. And to hear that it
was a moderator that UVa specifically said they didn't want...

In the end, it didn't matter. Virginia was the best team at the
tournament, and they won the title. Congratulations.

[smo...@opie.bgsu.edu]

Also another thing to remember about getting back on TV, is ther
personality factor. Which would be more entertaining to watch, schools
who know what's going on, are used to the game, have noticable team
chemistry, and also want to win, or some schools who only play once a year
and don't have the agressive mentality of the regular cirucuit
schools.

I'm not saying that the non circuit schools don't have personality, but I
see more of it in the AC schools. I'm making my observation based on the
Region CBI tournament that was held here in Bowling Green (I don't
remember the number, it contains Ohio State University, and the Michigan
schools). They drew the two brackets out of a hat, and the bracket BG
ended up in had a lot of once a year schools in it. From these schools I
noticed an amount of dismay when the moderator would go clearly but
rapidly to keep the pace of the game going, and lack of cohesiveness on
the part of the teams.

If I compare this to invitational play, where there is a lot more
cohesiveness (obviously they play more than once a year) and players who
are fun to watch because you know they want to win (or the one who could
be annoying and you want to see loose, both have entertainment value,
remember Quizshow)

To be entertaining for an audience the game must be somewhat fast paced,
and the two participating teams need to look like the know what their
doing. If CBI looses it's regular circuit schools it could loose the
ability to have the paced games they would need with teams people feel
would be worth their time to watch.

>
>
> --
> Adam Fagen \\ afa...@fas.harvard.edu
> Harvard University GSAS // http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~afagen/
>
>

Stacy Moorman -Sometimes the things you most
wish for are not to be touched
smo...@opie.bgsu.edu Into the Woods

[Alceste]

David C. Tuttle <d...@odin.mdacc.tmc.edu> wrote:
>
>Just before the Virginia-Washington game at Nationals, someone wrote
>on the blackboard names for the two teams: "VIRGINIA" and "MEAT".
>
>I was not there, and I do not know who did it.

Oh boy, people just can't resist another chance to badmouth Virginia.

For the record, this was not written by our resident scapegoat Brian
Rostron; the culprit was Steve Gray. I'm not going to defend this
action; Steve got the bright idea all by himself and no one else on
the team noticed it had happened until Mary Oberempt mentioned it to
Clay.

Criticize Steve all you want; it was a stupid thing to do and none of
the other team members are on his side on this issue.

[Stephen Ray Sheiko]

Timothy J Young (tjy...@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu) wrote:
: jpg...@students.uiuc.edu wrote:

: [Everything else snipped...]

: : Jonathan Green

: : who would never dream of criticizing another player for a lapse in
: : decorum, especially when such a lapse is merely reported rather than
: : personally seen, even if the reports are from several sources, all of
: : whom are shocked, terribly shocked by such an outburst.

: Really? Not even if another player decided to start singing mid-match in a
: close game, and one happened not be there at the time?

Wasn't that a moderator, though? Or am I thinking of something completely
different?

--
| Stephen Sheiko + 2100 I St., NW #808 + Washington DC 20037-2319 |
| ssh...@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu + http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~ssheiko |
| "It is a great poverty to decide that a child must die |
| so that you may live as you choose." Mother Teresa |

[Richard Mason]

Mark Staloff wrote:
>
> [University-specific questions]
>
> How do you propose to correct this? Blatant university-specific
> questions are one thing, but if we try and yank geogrpahy questions
> which favor one area, that's a slippery slope... for example, in our
> match against Oklahoma, one question read, "The <blank> and Raritan
> canal", and I rang in immediately, because the Delaware and Raritan
> is a few minutes from my mother's house...

I agree. University-specific questions are just one example of
a more general problem; how should you adjust the questions you
write when you have some prior knowledge of what the
players know?

After you get to know quiz bowl players and see them in action a
number of times, you develop an idea (of greater or lesser accuracy)
of what they do and don't know. You may especially know this about
other players from your school, but it could also hold true for
players from other schools. "I know for a fact that the BYU team
will eat this musical bonus alive."

If you KNOW that a team/player will get a toss-up early or devour
a bonus, is it fair to give them that gift? On the other hand,
is it fair to them to take questions out of the packet, just
because you think they'll do well on them?

You could go crazy worrying about what consitutes fairness here.
My feeling is you shouldn't worry about it, just write the questions
you were going to write as if you had no idea who the players would
be.

Along these lines, I see nothing really wrong with university-specific
questions per se, as long as they are gettable by the mythical
average player. Of course, a university-specific question could
be ridiculous ("What are the three lies on John Harvard's statue?")
but that is because it is too obscure for the average player;
it is bad in just the same way that a too-hard physics question
is bad.

--
Richard Mason "And you may say to yourself/
ma...@robby.caltech.edu My God! What have I done?" -- D. Byrne

[George Pen-Wen Huang]

: You shouldn't be able to find a CBI packet from 1988.

I seem to be putting my foot in it today. No more newsgroups at 1am! In
this case, I was exaggerating greatly. Though I really did throw out a
lot of old packets.

george

[George Pen-Wen Huang]

: Were you at the same Region 4 tournament I was? Weren't there more like
: eighteen?

Oops, my bad. I forgot it was a double-bracket round-robin. We played
eight rouunds in prelims, so you're right, 18 would be more correct.

george

[George Pen-Wen Huang]

: Even here at Cornell, the student activities folks run the campus
: tournament. Over the past few years, they have fiercely defended their turf
: from Richard Dunlap's, Dwight Kidder's, and my own efforts to try and advise
: them on possible improvements (although they do seem to be softening).

I'm not saying that only students have input, but at least that it should
be taken more seriously. I suppose the other relevant question regarding
Cornell's situation is whether they MUST participate in the campus
tournament in order to keep their standing. It sounds, as always, as if
those who are willing to play CBI will deal with the problems the rest of
us don't want to deal with.

george

[Gary Greenbaum]

>In article <Pine.A41.3.95.970425...@red.weeg.uiowa.edu> Matt Larson <mala...@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu> writes:

>> I probably should have said this sooner, but I can certainly understand
>> UVa's frustration with CBI.
>> This was something I stumbled on when before the first match of the final,
>> someone leaned towards me and said, "the moderator wants Virginia to
>> lose...pass it on..."

As a lawyer, I don't think that is evidence. Did the comment
originate with someone actually in the know, or with a wiseguy?

>> Which is absolutely inexcusable on the part of CBI. And to hear that it
>> was a moderator that UVa specifically said they didn't want...

Well, the question is how the choice of moderator was made. Was the
moderator scheduled to work that match, or was he put on for the
actual purpose of p----ing off Virginia? If the former, than it is
something that Virginia should have just swallowed. Not every team
likes every moderator. If the latter, then Virginia is quite right in
its reactions.

