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Help with a new conference

Discussion of quizbowl topics not related to specific tournaments
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CentraliaCoach
Posts: 261
Joined: Thu Feb 18, 2010 12:38 pm

Help with a new conference

Post by CentraliaCoach »

Our conference is going to expand to 10 teams next season. Currently, we play weekly games until each team has faced every team, then there is a Saturday tournament. Including that conference tournament, 10 of our 14 matches would be consumed by our conference, leaving little room for tournaments.

Our football team is splitting the Conference into a north vs. south division, but they don't have the flexibility that QB does, in that they can't play 5 games in one day. I'd also like to avoid splitting since some good rivalries are bound to fizzle out.

Basically, what can you tell me about weekend round-robins? What are the pros and cons? How do we set them up? I'd like to be able to propose something to my conference sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks!

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Charlie Dees
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Location: Columbia, MO

Re: Help with a new conference

Post by Charlie Dees »

I strongly recommend running your conference as some kind of weekend only tournament. Unfortunately, if you were to use the MSHSAA format that would probably force you to run the tournament over at least two weekends. However, if you are in some kind of leadership role, I think a good solution would be to use an NAQT A-set then run a 10 game round robin on that. A-sets run on 20/20 rounds, have 3 line tossups that are ideally easier than standard pyramidal writing, and should allow you to very easily fit 9 games in before 3 PM, not counting a final. If for whatever reason that is not a possibility, I would then recommend figuring out a way to run a tournament where teams play 5 games one Saturday then four the next. Given MSHSAA's unenlightened stance on the fact that a match within a tournament can also bafflingly count as a tournament, I think something like this would do a lot to free up the calendar in your conference. Having never been to a school with conference duals, it seems to an outsider that they don't offer a lot of advantages compared to just playing a calendar full of Saturday tournaments.

MCCoach
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Joined: Tue Mar 16, 2010 8:47 am

Re: Help with a new conference

Post by MCCoach »

I don't think that weekends only will work. As we are all small schools and have students involved in multiple activites, going to a weekend format would eliminate a lot of players. I also don't like the NAQT format that we have seen in several tournaments this year.

I know 10 out of 14 takes up some tournament time, but is there any way that we could do some type of round robin and stay on Thursday nights?

Jason Loy
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Joined: Wed Mar 11, 2009 12:00 am

Re: Help with a new conference

Post by Jason Loy »

Keep in mind that using questions from NAQT does not necessarily using their game format. S&T's spring tournament, for one, used NAQT questions in a modified Missouri-format. Regardless of opinions about game format, I think we can all agree that NAQT's questions are preferable to QG's.

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DeckardCain
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Re: Help with a new conference

Post by DeckardCain »

Probably the most elegant way to stay on weeknights and still play nine other teams exactly once each is to use the "quad" format and play three games a night on three nights. Keeping the Saturday tournament in the mix, this takes your number of used dates down from ten to four, which seems a reasonable compromise. This also gives you some flexibility on travel, as you can pick a central location to host each of the quad meets (or just rotate hosts, or whatever).

As Jason alluded to, buying questions from NAQT does not necessitate using that format (although a full round-robin on a Saturday among ten teams in that format would work perfectly). Our spring tournament at Missouri S&T used a hybrid Missouri/NAQT format: NAQT questions converted into four-quarter rounds of 32 tossups and 16 bonuses, which seemed to be well-received. I suppose I would have to hear what exactly the objection is to the NAQT format to have a better idea of what alternative format to suggest.

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