College Bowl "On Hiatus"

[mmb5]

Full story on their home page.  Since the TV program went off the air in 1970, they continued the program on campus to varying degrees of success, derision and ridicule.  They were trying very hard over the last four years to get a TV deal to get at least the one-offs they had in the past, but one never came by.


--Mike

[Don Howard]

[quote name=\'mmb5\' post=\'188029\' date=\'Jun 12 2008, 10:34 AM\']
Full story on their home page.  Since the TV program went off the air in 1970, they continued the program on campus to varying degrees of success, derision and ridicule.  They were trying very hard over the last four years to get a TV deal to get at least the one-offs they had in the past, but one never came by.
[/quote]
I'm sorry to hear about that. Having coached the team at the university I used to work at for two years and having been graciously invited back to be one of the moderators when that campus hosted the 2007 event for their region, I remember how much fun the participants and other personnel had at the tournaments.

[TLEberle]

[quote name=\'mmb5\' post=\'188029\' date=\'Jun 12 2008, 07:34 AM\']Full story on their home page.  Since the TV program went off the air in 1970, they continued the program on campus to varying degrees of success, derision and ridicule.  [/quote]Now I'm curious. I remember reading somewhere or other that College Bowl's material was wanting, and NAQT filled the void for people who like their quiz bowl to be more brain burning, but where else would derision be derived?

[mmb5]

[quote name=\'TLEberle\' post=\'188106\' date=\'Jun 13 2008, 12:36 AM\']
Now I'm curious. I remember reading somewhere or other that College Bowl's material was wanting, and NAQT filled the void for people who like their quiz bowl to be more brain burning, but where else would derision be derived?
[/quote]
Disclaimer - I am no longer involved with NAQT, I left the group earlier this year semi-amicably.

Oh, where to begin?

Up until the mid-90s, if you played quiz bowl in college, College Bowl was your only choice.  The problem became, at most, you would play three times a year -- the IM tournament, the regional tournament and the national tournament.  However, if you didn't win your IM tournament, you weren't playing in the regional tournament, and if you didn't win the regional tournament, you didn't play in the national tournament.  Many campuses also played their IMs as a single elimination tournament, meaning you may have played one game in the entire year.  Also, the focus of College Bowl (which I'll be referring to as CBI) always was even after TV dried up that they were still a TV show -- the material lent itself to being TV friendly, even if there was no TV.

In the early 90s, in order to get more playing in, some schools started organizing tournaments.  These tournaments also tilted the bent of the questions away from more of a current-events/accessible-to-all to more rigorous college level of questions, plus losing the elements of questions that made them more TV friendly, like using word play or tangential information to get answers.  Great for the players who were rote memorizers, but no longer compelling TV, or even fake TV.  This eventually led to the "ACF"-style of play, which was pretty much hard core classics, science, literature and history with a smattering of fine arts and nothing else.

However, there was still a group of players that wanted some of the ACF-innovations but not the obscurity.  That led to the formation of NAQT, which at the time was supposed to be a middle ground.  Plus a fourth organization, Colonial's own TRASH - which got rid of those pesky history and classics questions and kept it to mass media and sports.  So you now had this overwhelming level of choice, all of it except for CBI with a heavy player and recent player-led leadership.

CBI decided to consider all of this a threat, not in the competition of the game, but in the idea that one of these other formats might get on TV first.  They threatened tournaments with lawsuits.  They clung fast to their geographical regional system where one group has most of the Ivy League battling for one spot in their national tournament while Portland Community College represented the Northwest.  They required teams to have a university employee as a chaperone.  They bullied players, they treated them like children and it cost a school four-figures in entry fees to play if they advanced to the regionals.  They began to slowly lose their voice in the marketplace.  The winner of the 1997 championship (UVa) immediately declared they were no longer playing CBI.  Other schools were leaving left and right.  They became a running joke in the circuit.

As this was going on, the other formats (NAQT, ACF and TRASH) answer set gradually crept to be more difficult, to the point today that they are very difficult for a novice and the barrier of entry became high.  Teams started dropping all over the place, because getting new players is incredibly difficult.  There may be less than half the number of players than there were 10 years ago.  The marketplace shrunk.  The college-run tournament with the exception of questions in the ACF-style have disappeared.   The archetype player is now pretty much an ACF-partisan, NAQT is now-somewhat derided as being CBI-like because the material is more accessible while CBI is just considered a lost cause.  Why ask questions about Arthur Miller when you can ask questions about Antonin Artuad, instead?