Concerning the Congress protest, I think College Bowl adjudicated it
correctly. At first, my gut instinct was that a replay was in order,
due to the intentional minus-five. But posts to the effect that you
do such at your own risk, and should be aware of potential protests,
convince me that the resolution was correct.

I presume that CBI is shooting itself in the foot by offending
teams, but then, I'm not privy to their bottom line.

Gary Greenbaum

[Sendhil Revuluri]

Just my commentary on what Andrew wrote. (I've fallen a bit behind on
keeping up with the group, but isn't it great that there's real volume on
it again! Reminds me of the good old days of the dawn of the group.)

From the keyboard of ad...@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU (Andrew Yaphe):
> Given the continuing low quality of the questions, it seems like a
> waste of time to compete at CBI tournaments. In my opinion, the

How much time does it really waste to compete at CBI tournaments? At most,
3 weekends: IM, Regional and National. Despite the poor quality of the
questions, I can't believe any team would de-affiliate from CBI because of
the time involved. (On this note, I personally feel that many circuit
teams do a half-assed job of conducting IMs and that this abdicates their
responsibility to the student body which provides their funding (if any),
their players, and whatever institutional support they have. IMs could and
should be a way to increase awareness of and support for quiz bowl teams on
the local campus.) The question of the best use of funding and the
opportunity cost inherent in participating in CBI is valid, though.

> questions at CBI nationals did not effectively differentiate between
> the top teams; as long as CBI chooses to value game "flow" and
> appearance over producing valid results, CBI nationals will be a
> pointless exercise for the teams there.

People who play quiz bowl, and especially the better players, are often
very competitive. Given that, I don't think that "producing valid results"
is as much a concern for any other stakeholder in the game. By this
standard, most TV game shows are "pointless exercises" (eg, in my own
experience, Jeopardy! -- for it values game "flow" and appearance over
producing the "valid result" of ensuring the best player wins each game).

The quality of the questions is lacking (I didn't like them when I played
on them, and given what I have seen and read this year, I do not like them
now). But this does not make CBI nationals an entirely pointless exercise.

> Let me say that I personally appreciate the efforts of the volunteers
> who help make CBI such a good show; whatever dissatisfaction we felt
> at nationals was aimed at the consistently poor questions. I hope

I feel there are other reasons to be dissatisfied with CBI about Nationals
and other things...

> that other teams will consider deaffiliating from CBI as long as it

...but I don't feel de-affiliation is necessarily the best way to go about
things. I think CBI may need a management overhaul. Given the current
ownership structure and the challengers in the marketplace, I doubt this is
forthcoming.

> remains company policy to produce questions that hamper players in
> order to appeal to a presumed audience, and which do not produce
> meaningful game results.

The audience may be "presumed" now, but I hope (and I think CBI hopes) that
it will be more real in the future. Witness "University Challenge" -- a TV
show that garners respectable ratings and has a place in popular culture
(admittedly in a country where TV sucks eggs and until recently there were
4 broadcast channels). And I don't see how the game results aren't
"meaningful" -- to me, the criterion of "being liked by the players who are
currently the best on the circuit" hardly seems like inviolable or
necessarily superior to others. So some players who would not beat Yaphe,
Sheahan, Johnson et al. on circuit questions can beat them on these
questions. So what? When things are laid out this way, this pillorying
seems somewhat pissy and petty. De-affiliation may still be a sensible and
sound decision -- CBI should not expect its customers to put up with a game
they do not like, given that there are now more alternatives than ever
before. But to take some kind of moral high ground seems pretty sophistic.

> I am disappointed that we did not get to
> compete against excellent teams like Harvard, Oklahoma, Chicago, Cornell,
> and the others at nationals on questions that would better indicate
> who the best teams really were.

Again, I am not so quick to accept that Andrew's criterion of "the best
teams" is somehow inherently true. If this is really the source of his
disappointment, I cannot sympathize at all. If, on the other hand, poorly
written or edited questions, or poorly adjudicated matches, disrupted
teams' enjoyment of the game, I am all for their making their displeasure
known (whether with a letter of complaint or through de-affiliation).

I think CBI has made some boo-boos lately. I am glad that NAQT seems to be
getting off to a good start. But attacking one or the other based on
personal preference seems petty, and I feel (from what Andrew has written
here, and from other discussions) this is what a lot of people are doing,
when they could be complaining about a lot more valid things.

Bring on the flames,
Sendhil
--

Sendhil Revuluri (s-rev...@uchicago.edu)
University of Chicago

[Sendhil Revuluri]

From the keyboard of jc...@aeolus.evsc.Virginia.EDU (Clay D.):
> I knew it was unprotestable. The last protest was the key one, and was that
> "INC" stands for "Indian National Congress", which is the full name of the
> "Congress Party" led by Nehru in 1940s and 1950s.
>
> The eventual decision came down was that the question was "flawed"
...
> they decided to allow Virginia to keep the 10 points for Labor, throw
> out the Congress part, and read another 10-point-part of a bonus to Virginia.

This is a load of poop. It was a bit late to throw such a curve in, no
matter how poorly worded the question. Once a bed has been made and it's
that late, you sort of have to lie in it. I agree that the question was
flawed, but they should have asked for more information when INC was
answered and/or given Virginia the points, on review, if they duffed it the
first time. This is truly sucky adjudication.

This is not the first time the CBI NCT has been substantially affected by a
protest either. In 1993 the result of one of the games in the round robin
was changed by a protest which was incorrectly decided (one of the old
favorites involving translation of prepositions in French titles into
English). This ended up actually changing which teams made it into the
finals.

But we should CBI is not the only case where there have been screwups in
deciding protests in final matches of national tournaments: witness the
final of Penn Bowl 1994, where the Tech-Chicago final match was decided in
favor of Tech based on a protest which was just wrong, but which was
accepted anyway.

Sendhil "Man with the Muck-Rake" Revuluri

[Willy Jay]

George Pen-Wen Huang (g_h...@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu) wrote:

: : wrong) was the "bacteria" tossup that cost Harvard game 2, and thus the
: : match. With Harvard down about 20 inside the final minute, this question
: : started getting read, and it was clearly neg bait with many possible

: When I heard this question, the only thing that popped into my mind was
: bacteria. What other possible answers could it have been? The only other
: one I could think of on reading this was hair.

Jeff went in with "mites."

