First of all some fun bits:

24 premieres tonight. Just watch it. If they manage to make it half as good as last year, you can thank me later.

I ran across someone mentioning this short biography of Piet Hein I had run across his work in old Martin Gardner columns, but it appears that he's an order of magnitude cooler than even I thought. Anyone who can combine mathematics, architecture, and satire is one formidable dude. The superellipse was the first thing that I ever looked at and immediately was able to grasp its aesthetic virtue.

Maybe it's the only flower of the season, but maybe it's just the first.
Word came from Eric Bell that he had had a school sign up for one of his HS events which qualified under Title I. That's one of the good signs. If we can draw in more teams like that, that's a big step toward dropping the stigma of quiz bowl being just for "elitist suburban schools." Yeah, we still get dogged by that.

In reply to the reply to the reply:

Eric, I'm not underestimating the value of travel, but when travel for most teams consists of enjoying the great Motel 6's of the world, arriving late at night, playing, and then leaving after the tournament to head back home, I have to think that you might be overestimating the value. The majority of tournaments aren't exactly travel destinations, but a few are. There's room for both.

And as for the question of playing with the university money versus your own, it may be true, but should that matter? Whether your team has to fight for the budget money, or earn their own cash, it's the same shade of green. You may not be able to spend university funds in all the same places, but the investment principle is the same; it's a resource that needs to be divided up, and we should all be watchful of how it gets divided. If you want to argue this as the extension of my old rule that high school teams will spend their budget in the least logical way, you're welcome to.

As for the argument that new people will possibly be annoying... Well, would it be any less annoying than the circuit is now? The circuit talks more angrily than it's ever done before. I may be privileged in remembering a time when the circuit forums were actually reasonably pleasant, but it's really nasty out there, and the lesson being broadcast out there is if you want to be heard, speak louder and flame more hurtfully. I grant you it's a possibility that what is brought in will be worse that what's here, but the favorable outcome is far more probable.

Why I think the density can be achieved (certainly east of the Mississippi, beyond there, or California, it's iffy.): Take a look at any listing of the colleges within your state (I used the list at infoplease.com). It is my belief that any school with 1000 students could support a team. There should be enough people familiar with the concept of quiz bowl there that they could do it (not will, but could). It doesn't matter whether it's Directional State or Ivy Tech. If we can just put them all together... I'm not foolish enough to think that will happen overnight, but give us five years, and there's hope.

Eric is essentially correct in saying that there's not a groundswell supporting the idea of growth. For now. Like anything else, it needs a catalyst. It demands someone looking beyond this year, beyond even when they might not even be part of the circuit. I admit I'm trying to raise some rabble, but I'm also trying to raise awareness. If you've ever had that feeling during a tournament, "there has to be more than this." I'm trying to scratch that itch for you.

Let me tackle Eric's four components, they do summarize the basics requirements:
1. (a sufficiently motivated individual with organizational skill) is easy enough.(the actual level of organization needed at the beginning is remarkably small, it's only when you formally organize as a club that this comes into play.) And component 1 will easily collect component 2 (people interested in competing). Component 3 (money, basically) is harder to come by, but does have some degree of scalability. You can get by with less. (fewer tournaments, certainly, but what's required for one tournament isn't much. No one ever required teams to go to every tournament.) 4 (the catalyst to put everything in motion) is the mystery. To a certain degree we've fallen into the expectation that 1 will find 4 for themselves (maybe they find the Yahoo club, or something similar). The problem is that 4 is pretty inert. Part of what I'm proposing is reversing that order. What happens if 4 actively seeks out 1? What if we make 4 more available? Now I'm not exactly talking about prosetlyzing the masses. Nobody's got the time for door to door sales. But a more open and active presence is possible, increasing the awareness of what we do outside of our little box.