- So what’s ACF all about then?
ACF stands for Academic Competition Federation, a loosely centralized non-incorporated, non-profit organization dedicated to providing low-cost, high-quality academic quiz tournaments. ACF differs from other quizbowl activities in its emphasis on hard facts, quality clues, and non-extraneous writing. The questions you will hear at our tournaments are academic; we keep the amount of pop culture or semi-academic questions to a minimum. We pride ourselves on the highest standard of academic question writing.
We offer three tournaments throughout the academic year. Our Fall tournament, which takes place in early November, is intended as an introductory-level event with accessible answers. Our intermediate, regular-difficulty tournament, ACF Regionals, is usually held in February. Both Fall and Regionals are centrally organized but hosted at regional mirror sites around the U.S., Canada, and Britain. ACF Nationals, our championship event, is usually held in late April at a single site.
- Sounds great! Who can play in these ACF tournaments?
In order to be eligible to play an official ACF tournament, a team must be composed of students all attending a single school. Each member of the team must take at least one class for credit during the school year in order to be considered eligible to represent the team. A player may compete in ACF tournaments during a school year before the class is actually taken. A student who does not meet these requirements but is involved with some other academic research at a school may appeal to the ACF eligibility committee. Appeals will be handled on a case-by-case basis. If a team or any member of a team is found after a tournament to have violated these eligibility requirements, that team will retroactively forfeit any ACF titles obtained during the course of the school year. If you have any questions about eligibility issues, please contact ACF before coming to the tournament.
“Mixed” or “masters” teams (that is, teams containing players not all from one school, or players who have graduated) may be allowed to play at official ACF tournaments, but only with the permission of the head editor in very limited circumstances and only as exhibition teams. ACF reserves the right to disallow any team from playing at one of its tournaments.
- Who is part of ACF?
ACF is a diverse group of individuals dedicated to writing, editing, and organizing high-quality quizbowl tournaments. The editorial membership of ACF typically changes every year as older editors retire and younger writers step in to fill their place. You can see who the current and past members of ACF are on this site.
- Can anyone join ACF? How do I become a member?
ACF is a very open-ended organization; in principle, anyone can become a member. ACF editorships require work ethic and knowledge of how to write good questions. Because our members are students, and students graduate, ACF is always on the lookout for new editors.If you’re interested in joining ACF, contact any one of the current ACF editors. Most of our current editors served as members of the ACF Fall team, which has been our traditional proving ground for new members. After ACF Nationals, we have an annual meeting to discuss who we want to invite to take these Fall editorships, so if you want your name in the ring, get a hold of an ACF editor before then, and be ready to demonstrate your question-writing skills.
- Is being an ACF editor a lot of work?
Short answer: it depends on your role. Long answer: the general method of introducing new editors to the ACF editing process has been to assign them work in their area of expertise, usually on our Fall tournament. A central senior editor typically coordinates the efforts of an editing team, which typically consists of four to seven people, and will assign the various writing and editing tasks. New editors may be expected to edit somewhere between 2/2 (two tossups and two bonus) and 5/5 questions per packet of a tournament (which typically have between 16 and 20 total packets). This work is spread out over a few months. In general, editing requires a significant time commitment, but not an impossible one.
- How can I keep up on the latest things that are happening in the quizbowl world and discuss quizbowl?
For the latest information on ACF events, please keep an eye on this site. Any important information pertaining to Fall, Regionals, or Nationals will be posted here. Also, you might want to check out the quizbowl forum, which features an active collegiate section. Announcements for all collegiate tournaments will be posted there, and you can also discuss quizbowl to your heart’s content.