Willy

****"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." --Thomas Jefferson****
* Willy Jay, Kirkland Class of '98 * http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wjay *
************"I'd rather be rich than stupid." --Jack Handey************

[Willy Jay]

Alceste (ac...@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU) wrote, for John Edwards:

: The most interesting event was the choice for the moderator for the first
: game. This is a moderator UVA strongly said they did not want; not because
: of his ability, but because of his clear anti-UVA bias which the team felt
: he had. One may disagree with the sentiment and maybe he actually has no
: animus (although one could feel the disappointment from him when UVA won the
: first game) against the team, but UVA's wishes should have been honored. It
: was a telling moment when it was denied.

(The moderator John refers to, for those who weren't there, was MIT's Jim Bales.)

For the record, Harvard submitted three names and UVA submitted three names.
I *think*, though I'm not sure, that they picked the one on both lists
(CBI's Tom Cunningham, who moderated Game 2), then randomly drew one of the other
two names from each team's list. Since there was no third game, I don't know who
would have moderated it, but if what I just wrote is true, then it would have been
one of UVA's two non-Cunningham nominations.

It seems to me, incidentally, that it would have made more sense to have
the two moderators picked by only one team read the first two games, so that
a "rubber match" would be moderated by someone on whom both teams agreed.

I won't comment on whether I think Jim Bales is biased against UVA; I wouldn't have
anything intelligent to say.

[Phil Groce]

afa...@login1.fas.harvard.edu (Adam Fagen) wrote:

>phil_...@cmcsmart.com (Phil Groce) writes:
>
>>ahead of its nearest competitor in schools affiliated. Furthermore,
>>if they're selling clients on their ability to run tournaments (or
>>tournament-like events), it doesn't much matter if Harvard plays
>>Virginia or Hampden-Sydney plays UC-Santa Cruz (no offense to either).
>>What matters is the entertainment value and smoothness of the
>>tournament, and even Andrew says they had that in spades.
>
>One comment on this. This argument makes sense for purely economic reason
>with the current set up of CBI. But CBI made it clear at the forum that

>their number one priority is getting the game back on TV. [...]

>But it seems that CBI needs
>"name" teams in order to have a hope of getting on TV.

Fair enough. But, as Gary Greenbaum pointed out, many "name" teams
are names because of their sports, not their academics (who's the
better football team, Florida or Auburn? Now, who has the better
anthropology department? :)

Further, ivies and academics are more notable in their presence than
their absence. If, for instance, viewers saw Cal Tech and Duke, but
Harvard and UVa have already deaffiliated, most people probably won't
notice the difference. And if CBI got on TV with sufficient exposure,
many schools completely ignorant of the circuit would proactively
affiliate precisely to improve or maintain their academic image --
many of whom CBI couldn't previously recruit because of their
arrangement with ACU-I.

Lastly, who's to say that student-run AC clubs are the final word in
whether a university deaffiliates -- or re-ups when CBI gets on TV?
If the president wants Penn or UVA on TV, and he shells out the bucks
for IM packets, who's going to stop him?

The real irony here is that CBI could probably keep most potential
deaffiliates in the fold by making changes that would not
significantly hurt its chances on TV, but would regenerate their image
among many schools (CBI is much more telegenic than ACF or NAQT, but I
wouldn't, for instance, miss the single-answer bonus). What stops
them is not malice, but corporate culture, and a business plan that
will nevertheless keep them going, and, if CB does re-emerge on TV,
make them lots of money.

>--
>Adam Fagen \\ afa...@fas.harvard.edu
>Harvard University GSAS // http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~afagen/

Phil Groce
Memphis

[Bill Atkinson]

Robert Craig Harman <pa...@byu.edu> wrote:

>Bill Atkinson wrote:
>> andy tin-an wang <a-w...@students.uiuc.edu> wrote:

Columbia deaffiliated from CBI in September 1996. The decision was taken
unanimously and without regret.

Bill Atkinson

[Richard Mason]

Joseph K Wright wrote:
>
> Shawn Pickrell wrote:
> >
> >Even the once-a-year schools seem to be leaving. There was
> >declining attendance at nearly all regions this year ...
>
> It was pointed out at the Forum that MORE schools participated
> this year than last.

Strictly speaking, both these statements could be true...
Attendance at Region 15 RCT was certainly down, but I suppose
it might be on the upswing in some other regions? Anybody
know which ones?

I also wonder if "participation" (as in the second statement)
might mean just having a campus program, rather than attending
regionals (first statement). There are a number of California
schools who have CBI intramurals but don't show at the regional
tournament.

Joseph K Wright wrote:
> It really doesn't matter to CBI whether top programs or
> whether East Bufu State participate--1=1.

It's interesting to speculate whether continued defection of
top schools could affect CBI's prospects for getting back on
television, which is, as many have pointed out, their overriding
goal.

I can easily imagine viewers watching CBI on CBS and asking,
"How come East Bufu State is in the championship this year,
but Ivy University isn't?" Or, on a less extreme level,
"Okay, Stanford won California again... Hey, how come they
didn't have to play Berkeley?"

Maybe if CBI gets on TV and their fees come down, all the
de-affiliated schools will start participating again.
If not, it seems like a good opportunity for a rival TV program...

Piling speculation on speculation, what if there were two
televised leagues of academic competition -- College Bowl
and a rival format played by ex-CBI schools? Naturally,
the hordes of viewers would clamor for a showdown between
the two league champions. Of course, on current trends,
that could end up being about as exciting and unpredictable
as the Superbowl.

--
|Richard Mason (ma...@robby.caltech.edu)
| "So he says, 'I don't like the cut of your jib!'
| And I says, 'IT'S THE ONLY JIB I GOT, BABY!'"
| - The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs At Midnight

[Desjardins Gabriel M]

Kenny Peskin (km...@cornell.edu) wrote:
: Even here at Cornell, the student activities folks run the campus
: tournament. Over the past few years, they have fiercely defended their turf
: from Richard Dunlap's, Dwight Kidder's, and my own efforts to try and advise
: them on possible improvements (although they do seem to be softening).

:
: As for Region 2, I don't think that there is a single school (with the
: possible exception of Queens) at which the students run the CBI program.
: Our region is exclusively ACUI and student administrator run. And it has
: been quite well run over the two years I have participated in the tournament
: (though it has the highest cost of any Regional).

The whole College Bowl program is student-run at Queen's. We buy the
question packs, organize, promote and run the campus tournament. We then
pay some portion of registration and travelling costs for the team,
without our student union ever being involved other than when CBI requires
that a student union deal with the corporation. This year, our staff
coach could not attend the Regionals, so our choice of a coach was
nominal. We did not receive any funding from our student union this year
(though we have in the past, and we always receive its assistance in
CB-related matters.)

