First of all, it has nothing whatsoever to do with college football.
How do I get involved?
The first step is getting on our mailing list. To do so, just send an e-mail message to cbowl@dartmouth.edu. (Alternatively, you could contact one of our officers or active members.) Then attend a few practices - click here for more info on practices. In no time, you'll be ready to help represent Dartmouth at various tournaments. To learn more about the tournaments we host and/or attend, simply click here.
General Rules :
A team in standard academic competition format generally has four people, though one can play with fewer. There is also a lockout buzzer system involved. There are two types of questions : tossup questions and bonus questions. Generally, the first player to ring in and correctly answer a tossup gets 10 points for his/her team, with a 5 point penalty for incorrect guesses before the question is finished : in some formats a particularly early answer earns a player's team 15 points. (There is no penalty for incorrect guesses if either the question is finished or if the other team has already been penalized with an interrupt.) Each time a team gets a toss-up, it can confer to answer a bonus question (which may be multi-part) worth up to 30 more points. (Under no circumstances, however, is conferring allowed on tossups.)
Format :
Several competing formats exist: In traditional College-Bowl style, two timed halves, which are 7 or 8 minutes in length, depending on the tournament format : at College Bowl-run tournaments, the halves are 7 minutes in length. In Academic Competition Federation style, 20 tossups (untimed) per game are read. There are also invitationals at which 24 untimed tossups are read per game. There are other ways in which the formats differ, and most invitational tournaments combine aspects of CB, NAQT, and/or ACF rules : it is important to know the specific rules of specific tournaments, since they are often somewhat idiosyncratic. A new form of academic competition is emerging, using 9-minute timed halves, known as National Academic Quiz Tournament (NAQT) style. In addition, a new set of rules for certain timed invitationals, known as the "Michigan Rules" because they were developed, logically enough, at Michigan, may become a popular format in the future.
Question style:
Questions may cover just about anything generally known
to someone with a high school diploma, not necessarily in an academic
field. College Bowl Inc. questions tend to emphasize pop culture and
current events in addition to more "traditional" academically-oriented subjects, and are brief (because the rounds are timed) and generally not very difficult. ACF questions are explicitly academic, and a bit longer and more difficult. NAQT questions tend to lie somewhere between the two extreme commercial formats. Questions at invitational tournaments vary by tournament ; most like, NAQT, attempt to strike a balance between the extreme formats of ACF and CBI. The academic competition circuit has a protracted debate about which format is best, which you can follow if you read the Yahoo Clubs Page. A lot of the stuff on the page is off topic, but there is also a great deal of good information.
How are national champions deicded?
Late February, the entity known as College Bowl Incorporated holds its
Regional tournament, at which we compete against other schools in our region, ACU-I Region 1 (which includes the six New England states plus the Canadian Maritime Provinces.) Our region is generally considered among the toughest, with 1997 Regional Champions and 1995 National Champions Harvard plus past champions and 1996 Region 1 winners MIT, in addition to 1998-2000 Regional Champions Williams, Boston University, and, of course, Dartmouth : Dartmouth last won CBI Region 1 in 1994 and was runner-up in 1998 and 1999. Unfortunately, each school can send only one team; our team is chosen based on knowledge/skill, practice/tournament attendance, participation, and performance, and overall "team chemistry." If we win Regionals, or finish second and are lucky enough to get the "wild-card" spot given to one of the 15 teams that finish second, we go to CBI Nationals in late April.
NAQT (National Academic Quiz Tournaments)holds more loosely-defined sectionals, where multiple teams qualify for nationals from each regional (though only the region's winner is guaranteed). Each school is allowed to send multiple teams and qualify as many as possible for nationals. Play is divided into two divisions, based on player experience. This year, Dartmouth is hosting the NAQT New England regional and will receive an automatic bid to NAQT Nationals (at UNC-Chapel Hill) assuming everything runs smoothly. Dartmouth last attended NAQT Nationals in 1999 where we placed in the middle of the pack in Division II.
ACF also holds fall and regional tournaments with qualification tournaments in the winter and national qualifying teams selected in a similar manner to NAQT. The New England region tends not to do well with ACF questions as the regional was cancelled due to lack of regionals. Dartmouth has participated and succeeded in ACF in the past.
The final national quiz bowl organization is TRASH (Testing Recall About Strange Happenings), which also holds national qualifying and a national tournament. The difference is that TRASH concentrates solely on pop culture. Pop culture is a part of normal academic tournaments, but this format concentrates solely on that area. Though Dartmouth has never qualified for nationals in TRASH, we have done very well in trash tournaments. In April of 2001, Dartmouth debuted its own tournament, D2K1: All Hell Breaks Loose and plans to continue in 2002.