With that derision in the marketplace causing a lack of players, somebody had to lose.  And that loser was CBI.  They had way too much overhead -- they had a staff in L.A. still waiting for their big TV break.  If they had dropped the TV dream years ago, moved to a cheaper location, dropped their attitude and offered differentiating product, they could have limped on longer.  NAQT's only sustainable market is the high school game, the college game is not profitable/break-even.  ACF is entirely volunteer.

It's not a happy day in quiz bowl land.  For their faults, I really enjoyed my time as a player and I wish that there was still room for them.  To finally get this to game shows, some of your great game show players of recent history (Ken Jennings, Kevin Olmstead, Brad Rutter) were trained on CBI-style questions.


--Mike

[That Don Guy]

Wasn't another problem with CBI the fact that (a) you could only use "their" questions, and (b) you had to pay some outrageous amount for the privilege?  (I recall one university - Michigan? - announcing they were dropping out of the CB program pretty much the day after they won the national championship.)

The main stumbling blocks I see with College Bowl returning to television:
(a) you would have to dumb down the questions in order to maintain enough viewer interest to make it feasible (either that, or put it on a lower-tier cable channel like TLC);
(b) there is no way any network is going to air the championships if there is the possibility of an "if necessary" game (CBS even got the NCAA to change the baseball and softball tournaments from true double-elimination to a "single championship game" format; it was only when they moved back to ESPN did they start the two-out-of-three final series they have now), and I don't think the schools would be particularly happy with a forced "winner-take-all" championship game.

-- Don

[Jeremy Nelson]

That is sad to hear. I currently play in Honda Campus All Star Challenge, which is basically College Bowl for Black Colleges. Our question packs are basically the same stuff they write for College Bowl,but with a little more black history thrown in. Overall, the questions were challenging, but easy enough to entice a new player to give the game a try.

This past year, I was the captain at Alcorn State University. After losing the national championship by five measly points, I got an e-mail from the College Bowl captain at Mississippi State. He wanted to invite us to their tournament, and explained that they played NAQT style. I was a pretty familiar with the style of play,since that's what we used in high school. When I got hold of a college NAQT question pack, my team and I were a bit overwhelmed. We couldn't go anyways, so we would never have figured out how capable we were under NAQT. For next year, as far as I know, our questions are staying the same.

I don't know if College Bowl is too easy, or if NAQT is too hard, but without College Bowl, that Vanna White toss-up I got would have never seen the light of day

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'rollercoaster87\' post=\'188134\' date=\'Jun 13 2008, 09:42 AM\']I don't know if College Bowl is too easy, or if NAQT is too hard, but without College Bowl, that Vanna White toss-up I got would have never seen the light of day [/quote]
Remember, though, that easy vs hard is only one part of the equation.  There's accuracy, there's style and there's the placement of the questions on the basis of difficulty, which is a different thing.  For example, a preposterously easy toss-up question can work, because it's still a matter of who gets it first.  But if you have preposterously easy bonus questions, you're essentially just handing out points and wasting time.

We've chosen NAQT to write most of the material for QuizBusters because we like their style.  The knocks I've heard about them (mostly from veteran HS coaches) is that they're too difficult for entry-level players, that they are too heavy on humanities and too light on science, and that they have a tendency to go to the same well of material too often.  Still, I've also read for CBI-written tournaments fairly recently, and the difference in quality was striking.

[mmb5]

[quote name=\'That Don Guy\' post=\'188133\' date=\'Jun 13 2008, 09:42 AM\']
Wasn't another problem with CBI the fact that (a) you could only use "their" questions, and (b) you had to pay some outrageous amount for the privilege?  (I recall one university - Michigan? - announcing they were dropping out of the CB program pretty much the day after they won the national championship.)
[/quote]
It was Virginia that pulled the stunt in 1997.  Michigan won the year before with the founder of NAQT on the team and also won a few times afterwards.  When the "ACF mentality" crept into the Michigan program, CBI became dead.  They only recently reappeared in regionals, and that was only because of institutional pressure, e.g. either play CBI or lose your funding.