Back in the day, the student union used to run everything and put
somewhere on the order of $2200 into College Bowl every year, including an
expnse account and driver for the regionals team. In 1991, control was
turned over to students, and they had to find funding. Despite being in
existence for 4 years, CB was not well-known on campus. The students
managed to put together teams in 1992 and 1993, but funding and volunteers
disappeared for 1994. The club was re-started in its present form in late
1994, with the provision that the student union would not really be
involved in the day-to-day matters of CB.

I can't really see anyone from the student council or the student union
wanted to get in on what we're doing. That seems to me to be seeling CB
and related academic competitions at the wrong end - the people in the
club, the people who played in regionals - with few exceptions, they all
played for years in high school, and are continuing with a commitment
because they really enjoy what they're doing.

This is what has kept us going, and is what has kept ACU-I from starting a
program at U of T - few people are going to put in the extra effort needed
to get something running if they have no interest in playing themselves.

Gabe

[Gary Greenbaum]

re...@midway.uchicago.edu (Sendhil Revuluri) wrote:

>Just my commentary on what Andrew wrote.

And welcome

>From the keyboard of ad...@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU (Andrew Yaphe):
>> Given the continuing low quality of the questions, it seems like a
>> waste of time to compete at CBI tournaments. In my opinion, the

>How much time does it really waste to compete at CBI tournaments? At most,
>3 weekends: IM, Regional and National. Despite the poor quality of the
>questions, I can't believe any team would de-affiliate from CBI because of
>the time involved.

>> that other teams will consider deaffiliating from CBI as long as it

>...but I don't feel de-affiliation is necessarily the best way to go about
>things. I think CBI may need a management overhaul. Given the current
>ownership structure and the challengers in the marketplace, I doubt this is
>forthcoming.

I have had some quiet amusement trying to envision Virginia's trip
back from Montclair to Charlottesville. Gritted teeth, angry
comments, the trophy tied to the rear bumper like the dog in _National
Lampoon's Vacation_, team members racing for a keyboard upon arrival
to announce their well-considered decision after extensive
consultation with anyone who might play for them next year.

Gary Greenbaum

[Benjamin Lu Chen Wang]

Excerpts from netnews.alt.college.college-bowl: 24-Apr-97 Re: Virginia
deaffiliates f.. by George Pen-Wen Huang@jhu
> : If enough circuit schools decide to defect, and enough new schools enter
> : the circuit and do not affiliate, then total attendance WILL go down.
>
> Just on a side note, I haven't seen that many new circuit schools come
> out; I think RMC might be the only one I know of in the years I've been at
> JHU. The easiest way for new schools to join is probably CBI-- we all
> know writing questions is probably the most difficult part of being a CB
> member and colleges looking to start one up will probably have heard of
> them thru ACU-I. I certainly know that had I come to JHU and one did not
> exist, I wouldn't have started it (that's a LOT of work).
> Perhaps one other thing we should be advocating is that NAQT compile a
> list of smaller schools and start sending informational packets to them.
> If the school has a choice of 10 packets for $600 or 10 packets for $150,
> which do you think they'll choose? Then the people starting off will
> already have a better idea of what people at top programs prefer. We
> certainly know Pat and Co. will not make the game easier just to get on
> TV.

Well, if the definition of "new circuit school" is a team that competes
in some non-CBI competitions, then I would consider our school to be a
new circuit school. We still haven't really competed in a large amount
of invitational tournaments due to the fact we can't get any funding for
travel and that until this year, we haven't had anyone on the team that
has a car, but we did compete in NAQT sectionals and nationals as well
as the Ann B. Davis trash tournament.

As someone who did decide to start up a College Bowl organization during
his freshman year, I agree with your statement that it is easier to
start up by using CBI. I can also tell you from experience that it IS A
LOT of work! :) (Wow! I can't believe that it was almost 4 years ago
that I posted a couple of messsages on this bboard asking for some help
on starting an organization here. I also remember that I got a lot of
help from the people who read the bboard and I thank all of those people
who did give me some advice... but I digress...)

Anyways, when I came to CMU, we did not even have any kind of an
intramural tournament. So, I started off with CBI because it was
well-known and that until this year it was the only company (that I know
of) that sold intramural question packets. CBI can by default have more
exposure since it is affiliated with ACU-I. When I asked the people in
our student activities department about College Bowl during my freshman
year, they knew exactly what I was talking about. I'm guessing that CBI
will always (or at least for a long time) be the default starting point
for any school that does not already have an intramural tournament.
People also still remember College Bowl when it was on TV in the 60's.

Ben
Founder, Carnegie Mellon College Bowl

[Benjamin Lu Chen Wang]

Excerpts from netnews.alt.college.college-bowl: 24-Apr-97 Re: Virginia

deaffiliates f.. by Doug O'Ne...@astro.psu.ed
> Actually, there are plenty of such schools. They tend to be smaller,
> often once-a-year programs who don't send teams to ACF's or a lot of
> invitationals. But at a lot of schools, the administration buys the
> questions, runs a campus tournament, and sends the winning team to
> regionals. On this newsgroup there have been plenty of stories told of
> student organizations trying (sometimes successfully, often not) to wrest
> control of the campus CB organization from such administrations. At your
> school and mine, the students may make the decisions, but at the Cow
Creek > States of the world, it's the student activities folks.

Or in CMU's case, the students have to run the intramural tournament or
it wouldn't exist. :) I guess that the reason why we've always used CBI
is that our Student Senate will allocate us all the money that we need
to purchase all of the CBI intramural packets that we need (we've always
bought all 25). So, if we just used NAQT packets, they would end up
allocating us less money in the end.

> > I would like to take a survey. How many teams showed up at each
> > Regional tournament again? In our Region 4, eight teams showed.
> > Surely we can figure out the economic situation from data at hand.
>

> Were you at the same Region 4 tournament I was? Weren't there more like
> eighteen?

Or is he talking about eight circuit teams? Just wondering...

Ben

[Benjamin Lu Chen Wang]

Excerpts from netnews.alt.college.college-bowl: 25-Apr-97 Re: Virginia
deaffiliates f.. by Kenny Pes...@cornell.edu

> Even here at Cornell, the student activities folks run the campus
> tournament. Over the past few years, they have fiercely defended their turf
> from Richard Dunlap's, Dwight Kidder's, and my own efforts to try and advise
> them on possible improvements (although they do seem to be softening).
>
> As for Region 2, I don't think that there is a single school (with the
> possible exception of Queens) at which the students run the CBI program.
> Our region is exclusively ACUI and student administrator run. And it has
> been quite well run over the two years I have participated in the tournament
> (though it has the highest cost of any Regional).

