Mike pointed this out to me, it would make a good companion site to BevNet, for your Pop Culture: Food & Drink needs.
Also please take note that Mike is looking for nominations for the Trash Nobels, to be awarded next week. Help out by nominating.

Little else to report today, save we got the last of the big beast done last night, and hopefully we kill off the next big one tonight. Meanwhile the day job has set tomorrow as the absolute final drop on the latest release. It goes tomorrow, and at this point, speaking as a tester, I can only say get it out of here.

Open mike night again: Tim and Anthony and Ed and Bill and Charlie's posts on the Yahoo club are available, and even Seth manages to make a good point on qbflame, once you clean the bile off it (bucket of club soda and a wire brush). If I don't get to one that you post on the Yahoo club (and there have been a lot of good takes on this) I apologize, but you can always send it here. Phil sent this one in to me(yes, I know it's a rebroadcast)

The Future of the Circuit

Just so everybody understands my perspective – I am a 3rd-year law student at Villanova who has been playing since 1994. I guess you could call me a dinosaur. I played while an undergrad at Georgetown, and currently can be seen at various trash tournaments around the country, or reading at events. Even though I am a so-called dinosaur, I will scare no one at an academic tournament. I do serve as the advisor for Villanova, as we try to integrate ourselves into the circuit.

The circuit has cockroach-type survival ability, and I suspect that in five years, it will still be around, with the 50 or so schools that are always around being there, and the 30 other sporadic schools dropping out and other ones catching on, with a few exceptions.

Almost all invitational tournaments are too hard. There are several reasons for this. One is the one-person written set, in my estimation, largely an exercise by a good player to try to get even better by doing all the research and legwork, but further squeezing what should and should not be asked. Another is existence of tournaments such as Michigan’s Kleist/Artaud, whatever you wish to call it. Please do not posit the argument that if you don’t want to play, don’t show up, that’s not what I’m driving at. My point is that people get the idea to write the hardest questions they can find, and this directive from one of the most successful and prominent programs (Michigan) permeates the circuit. It’s a difficult to measure trickle-down effect, but I think it is there.

The biggest reason for difficulty skyrocketing is TD’s desire to please only the best players. Anyone who understands basic marketing can tell you that you should shoot to please the greatest number, so let’s say the aim is to please the middle 50%, not the three best players/teams, or the top 25%. It seems to me that the infamous Chip Beall may have figured this out, and CBI has to a degree. I am not arguing we should mimic them, but I think there is a way to structure circuit packets/activities in the same way.

Graduate students are needed. Think of the tournaments you attended in the past year, and who was running them. I attended 2 NAQT tournaments, Penn Bowl, JCV, and Pitt’s Omar Bongo. NAQT largely grad students and beyond, PB is run by Samer T. Ismail, and Tim Young is at GW. Only Pitt was undergrad-free, and the finals were bastard teams made up of grad students and beyond. My point is that’s who is running the circuit these days. I would love the idea of the Masters Competition Circuit. Every year I’ve read at ACF, some older hangers-on invariably play. It’s bothersome and should be stopped.

I’ve argued for a schedule before, I do think it would help. Basically, a central body would schedule the tournaments. Attendance is very sparse at many events, causing a waste of extremely limited resources. More stuff seems to be cancelled than ever before. If fundraising is the issue, high school tourneys provide much better margins.

So, in conclusion, the circuit will remain, but no one seems to have the vision to move it forward. The qb community are largely not salespeople by nature, and some degree of marketing will be needed to ensure its expansion. It’s a great game, and it survives through dedication by people; I’d like to see their efforts go more rewarded.

Phil Castagna
JD/MBA 2003
Advisor, Villanova ACC