Quiz Bowl and the college football arms race

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Mrcommodore
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Quiz Bowl and the college football arms race

Post by Mrcommodore »

Bear with me to get to the football part.

When I was in high school, I was on the quiz team -- a four-member group who went to tournaments and tried to "buzz in" with the answer to all kinds of trivia before the other teams could. It was a lot of fun. We "practiced" once a week right before school, mainly to get the feel of listening to questions and buzzing in at the right time. Our individual right answers also determined who was on the A team and who was on the B team.

We had a blast. But, we lost a lot. At even our best tournaments, we usually had a break-even record.

We didn't lose because we weren't particularly bright or didn't go to a good school. In fact, we went to one of the top public high schools in our state. We lost a lot because we were unwilling to compete at the top level.

We soon noticed that a lot of the other "good teams" did a lot of things we did not. First, they appeared to be studying all the time -- lists of the presidents or the kings of England. Boyle's Law. The stages of mitosis. Anything and everything that might provide ready fodder for a trivia question.

And the blazers! It was the 90s, and our team was decked out in stone-washed jeans and untucked flannel shirts. We suffered many a defeat to uniformed squads in khaki pants and navy blazers. Clearly they were dedicating a lot of time and effort to their team experience.

Yet despite these obvious challenges, we stayed ourselves. Quiz bowl was fun. We enjoyed the games themselves, and the time spent together. We had no interest in dressing up, spending more than an hour a week in practice, or memorizing fact sheets. What we would have loved the most would have been if every team had walked in "cold" and we had had a straight-up competition about what random facts were stored in our adolescent minds. But, although it became clear that our ideal would never be reality, we decided against playing the game "their way." Yes, it meant letting go of the idea that we would bring home a trophy, but it kept the experience fun.

Perhaps by now you see the analogy. What we are seeing today in college football is the result of one simple truth: we care too much. We complain about football players transferring to other programs because they are "chasing the NIL money," or "only concerned with their NFL hopes," and "have no loyalty to the school itself." The money, the NFL dream, and the loyalty to football over all other ties did not come from nowhere. If we all cared less, then they would not exist.

It's hard, when another team walks in wearing fancy navy blazers (or a roster of football-obsessed, students-in-name-only athletic monsters), to say "Well, in the end we just don't care that much. We're not going to pursue that arms race. Maybe we'll compete against other teams with values like ours. Maybe we'll just accept that a certain number of our opponents are absolutely going to crush us. But we're going to do us."

It's a hard perspective, but I think we would actually ENJOY football a lot more if we took that view.

There's a mercenary decision to be made about competing in the SEC in football, where we have to decide if losing to Big State U 20 times in a row is worth the media payout that supports the rest of the department. I think we've probably already made that decision and yes, we accept the 62-0 shelacking from time to time and cash our check. But maybe we should just be OK with that and all turn off the TV midway through the 2nd quarter.

If we don't accept it and triple down to compete, what cost will it come at? Who will we be -- Ole Miss?


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Re: Quiz Bowl and the college football arms race

Post by VU1970 »

Ask yourself this: since the year 2000, which SEC team has won the most games they weren't supposed to win -- Alabama, Georgia, or Vanderbilt?

Winning when you aren't supposed to win is more fun than slaughtering unranked teams. We just need to see it more often.

Can't wait for the first time Vandy gets a win nobody saw coming (under Coach Lea)!
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Re: Quiz Bowl and the college football arms race

Post by cjdore »

VU1970 wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 12:42 pm Ask yourself this: since the year 2000, which SEC team has won the most games they weren't supposed to win -- Alabama, Georgia, or Vanderbilt?

Winning when you aren't supposed to win is more fun than slaughtering unranked teams. We just need to see it more often.

Can't wait for the first time Vandy gets a win nobody saw coming (under Coach Lea)!
This.....I remember that win over Aub about 10 or more years ago when they were rated in top 20. I remember a win over Uga I believe when Richt was the Coach. I further remember a win over UF when I was in school in early 80s. We just need a lot more of these to sustain our fandom!!
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Re: Quiz Bowl and the college football arms race

Post by dore74 »

Great post Mr C. Both my daughter and i went to old VU while our son went to WashU. Similar academic profiles, but VU was a lot more fun. On the other hand my son played D-3 baseball against schools like U of Chicago, Coe College you get the drill, and would have been manager on our baseball squad. There frankly is no right answer--i suspect all on this site would agree.

I'm personally good with the model that has us wining 8 games once in a while and, likely, never going to the SEC title game. I was here in the early 70's and the athletes were truly student-athletes and were in all sorts of classes of mine as well as even in pre-med (pretty amazing when you think about it). These days the major sports take up so much time and are the prime focus of the kids that it truly does give me pause.

it's certainly an imperfect model, but the one we have. Anyone have any better ideas? PS here's to beating UT tonight
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Re: Quiz Bowl and the college football arms race

Post by vandy05 »

dore74 wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 3:48 pm Great post Mr C. Both my daughter and i went to old VU while our son went to WashU. Similar academic profiles, but VU was a lot more fun. On the other hand my son played D-3 baseball against schools like U of Chicago, Coe College you get the drill, and would have been manager on our baseball squad. There frankly is no right answer--i suspect all on this site would agree.

I'm personally good with the model that has us wining 8 games once in a while and, likely, never going to the SEC title game. I was here in the early 70's and the athletes were truly student-athletes and were in all sorts of classes of mine as well as even in pre-med (pretty amazing when you think about it). These days the major sports take up so much time and are the prime focus of the kids that it truly does give me pause.

it's certainly an imperfect model, but the one we have. Anyone have any better ideas? PS here's to beating UT tonight
I can tell you with certainty that today's players are still true student-athletes, by and large. You will always have players on VU's squad who are not up to snuff academically and don't handle their business, just like you have that in the population of regular students. But those guys make the most of their time and are highly successful upon leaving the school. You only have to look at our current staff to see that. While they're not current players, they're all within the last 20 years. Add Larry Smith and Chris Marve to that bunch as well. Our guys make good with what they have in a VU degree. I'm not preaching at you or beating you up, because I think you're right to pause and think about it. But I want to provide you assurance that these guys will make you classroom proud. I think its part of the reason that we do have a hard time competing on Saturdays. VU is so demanding academically that its inevitable that in our guy's desire to keep up, they don't have as much time for the football side.

To your other point about the model that has us win 8 games every once in a while, I think that is the goal, at least from my perspective. In my opinion a ten year span of seasons should look like this:

3 wins - 1 time
4 wins - 1 time
5 wins - 2 times
6 wins - 2 times
7 wins - 2 times
8 wins - 1 time
9 wins - 1 time

That would look very similar to what Northwestern has done over the last 20 years. But it would mean suffering through some tough seasons from time to time, and some of them surprisingly tough. If you cluster around that 6 win mark by winning 3-4 non-conference games and picking off a couple conference games with an upset or two in there, you're always knocking on the door. Some may say that this viewpoint is defeatist, I just see it as a reality. And its a reality I would be very happy with.
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