To tell you the truth, I'd actually kind of like it if some people in
our administation would run our intramural tournament. I had to run our
intramural tournament for 3 years and helped out a lot this year and it
definitely takes up a lot of time. It's also not fun trying to compete
and run the tournament at the same time. :)

If anyone wonders why we do run an intramural tournament, it is because
it is one of the best ways to recruit members (besides having a table an
our school's activities fair) and since our team hasn't had the
resources in the past to compete in invitational tournaments, the
intramural tournament gives us a way to compete.

Ben

[George Pen-Wen Huang]

: Lastly, who's to say that student-run AC clubs are the final word in

: whether a university deaffiliates -- or re-ups when CBI gets on TV?
: If the president wants Penn or UVA on TV, and he shells out the bucks
: for IM packets, who's going to stop him?

This is a good point. I suppose the followup would be, would losing on
CBI on TV mean anything? If yes, then I think certainly the university
would want good reps on tv and if there's a club already around, they'll
go there first rather than just finding people with high GPA's. If not,
then this question doesn't matter to us.

george

[Mark Staloff]

andy tin-an wang (a-w...@students.uiuc.edu) wrote:
[snip re: Rostron in the finals]

I've replied to this via e-mail, and if anyone else would like
to discuss anything I've posted on this subject, I'll be more
than happy to do so, over e-mail.

Otherwise-- I think it's time to say what's done is done, there's
nothing new to be said. Let's move on with our lives, and not drag
this affair out any further.

Mark

[Gary Greenbaum]

phil_...@cmcsmart.com (Phil Groce) wrote:

>Lastly, who's to say that student-run AC clubs are the final word in
>whether a university deaffiliates -- or re-ups when CBI gets on TV?
>If the president wants Penn or UVA on TV, and he shells out the bucks
>for IM packets, who's going to stop him?

Worse than that. What is to stop CBI, through the ACU-I
representative, from recruiting a team from a deaffiliated school,
selected, say, by a professor, as the GE College Bowl teams usually
were?

Frankly, if all schools were selected in this manner, I don't think
the average TV viewer is going to realize there is a difference in
quality of play. And CBI could select for telegenic players, maybe
with minimum female and minority requirements.

If they did, I don't think they could be stopped. They could
include, if they wished, Georgia Tech, Maryland, and other hard-line
ACF schools, and I don't think the programs at that schools could
prevent students, tempted by scholarship money, from trying out.

Gary Greenbaum

[Adam Fagen]

Matt Larson <mala...@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu> writes:

>I probably should have said this sooner, but I can certainly understand
>UVa's frustration with CBI.
>This was something I stumbled on when before the first match of the final,
>someone leaned towards me and said, "the moderator wants Virginia to
>lose...pass it on..."

Wait a minute. Where was there any evidence of bias on the part of the
moderator? If a moderator would do something to give one team an
unfair advantage in any game, that would be highly inappropriate. But
there was no evidence that the finals moderator had any bias.

[Timothy J Young]

George Pen-Wen Huang (g_h...@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu) wrote:

: : Were you at the same Region 4 tournament I was? Weren't there more like
: : eighteen?

: Oops, my bad. I forgot it was a double-bracket round-robin. We played

: eight rouunds in prelims, so you're right, 18 would be more correct.

I believe the total was 17 teams, nine in our bracket and eight in the
other. Seven of those teams (JHU, GWU, CMU, Pitt, PSU, G'Town, and
Dickinson) had previous circuit experience, and except for Dickinson and
one close PSU loss to Lafayette, circuit teams lost only to each other.

: george

--
| Tim Young (tjy...@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu) Red Sox o-Meter : |
| GWU Law School '99 :/ |
| Dartmouth College '96 |
| "I feel the need...the need for expeditious velocity!" - The Brain |

[Adam Fagen]

Okay, hopefully my last comment on all this.

ac...@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU (Alceste) writes:

>How can you take an exclamation like "you want a piece of me" seriously?
>Did you really think that Brian wanted to take Jeff Johnson outside
>and rumble? Brian directed that comment specifically at Jeff because he
>seemed to be the only one on your team who was easygoing enough not to
>take offense. I'm sorry that the rest of you felt obliged to do so for
>his sake.

The point is not whether we thought the Virginia player was serious. I'd
probably put my money on Jeff anyway. :-)

And I can name 3 other players on the Harvard team (i.e., the whole team)
who had the same reaction as Jeff: "whatever." Just because it seemed
inappropriate behavior does not mean that anyone from Harvard (or anyone
else) was offended or really cared all that much. The only response was
to ignore the show.

And, as several others have said, probably best to get on with our lives
and let this drop.

--Adam
Harvard Coach

[Timothy J Young]

Richard Mason (maso...@robby.caltech.edu) wrote:

: Joseph K Wright wrote:
: >
: > Shawn Pickrell wrote:
: > >
: > >Even the once-a-year schools seem to be leaving. There was
: > >declining attendance at nearly all regions this year ...
: >
: > It was pointed out at the Forum that MORE schools participated
: > this year than last.

: Strictly speaking, both these statements could be true...
: Attendance at Region 15 RCT was certainly down, but I suppose
: it might be on the upswing in some other regions? Anybody
: know which ones?

It wasn't in Regions 1,3,4, or 5. All had fewer teams. (Region 1 in the
last few years has gone from 21 to 17 to 15 to 13 teams - and that's
without any "high-profile" deaffiliations.)

: I also wonder if "participation" (as in the second statement)

: might mean just having a campus program, rather than attending
: regionals (first statement). There are a number of California
: schools who have CBI intramurals but don't show at the regional
: tournament.

Really. I wonder why anyone would spend that kind of money on CBI and then
not go to RCTs, the only reason why most circuit teams buy those packets
in the first place.

: |Richard Mason (ma...@robby.caltech.edu)

: | "So he says, 'I don't like the cut of your jib!'
: | And I says, 'IT'S THE ONLY JIB I GOT, BABY!'"
: | - The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs At Midnight

--

[Timothy J Young]

Gary Greenbaum (ga...@clark.net) wrote:
: Richard Mason <maso...@robby.caltech.edu> wrote:

: >Maybe if CBI gets on TV and their fees come down, all the

: >de-affiliated schools will start participating again.
: >If not, it seems like a good opportunity for a rival TV program...

: Oh sure. CBI has tried for ten years to get back on TV. How is Joe
: A.C.F.N.Q.A.T. Student going to get his program on TV? Especially
: when CBI starts making copyright noises.

Then ACF/NAQT/whomever would have a clear antitrust claim. Whether they'd
have the resources to pursue it is another question. Hell, there are a lot
of would-be lawyers around here, aren't there?

: Good luck!

This would be plenty reason to stop giving them your money right now and
hope they went belly-up, if this were the eventual mission.