Rollercoaster's points drive home of why collegiate-level quizbowl is dying, and why CBI was a victim.  His team considered NAQT to be too hard.  Most of the people active in quizbowl right now would reject that outright, you would be told "you must study" and "learn the canon".  Even myself I consider NAQT to be too hard now, although it happened gradually.  If you played NAQT questions that are of older vintage, you wouldn't find it too hard.  The hardening became a reaction to what the customer base allegedly wanted.  If you as a freshman come into a practice, you hear the players playing say such things as why are these questions so easy when the answers are Heinrich von Kliest or the Battle of Frazier's Farm, what would you do?  Those kinds of players never continue after that horrific first practice or tournament, and that was CBI's customer base.  They had over 250 teams play regionals ten years ago.  This year, that number was 123.


--Mike

[colonial]

AFAIK, HCASC, University Challenge and similar fare will continue.

I penned this on my barely-updated blog last week, but I would have to think the rise of the Internet message board played a key role in CBI's demise.  I first played CBI in a 1992 campus tournament (George Washington) -- I'd only hear about tournaments through word of mouth (teammates) or snail mail.  

Once the first quizbowl message board, alt.college.college-bowl, came about, players, coaches and alumni now had a forum to discuss the state of the game, as well as criticisms of what they didn't like.  And CBI quickly became public enemy #1.

The anti-CBI fervor pretty much hit its boiling point around 1997, during the NCT in Montclair (NJ) State University.  CBI held a forum to discuss the state of CBI, and let's just say CBI's issues were a lot different than what most of the players wanted to talk about.   CBI wanted to focus on regional locations and logistical issues, while players (primarily those who played at non-CBI tourneys) wanted to discuss issues with question quality, rules, behavior and concerns that CBI wasn't giving a fair shake to HCASC teams if they wanted to attend non-HCASC tourneys.

The finals came and went -- the team CBI didn't want to win (the team that featured at least two players and two advisors most vocal about CBI issues) beat the team CBI allegedly wanted to win.  Before the match, the two teams and CBI officials argued for an hour over who would moderate the three games (long story short -- both sides agreed on two of the three moderators.  The "anti-CBI" team wanted me to moderate the third game -- I was a moderator for that tourney -- while the other team wanted a moderator who allegedly made crude remarks to one of the "anti-CBI" team's advisors.  The other team won out).

With the rise of NAQT and ACF, pretty much all "name" schools withdrew from CBI, and CBI became a non-issue on message boards.

Is quizbowl harder than it was 10 years ago?  Absolutely.  I received a brunt of complaints the last year I ran TRASH about questions being too easy, and that TRASH wasn't "canon-friendly."  Unlike CBI, TRASH received a great deal of positive feedback from players in response to the criticism.  

On the other hand, I soon realized that this little collective I helped create became, like CBI before it and NAQT today, a target -- something I didn't want.  Perhaps being a target means you are doing something right and you've made a name for yourself, but at the same time I didn't want something originally intended as being fun for teams become the subject of personal attacks and the like.  Also realizing that I now had a personal life that took priority, I became an emeritus advisor to TRASH -- a position I enjoy as I don't have to worry about writing questions

Back to the Internet...not only do you have message boards, you now have archives of tournament questions available for free online, as well as podcasts of tournaments.  Players can now memorize "buzz" words and certain clues to remember an answer for future tourneys, as well as develop harder clues for future tournaments.  As a result, CBI's question style became outdated by most QB players.

It also didn't help that most of the CBI head honchos were difficult to speak with and tended to look down on players if they complained about anything.  I saw that firsthand.  However, there are good people who worked for them -- I've played against 2-3 of CBI's writers in tournaments, for instance -- and I hope they bounce back.

James

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'colonial\' post=\'188155\' date=\'Jun 13 2008, 09:32 AM\']
I received a brunt of complaints the last year I ran TRASH about questions being too easy, and that TRASH wasn't "canon-friendly."[/quote]
As someone fairly unversed in the QB/TRASH scene (someone PLEASE tell me why there isn't a TRASH presence in Seattle? I'd be all over it.), can you elaborate on what "canon" refers to in this sense?

