Pardon the BloggEruption

Quizbowl Thoughts

In response to things posted by Dwight and others in the IRC chat and over at the Quizbowl Yahoo! group, I'm going to start posting some quasi-rambling thoughts on issues as my thoughts on them coalesce. Lucidity is not guaranteed here, but I encourage comments and feedback, as always. (BTW, thanks for reading, Brian)

On Graduate Students and Other Dinosaurs:
I’m one of them now. Yip-yip-yip-yip-yahoo! I’m also really not that great of a player. On a team of four, I’d probably make a good second chair / captain, since on typical ACF / NAQT type questions my PPG is somewhere around 30-40. This goes up to about 50-60 when playing solo or as the go-to-guy on my squad. All Star Level? Maybe, but nothing to get overly excited about. Plenty of undergraduates have and will continue to hand me solid defeats. Now that I’m playing solo, and doing so in a region whose circuit is not exactly powerful, I’m still not likely to crush even the youngest teams I face.

Case in point, I narrowly beat a weak Rice B team 115-110 last weekend on BRRR questions. Granted, I whammied four bonuses, but still, they could have answered a single additional bonus part and won the game. I certainly wasn’t holding back their progress or confidence.

So, in terms of playing in tournaments, writing questions, etc., I think that the suggestions and implications that graduate students and older folks are ruining the game and upping difficulty is a whole lot of bunk. Others have made this argument a bit more eloquently than I, so I won’t rehash their points on this one.

That being said, however, I do think that graduate students, older players, and even the top-notch undergraduates can hurt the development and such of younger and newer players … during practice. We often go full speed in practice, nailing tossups extremely early and cutting off bonuses before the parts are finished being read. While simulating game experiences and allowing top-tier folks to flex their proverbial QB muscles, it does little good for new folks to sit there dumbfounded as one line is read of a tossup and an answer which they may or may not be familiar with (let alone actually hear clearly) is quickly given. Newer and younger folks need to hear full questions, even if someone has already nailed it, so that they can begin to make the connection between clues and answers. This is so imperative, and I believe that too many potential players are being scared away.

So, my message to the top-level players of today: hold back on a packet or two in practice. Hold off answering until the tossup is done. Hell, buzz in in your head and keep your own score for all I care. Before anyone accuses me of coddling new players, consider this: you’d be amazed how much answering a question or two at practice encourages otherwise marginal players to get better, attend more practices, write questions, and help out at tournaments. I’ve seen it happen. They may not become the next God or Goddess of QB, but we need people willing to do the work at all levels.