: Gary Greenbaum

--
| Tim Young (tjy...@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu) Red Sox o-Meter : |

| GWU Law School '99 :) |

[Timothy J Young]

Sendhil Revuluri (re...@midway.uchicago.edu) wrote:
: Just my commentary on what Andrew wrote. (I've fallen a bit behind on

: keeping up with the group, but isn't it great that there's real volume on
: it again! Reminds me of the good old days of the dawn of the group.)

Indeed.

: From the keyboard of ad...@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU (Andrew Yaphe):

: > Given the continuing low quality of the questions, it seems like a
: > waste of time to compete at CBI tournaments. In my opinion, the

: How much time does it really waste to compete at CBI tournaments? At most,
: 3 weekends: IM, Regional and National.

Time spent ordering the packets, running an IM if you have a formal one,
getting whoever pays for this stuff at your school to pay for them (or
raising funds for them if you have to pay for them yourself), dealing with
the eligibility forms and getting them sent in, and jumping thru whatever
other hoops (procuring an "official representative" was often a problem
for the Dartmouth team) that apply in specific cases.

None of these (except for the IM planning or the fundraising) take
especially much time by themselves, but in aggregation they constitute a
major annoynance. This by itself wouldn't be enough for me to consider
deaffiliation, but it doesn't help.

: Despite the poor quality of the

: questions, I can't believe any team would de-affiliate from CBI because of
: the time involved.

See above.

: (On this note, I personally feel that many circuit

: teams do a half-assed job of conducting IMs and that this abdicates their
: responsibility to the student body which provides their funding (if any),
: their players, and whatever institutional support they have.

Well, if you have a veteran program with a large budget and enough members
to send 3-4 teams to tournaments, fine. But most schools that do a
"half-assed job" of conducting IMs don't have those kind of resources.
If you have maybe 3-4 regulars and maybe another couple of people that
show occassionally to practice, are usually lucky to send one team
to any local tournament, and get negligible administrative support,
(which is closer to reality for the majority of circuit AC programs) you
do not usually have the means to run a good IM. Not every program is
Chicago.

: IMs could and

: should be a way to increase awareness of and support for quiz bowl teams on
: the local campus.)

Ideally, yes.

: The question of the best use of funding and the

: opportunity cost inherent in participating in CBI is valid, though.

Ay, there's the rub, matey. :)

: > questions at CBI nationals did not effectively differentiate between

: > the top teams; as long as CBI chooses to value game "flow" and
: > appearance over producing valid results, CBI nationals will be a
: > pointless exercise for the teams there.

: People who play quiz bowl, and especially the better players, are often
: very competitive. Given that, I don't think that "producing valid results"
: is as much a concern for any other stakeholder in the game.

Sendhil is probably right here, unfortunately.

[snippage]

: ...but I don't feel de-affiliation is necessarily the best way to go about

: things. I think CBI may need a management overhaul. Given the current
: ownership structure and the challengers in the marketplace, I doubt this is
: forthcoming.

Leaving de-affiliation as the only option, really, is your dissatsifaction
has reached a certain level, which it seems is the case with Virginia.

: > remains company policy to produce questions that hamper players in

: > order to appeal to a presumed audience, and which do not produce
: > meaningful game results.

: The audience may be "presumed" now, but I hope (and I think CBI hopes) that
: it will be more real in the future. Witness "University Challenge" -- a TV
: show that garners respectable ratings and has a place in popular culture
: (admittedly in a country where TV sucks eggs and until recently there were
: 4 broadcast channels).

I don't know. I could see NAQT-like AC getting a cult following, maybe. Of
mostly educated people, who are good targets of advertising dollars.
Especially w/ enough trash questions. :)

: And I don't see how the game results aren't

: "meaningful" -- to me, the criterion of "being liked by the players who are
: currently the best on the circuit" hardly seems like inviolable or
: necessarily superior to others. So some players who would not beat Yaphe,
: Sheahan, Johnson et al. on circuit questions can beat them on these
: questions. So what? When things are laid out this way, this pillorying
: seems somewhat pissy and petty.

Well, any proposition can be made to sound ridiculous. I'm not sure that
is the entirety of Andrew's argument.

: De-affiliation may still be a sensible and

: sound decision -- CBI should not expect its customers to put up with a game
: they do not like, given that there are now more alternatives than ever
: before. But to take some kind of moral high ground seems pretty sophistic.

: > I am disappointed that we did not get to
: > compete against excellent teams like Harvard, Oklahoma, Chicago, Cornell,
: > and the others at nationals on questions that would better indicate
: > who the best teams really were.

: Again, I am not so quick to accept that Andrew's criterion of "the best
: teams" is somehow inherently true. If this is really the source of his
: disappointment, I cannot sympathize at all. If, on the other hand, poorly
: written or edited questions, or poorly adjudicated matches, disrupted
: teams' enjoyment of the game, I am all for their making their displeasure
: known (whether with a letter of complaint or through de-affiliation).

But these arguments are intertwined. If, at a given tournament, you have
poorly written questions poorly edited, and arbitralily and capriciously
adjudicated matches, you're going to get random results. (Note the
difference between unpredictable results and *random* results.) Taken far
enough, you might as well flip a coin.

There's nothing necessarily inherently wrong with a packet that lets a
George Washington or a Virginia Tech or even a Cow Chip State beat a
Virginia (though I might be quite suspicious _a priori_ of the latter.)
But the upset had better be due to VT or GW or whomever outplaying UVA in
that round, which can happen, and NOT b/c the people running the
tournament had decided that upsets were per se a Good Thing(tm).

The real debate, then, should be over whether CBI does what it does to
*randomize* results, intentionally or even inadvertently.

This is somewhat tricky to separate from that part of the "bad questions"
argument that CBI doesn't ask sufficiently challenging questions. Easy
questions have less of a chance to "separate the men from the boys" (or
"the women from the girls," for that matter).

Interestingly enough, this also applies to really hard questions. (The way
to tell which is the better HS math team is not usually to test them on
multivariable caluclus *ugh* any more than it is to test them on 2+2=4
type stuff.)

After these arguments comes the stuff that is at least partially a matter
of personal preference. (ACF partisans aren't big on pop culture, sports,
current events, or general knowledge, and would prefer less geography than
CBI does ; some of us would rather see more 20-th C. stuff than ACF types
would allow ; others have complained of a lack of social science questions
in all formats ; at least one player at CBI RCTs was rather annoyed that
there are so few math computation questions.) This may be Sendhil's main
point of objection to Andrew's arguments. But I'm not sure Andrew was even
arguing necessarily from personal preference.

: Bring on the flames,

: Sendhil
: --
:
: Sendhil Revuluri (s-rev...@uchicago.edu)
: University of Chicago

--

[John Sheahan]

Just a few comments of my own on the apparent economics of College Bowl,
incorporated...