[mmb5]

[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'188159\' date=\'Jun 13 2008, 01:04 PM\']
As someone fairly unversed in the QB/TRASH scene (someone PLEASE tell me why there isn't a TRASH presence in Seattle? I'd be all over it.), can you elaborate on what "canon" refers to in this sense?
[/quote]
You don't have a geographical density of universities/colleges to make the venture worthwhile.  There usually has to be four teams to make it a go.

The "canon" refers to an acceptable answer set, you may ask about these writers, these works, these scientific concepts, etc. and no others.  I personally think that's a crock of whatever, but my view would be a minority opinion among the current quizbowl crowd.


--Mike

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'mmb5\' post=\'188160\' date=\'Jun 13 2008, 10:25 AM\']
You don't have a geographical density of universities/colleges to make the venture worthwhile.  There usually has to be four teams to make it a go.[/quote]
Is it a school-based thing? Yeah, that would make sense. I always thought it was a private-team thing, like bar trivia.

The "canon" refers to an acceptable answer set, you may ask about these writers, these works, these scientific concepts, etc. and no others.  I personally think that's a crock of whatever, but my view would be a minority opinion among the current quizbowl crowd.

And yet, completely in line with mine. That's ridiculous. Is it a test of knowledge or a test of study skills?

[mmb5]

[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'188165\' date=\'Jun 13 2008, 02:33 PM\']
Is it a school-based thing? Yeah, that would make sense. I always thought it was a private-team thing, like bar trivia.[/quote]
TRASH is generally not school-based anymore, but it's hard to play without them.  My team -- The Mike Keenan Employment Agency -- has had the same core of three now for 11 years, with the fourth player changing so much it's become like being a Spin̈al Tap drummer.  In fact, four of the past ones have played as The Mike Keenan Unemployment Line.

And yet, completely in line with mine. That's ridiculous. Is it a test of knowledge or a test of study skills?

It's become a test of study skills.  High schoolers started doing that a while back and it migrated to the college game.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'mmb5\' post=\'188167\' date=\'Jun 13 2008, 12:09 PM\']
TRASH is generally not school-based anymore, but it's hard to play without them.  My team -- The Mike Keenan Employment Agency -- has had the same core of three now for 11 years, with the fourth player changing so much it's become like being a Spin̈al Tap drummer.  In fact, four of the past ones have played as The Mike Keenan Unemployment Line.[/quote]
Gotta say, I like the name of the latter team better.

It's become a test of study skills.  High schoolers started doing that a while back and it migrated to the college game.

Ah, ok. Yeah, when I was in high school, they had something called the Academic Decathalon, which was not like QB at all. Basically it was a whole lot of lunch hours blown in the name of study sessions and lectures, followed by a Saturday spent taking high-pressure written tests. My counselor tried to recruit me, I pointed out that I have plenty of studying to do and test-tasking to endure that I actually receive school credit for and why in God's name would I want to subject myself to more "for funsies" when it wasn't like I was brownnosing for bullet points on a college application anyhow? (I'd already decided to do the CC thing for a couple years and transfer, a decision I was very happy with and still heartily recommend.) She didn't have an answer for me. The conversation was terminated quickly thereafter.

We did have Knowledge Bowl, which was precisely QB, and I played in it my senior year when someone else dropped out because it was the same day as the prom, they were scrambling for a replacement, and they realized I was a bit of a trivia whiz. Our team was basically three of my friends who all subjected themselves to Academic Decathalon and me. Guess who carried the team on all of the TRASH-style questions?

[TLEberle]

[quote name=\'mmb5\' post=\'188160\' date=\'Jun 13 2008, 10:25 AM\']The "canon" refers to an acceptable answer set, you may ask about these writers, these works, these scientific concepts, etc. and no others.  I personally think that's a crock of whatever, but my view would be a minority opinion among the current quizbowl crowd.[/quote]Oh, yeah. That's a crock pot full of shenanigans, but it's their organization to run. The problem is that if you artificially restrict the sphere of what can be asked, it'll end up making the material that much harder. For example, if you can only ask about our solar system as it pertains to the universe and astronomy, you'll have to come up with more obscure material, otherwise the game becomes one of memorization and not knowledge.

That's too bad, because knowledge bowl et al was really the only school activity where I showed any sort of skill or acumen. Sports, band/orchestra, drama? Forget it. And I didn't have grades at the tippy top enough to be part of the Honor Society, but by golly I could play knowledge bowl. It would be a shame to lose that as an entity.