ThePocketProtector wrote:My point is the lack of playing OAC during the year disincentivizes teams to go to OAC regionals and learn another format for one tournament.
I do not see it this way, at all. In the northern part of the Southeast Region - be it defined as Fairfield, Licking, Delaware, Franklin and Muskingum Counties - both currently and in at least the previous 4-5 years, there are many entrants into the OAC Regionals field that at best only play one OAC event but in the case of many others play
zero. A lot of these teams qualify out of leagues that are not OAC format, and play virtually nothing else during the rest of the year: such as Olentangy HS and Orange, Licking Heights, Fairfield Christian, and, in recent years, Bishop Rosecrans, Liberty Union, Granville, to name a few.
ThePocketProtector wrote: I will admit that I hear from coaches that don’t want to teach their players another format just for regionals.
That is the choice of the coaches. There are plenty of coaches that don't
want to do anything to make their teams competitive, in any format. Imagine how competitive, how widespread, and how prominent Ohio quiz bowl would be if every coach was as dedicated and impassioned toward not just the game but also effecting their team's abilities to the maximum as the coaches are on the OAC Committee, as well as coaches such as you and Cortney Bird, to name a few, are. Now imagine how far that expectation is from what reality is today, in Ohio quiz bowl 2019. It's hard to help those who choose not to help themselves; full stop.
ThePocketProtector wrote:This was more the case when “0-2 then barbeque” was a strong possibility. That isn’t the fault of them playing NAQT questions. They weren’t prepared for the regional tournament by playing on the same nonpyramidal OAC questions multiple times, and I will argue till my dying breathe on that point. Would maybe more play in OAC regionals if they were still playing nonpyramidal OAC in league?
There are teams in the Southeast Region I have both played against, and read for, that come in with paltry at best OAC format experience and make it to Rounds 4 and 5. There are also Central Ohio teams in the Southeast Region that play OAC format in league, and have been seen at an OAC Saturday event, who I have both played and read for, that go 0-2 year in and year out as a regular attendee at regionals - one of those coaches has remarked in the past "these questions benefit private schools and big schools" (this school has enrollment in the 200's-low 300's.)
As for pyramidal/nonpyramidal - who knows? The accessibility and quantity of pyramidal questions found online, both OAC format and non-OAC format, is unprecedented. I don't even think one can find OAC format practice questions that are not pyramidal! Going off on what Bob said - as someone who has co-written like three or four years worth of said league's questions, I most definitely would've liked to have written said questions as pyramidal (but the league politely asks that we don't) and I also would've liked to have even been able to write some questions as representative of what the OAC format looks like today, such as economics being part of the since-blended "American Government/Economics" category (but the league politely asks that all of those questions be government, to which we acquiesce.) I think I can safely speak for both of us when I say that we enjoy writing for said leagues at the end of the day, even if we would prefer to see 1-2 line preferences be eschewed in favor of pyramidal questions.
BobKilner wrote:I am not surprised about the Sidney thing. I figured it was something like that. It still points to the fact that I’m not sure that winning regionals by itself mean a whole lot. They don’t get you the best 12 teams.
I've been involved since 1999 and unfortunately, I can't remember a year when the best 12 (or 10 or 8 back in the day) teams were the ones that made it to Columbus. Its an unfortunate consequence of the way the regionals are set up. If you try to seed teams to send them to certain regions for that to happen, you'd have lots of teams refusing to play because they'd have to travel much further than what would seem logical.
I don't even think it's specifically a consequence of the way regionals are set up, but more so the fact there is no pure way to arbitrate the ranking and seeding of teams 1-xx (1-96, 1-90 etc) and then get those teams to follow rank and go along with dispersion of where teams
"should" go in the name of achieving the most fair regionals stage to achieve the end goal of the "best 12" going to Columbus. Not even OHSAA can get that perfect for sports as simple as football: anyone who follows high school football in Ohio knows that, in Division I, the teams who make it to week 12 (field of 16), week 13 (field of 8), week 14 (final four/state semi-finals) and week 15 (championship) are not perfectly the "best sixteen, best eight, best four..." teams left in the state of Ohio because loaded regions like Region 1 (Mentor, St. Ed's, St. Ignatius, Solon etc) and Region 4 (Moeller, St. Xavier, Elder, Colerain etc), where probably 12 of the best 16 teams in Ohio compete in, see the top teams knock off each other so early. Not entirely different than what we see with the West Central and North Coast regions, here.
ThePocketProtector wrote:I don’t think it is your job to educate them. I feel like people in the OAC committee that do not have a business relationship with them should work on educating them. If I do it, then I am just a random guy with an axe to grind. I can’t really say that they would be wrong. If people from the committee would make real efforts, I think things could change. The problem is that the people in charge don’t really understand quiz bowl in any meaningful way. Teach them. It can’t be me, because, come on, who is going to listen to me. Someone, please step up to the plate and try.
...what is there to "educate"? The format? Format rules, how the game is divided up and all of that good stuff can be easily found on the the OAC website. There are sample questions on the website. It's no more a rodeo of learning the basics than NAQT/tossup and bonus is. To a team that plays some zany "tossups only" league, I personally see acclimating to the OAC format as being no more a burden nor a challenge than, say, tossup/bonus (because, apropos of nothing, you don't need to condition your players on the "when you can and can NOT converse" in OAC the way that one does TU/B.) At the same time, what is the point of the committee educating about the format when so many of these coaches supposedly don't want to teach their students a new format for regionals; who is the audience for this education you advocate for; what would you expect to be different as a result of this education than what you currently see to be the problem necessitating said education? Do you think said education is going to be any more successful and impactful than what these committee members already do by suggesting to teams in their league "give this pyramidal tournament on Saturday a shot"?