First, one very interesting statistic that came up last weekend. Of the
packets that CBI sells for IMs, about 35-45% every year go to schools that
do not even bother to send a team to regionals. Perhaps a very small
number of these are school that mean to send a team but don't because of
some later problem, but it seems obvious that a very large chunk of CBI's
market is not geared in any way towards intercollegiate competition. In
other words, these are schools where some administrator buys the packets
as part of some on-campus entertainment program, along the lines of a
pizza study break, rock concert, etc.

I haven't actually done the counting, but I will assume that there were on
average about twelve teams per regional in 1997, for a total of about 180.
Of these, I would estimate that no more than 40 played the circuit in a
serious way, and that of these, only about half could make a credible
threat to deaffiliate-- the others being programs which lack sufficient
independence from their unions to even exist without ACUI (as Cornell
seems to be), or which seem to prefer CBI at its worst to NAQT.

So a breakdown of CBI's market would look like this:

Possible deaffiliators...........20
Other circuit teams .............20
Regionals-only teams ...........140
IM-only teams ..................120

Also, consider the market that CBI does not currently tap. Again, these
are just rough estimates:

Deaffiliated circuit teams.......20 (this may be a little high)
Other non-participants ........ 680
(The number of schools in the country is much higher, of course,
but it should be remembered that many have no campus life or mechanism for
organized student activities. I think 680 is a fair estimate of the
number of schools that could participate in AC, but don't. Anyway, it
brings my total up to 1000, which makes the math a bit easier).

Assume that CBI maximizes revenue by maximizing the number of teams that
buy packets while minimizing the production costs of those packets. (This
ignores the fact that IM-only schools are probably a bit more profitable
than schools that decide to go to regionals, but I don't think this really
changes the argument). Suppose that there are three variables that CBI
can control: the difficulty of the packets, the quality of the packets,
and the price charged. My argument is that CBI cannot improve (by our
perspective, anyway) _any_ of these without taking a serious financial
hit.

First, difficulty. By my count, about 80% of CBI's market depends on a
successful campus program-- in other words, at these schools would not buy
packets unless they can convince at least 50 or so people on the campus to
play in the IM tournament. Since (even at a Cornell) most of these people
will be once-a-year players, any marginal increase in difficulty above
Jeopardy-level will drive at least some people away-- and, multiplied over
360 schools, this means that even a very small increase in difficulty will
cause a buyer to tip past the point where they no longer attract enough
student IM-players to justify holding the IM, which loses CBI a customer.

This would not be important if every loss of a school at the bottom was
coupled with an equal or greater re-entry of schools at the top. But this
is unlikely to happen. First, the number of teams that would
reaffiliate (or decide not to deaffiliate) is very small-- no more than
40, and I suspect much smaller in practice, since many of the deaffiliated
schools seem to have done a rather thourough job of burning their bridges
behind them. For deaffiliated teams, there is also the problem that they
would have no way of noticing the improvement, absent very special
circumstances. In any case, a profit-maximizing CBI would settle on a
level of difficulty far below the tastes of the circuit.

One very important objection to this is that the difficulty-level for CBI
IM packets does not need to be the same as regionals or nationals. And
since the top end of the market generally doesn't care how bad IM packets
are, and the bottom end would have no way of knowing how hard or easy the
intercollegiate packets are, CBI could presumably keep both ends happy.

The problem here is that difficulty means a lot more than the actual
choice of answers within a packet. Instead, it is determined a lot more
by format-- filter versus pyramid bonuses, academic questions versus
everyday-knowledge, and-- above all-- the idea that you should be rewarded
more for guessing well (something most anybody can do) instead of knowing
a lot (which few college students seem to do). So this solution would
require that the NCT and RCT be fundamentally a very different game than
the IMs. But if this happens, the middle of the market drops out-- if I
were a player at UIC or Marquette who qualified for the RCT by virtue of
being good at the IM format, I would find this change of direction very
unfair. These are schools which are essentially asked to subsidize a NCT
that few of them will ever get a chance to participate in, after all.

Question quality might seem to be a different story, since presumably
nobody prefers inaccurate or boring questions. But here too, a rational
CBI would settle on a quality-control equilibrium that is something less
that what an experiences circuit team would demand. I think the reason
here is that, if my figures about are correct, about 75% of CBI's customer
base cannot tell the difference between a good question and a lousy
question, and even if they could, many of them (as individuals, often not
repeat customers) would not change their participation level as a result.
By contrast, on the circuit, virtually all of the market is very sensitive
to even minor lapses of quality. Teams will flock to tournaments that
have put on quality shows in the past (witness the last couple of Penn
Bowls), and stay away from tournaments with more suspect reputations
(witness the number of Harvest Bowl teams that stayed home for Larvae
Bowl).

This is important because every step taken to increase quality, every
re-reading of a packet, every doublechecking of a fact, has some cost--
whether in time or money. Each step taken also has a benefit-- the
increased likliehood that an additional team will sign up to play. So
presumably, every tournament organizer will take quality control steps so
long as the marginal cost of such a step is not greater than its marginal
utility. And this is the problem: CBI's market is much less sensitive to
quality, and so its marginal utility for quality control is always much
less than what it would be on the circuit. Even assuming that CBI can
take these steps at a lower marginal cost than a circuit team (this may be
untrue), it seems that the two lines will meet each other a lot quicker
for CBI. And because our expectations of question quality are more or
less fixed by the circuit, our dissatisfaction on this count is probably
unavoidable.

There is less to say about cost. Suffice to say that CBI will probably
adjust their price upward until it is just below the cost of the nearest
substitute good-- and for most schools, that substitute good is not NAQT
or ACF, but pizza-on-the-quads or a mediocre rock band or whatever else
the administrators would spend their entertainment funds on were it not
for CBI IM tournaments. Within reasonable limits, I think that the entire
market is fairly insentive to what CBI actually charges, and CBI is mostly
insensitive to what NAQT would charge.

A final suggestion that has been made is that the defection of top, "name"
teams hurts CBI because it hurts CBI's ability to get on TV. I think
there are two responses to make:

First, no matter how intolerable CBI questions become to the top circuit
teams, you could probably expect a stampede back into the CBI ranks once a
TV deal was signed. The ego is a powerful thing, and even within the
schools that are the most anti-CBI right now, I would expect resistance to
break down as soon as the current generation graduated.

Secondly, it does not matter that Virginia, Maryland, Tech, Berkeley, and
Illinois are gone-- even though this is easily half of the top echelon of
teams right now. Consider: of this year's NCT teams, only three (UIC,
Washington-Seattle, and UTD) represented schools that are not well-known
to the general public. Not to mention that there were still three Ivies,
plus Stanford.

Take it a step further: suppose _every_ team active on the circuit
deaffiliated. While it might take some targeted recruiting, CBI could
still put together a lineup of brand-name regional winners to compete on
TV. For example:

Region 1-- Brown
2-- Syracuse
3-- Rutgers
4-- Georgetown
5-- Kentucky
6-- Alabama
7-- Cincinnati
8-- UIC
9-- Indiana
10- Macalaster
11- Nebraska
12- LSU
13- Arizona
14- Washington
15- Cal-Irvine

Yes, this field would be a joke. But with the exception of regions 8, 10,
and 15, every team in the field would be a nationally-known athletic
power, or (in the case of Brown) an Ivy.

In all, deaffiliation should not make a difference to CBI getting back on
the air.

-JS
--

[Mike Zarren]

OK, my post went out before Sheahan's showed up. Ignore me & read his post.

-MZ

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Mike Zarren - mi...@tiac.net
Official With Slow Reaction Time, U of Chicago College Bowl Team
1997 NAQT Champions
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

[Mark Staloff]

A few things, mostly meta-issues, which after the responses I'm seeing on
the Harvard server on Sunday AM really seem to need to be hashed out
again.

1) I had no intention of bringing this subject up. I entered this thread
only after Alice posted her explanation of events, after which I kept my
responses to e-mail.

So it's kind of surprising to wake up this morning to find the equivalent
of "get over yourself". Please. No one's bashing Rostron anymore, only a
few people even commented on it, while about a half-dozen people (as
Andrew Yaphe pointed out) from Virginia (and John Edwards) are coming
forward to say what a wonderful guy he is and how the mob should lay off.
Which is just fine-- I posted last night exactly what I thought we should
do with he whole debate, and I stand by that now. Of course, that hadn't
arrived at the Virginia server by the time Alice posted her response, but
hopefully you'll take it into account now, nu?

2) The point of the story I told was not that "This was some horrible
thing Rostron did," because that wasn't what we were upset about, so
much as we just sort of found it bizarre. I mentioned it simply because
Alice said that whatever he did after they won the match was directed at
CBI, not us, so I mentioned something separate to point out that his
motivations were perhaps directed somewhere other than CBI. Something
which people have pointed out was clear from the other thing he did that
we've been talking about, but none of this is new ground, so whatever.

My point was not that we were so awfully offended by that, so much as we
just felt it was kind of out of place. I e-mailed Andy about this, and
Adam said it elsewhere. I hope this clarifies things, a bit.

3) If anyone wants to know why I didn't immediately accept Rostron's
apology-- as I said last night, I'll be more than happy to discuss this in
e-mail. I don't have the energy or patience to respond to a half-dozen
members of the Virginia squad, on something I didn't intend to get into in
the first place, and I don't think the newsgroup cares any longer.

Mark

[Gary Greenbaum]

Richard Mason <maso...@robby.caltech.edu> wrote:

>I can easily imagine viewers watching CBI on CBS and asking,
>"How come East Bufu State is in the championship this year,
>but Ivy University isn't?" Or, on a less extreme level,

>"Okay, Stanford won California again... Hey, how come they
>didn't have to play Berkeley?"

See my other post, this date. CBI could fairly easily recruit teams
from selected schools, even deaffiliated schools.

Given scholarship money availability, I think CBI could rather
easily recruit a team from a deaffiliated school, without reference to
the local academic competition club. In fact, CBI might choose to
disqualify all players who have played intercollegiately.

>Maybe if CBI gets on TV and their fees come down, all the
>de-affiliated schools will start participating again.
>If not, it seems like a good opportunity for a rival TV program...

Oh sure. CBI has tried for ten years to get back on TV. How is Joe
A.C.F.N.Q.A.T. Student going to get his program on TV? Especially

when CBI starts making copyright noises. Good luck!

Gary Greenbaum

[Matt Larson]

As far as the OSU-Iowa protest, yes it was done according to CBI rules.
And we lost. Not because of that protest, but because in the end, Ohio
State scored more points than we did.
It just frustrates me that the error occured, and the match was decided by
5 points in the end.
End of discussion. I'm not discussing it anymore...=)

Matt Larson

mala...@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu | http://www.leepfrog.com/~brog/matt.html

Matt's Latest Favorite Dead World Leader...

Aethelred the Unready

[hohzo]

On 27 Apr 1997, Michael Starsinic wrote:

> Somewhere early in this question (don't remember if it was a current events or
> vague geography lead-in), Iowa takes a -5. I believe the answer had been
> nailed down to an African country when Jim Bales reads the final line as "this
> former Portuguese territory _in_ [emphasis mine] the Indian Ocean." Being
> fairly sure there aren't any ex-Portuguese territories in the Indian Ocean, I
> incorrectly guess "Madagascar". Jim says, "No, Mozambique," - obviously not a
> country in the Indian Ocean.
>
> At the half, we inquired about the wording of the question. Knowing CBI's high
> standards of question writing quality control, we assumed the card had said
> "in". It didn't. The question correctly read "on". Jim Bales had misread it,
> and the judge, Mary Oberempt, had failed to catch it and correct him (which I
> saw several other judges do during the tournament). The two of them stepped
> outside the room, and came back in shortly with the decision to give a question
> for OSU only off the clock, because as Jim said, the misread gave "destructive"
> (his word) information. (I do not know who else, if anyone, they consulted.)

1. What in the name of [insert deity's name here] is 'destructive
information??? :) That sounds like newspeak or something to me! *laughs*

2. This kind of reader error always seems to be difficult to judge. I did
not hear the question referred to, but a couple of observations on this
kind of situation will follow:

I have sometimes heard a moderator say something like 'in 1996' when all
of the rest of the question makes it obvious that it must be something
else, like '1966,' for example. In that case, I just have to contextually
make sense of the question as a player, as whether a typo or a moderator
error, there's more to the question than the one word.

As for the question in question, I would have had to assume (especially
depending on what the previous info given was) that one would be less
likely to substitute 'Portuguese' for 'French' so that the 'on' slip would
still lead to processing the question as 'on the Indian Ocean.' That's a
lot to expect, but I had one of the worst moderators in high school & so
learned such 'tricks.' :)

At the base of the Mozambique question is what information was given
previous to 'in the Indian Ocean.' If they said something really uniquely
identifying (which I have no idea that they did) ("Its capital is Maputo."
or something), then Mozambique should be the only accepted answer despite
a misspoken word.

-Robert,
o que saiba do mundo lusof'ono
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Renda-se como eu me rendi. Mergulhe no que nao conhece como eu mergulhei.
Nao se preocupe em entender. Viver ultrapassa todo entendimento."
--Clarice Lispector
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Robert Trent robert...@uiowa.edu U. of Iowa Comp. Lit.