Before we proceed to those stats, examine this correspondence, a reply from Harvest Bowl director Shawn Pickerell to UVa team member Brian Rostron.

Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 00:16:09 -0400 (EDT)
From: Shawn Pickrell 
To: Brian Rostron 
Subject: Reply



Brian,
 
>   Where, oh where, to begin?

I don't quite know. 
 
>   First of all, you can send our $50 rebate to:

>                    Brian Rostron
>                    463 1B Lambeth
>                    Charlottesville, VA 22904.

Okay. 
 
> Now, I realize that we didn't actually pay anything for this tournament, but
> we want $50 in compensatory damages.  We'll take your hat in trade.

>   You can email the questions to me at this address.  I won't hold my breath.

Okay. You'll probably get them in late November. 
 
>   I believe that Andrew Yaphe has or will posted his analysis of Harvest Bowl
> on the newsgroup.  This will probably be a kinder view.

Okay ... 

>   Ever since you started hyping this tournament in April or May, I've been
> telling Andrew and Alice that we should go to it.  After much prodding, they
> agreed.  I kept telling them that it couldn't be as bad as they thought it
> would be.  Now I don't know what the hell I was thinking.

>   Actually, the event started out somewhat better than expected.  We assumed
> that the tournament, like all others, would start late and that you would
> never be able to follow the schedule you had planned.  The initial delays
> didn't bother us.  The questions were actually pretty good.  The distribution

Thanks. :)

> was horrible (all history, religion, literature, the Bible, religion), but we

I recall putting 4 science questions in each first half packet -- and three
such questions in each second half packet. A number of them were history of
science, but there were science questions in there. 

> benefitted from that.  The questions were generally well-structured.  The
> content of some was, um, interesting.  A few were insanesly obscure (the
> Bulgarian archbishop comes to mind) while others were too easy (e.g., the
> Samuel Clemens, Eric Blair, etc. pseudonyms).  Others were too strange to
> categorize - the 30 point, 3 part binary bonus on Einstein's Nobel Prize
> comes to mind.  Special theory of relativity? No.  General theory of
> relativity? No.  Photoelectric elect? Yes.  30 points.

OK, these problems come up with any tournament.

All tournaments are going to have their questions that are (1) too hard,
(2) too easy, (3) really weird, etc. What's so wrong with that? 

>   The officials were inexperienced, as we expected.  We particularly liked
> the one who tossed the pages into the air as soon as he was done with them. 
> Once he made a mistake and had to scramble around on the floor before he
> could read a bonus.

Whoops! :) 

>   But all in all, things were going well before lunch.  The questions were
> decent, and the meal was good.  Things went south after that.  I don't want
> to overstate the point, but it is inconceivable to me that you could believe
> that you could run a tournament without questions.  What were you thinking at
> 9:30 when you only had 4-5 typed packets?  That the world would end before
> noon?

Haven't you ever panicked before? That's exactly what I did. 

>   Needless to say, we were shocked that even Harvest Bowl would simply not
> have half of the questions needed.  Why didn't you just tell us at the
> beginning of the day that you had screwed up and didn't have all of the
> packets?  We could have formed two divisions of 7 teams, played round robins
> in the divisions and then had a championship game.  We would have known what
> to expect and would have been done by 2:00 instead of sitting around waiting.

Hans Krimm (the man from H-SC) said the exact same thing. 
 
>   The reason that you did not do so seems to be your immense ego.  You wanted

You are not the first person to recognize that my ego exceeds my abilities 
many times. You're telling me nothing my teammates have not already. 

> to be Mr. Bigshot Tournament Director who created his own format, who wrote
> his own rules, who wrote all the packets.  The problem with this, of course,
> is that you didn't write all the packets and were too pigheaded to admit it.

You are correct, sir. 

>   I hope this does not seem too cruel, but compared to the opinions of my
> teammates it is downright generous.  Frankly, I don't know how you escaped
> Saturday's debacle without a good physical thrashing by Miss Alice Chou (it
> certainly would have been well-deserved).

>   The only suggestion I have for you now is to return ALL of the money paid
> by teams (not that $25 sop, except for us because we didn't pay).  Unless you
> do that, I think it will be the Lord who will be kicking your ass for the
> time being.

You got (1) a free lunch and (2) 8 out of 14 games. In addition, you 
will be getting 16 packets (9-10 of which have never been played). 
The questions themselves are about $10, and by your own admission, they 
weren't that bad. 

And if the Lord's kicking my ass, what concern is it to you? :)

>   As for Harvest Bowl '97: I will be graduated, and I don't believe Andrew,
> Alice and Phil will have much desire to return.  That is unless they are
> eager to see if any tournament can possibly be worse than the one they
> experienced.

I don't blame them. That is their choice.

However, I would not like to penalize my successors for my mistakes and 
fuckups.

What does this mean? That R-MC should just crawl into their collective hole
and never be heard from again in the world of academic competition? I think 
not! 

If we quit now, then we did fail, and we're going to be a joke _forever_. If
we keep trying, then we can redeem ourselves. 

The problem revolved mainly around the fact that we didn't write 
enough questions. Other than that, what was _so_ wrong? 
We gave you lunch, the
officials were inexperienced (but hey, we've only been doing this for a 
semester), so you could only expect so much. We were even able to switch
buildings quickly, several teams were late (hence making the tournament late),

So if we get each team to submit a packet (again, this is a standard practice),
why would you think that R-MC could never hold a decent tournament?

>                                               Regards,
>                                               Brian Rostron

> P.S.  We want our prizes, because we know we won the stupid tournament. 

You'll get a prize. :)

Take care now. We hope to see you at Wahoo War and intervening tournaments.

Since you did get 8 of 14 games, and you sent two teams, I think it is 
perfectly fair to allow us to send a team for free. We will pay the standard
fee for our second team. If you don't think this is fair, then let me know
as soon as possible, as then we will probably not be sending any teams. Your 
loss, again, unless you have to turn teams away (and that didn't happen last 
year.) 

Virginia A beat Johns Hopkins B 440-60.  Andrew : 11/0.  Brian : 5/1.
					 Phil : 0/2  Alice : 1/0
Virginia A beat UVA B 375-100.		 Andrew : 7/1    Brian : 5/0
					 Phil : 1/0  Alice : 2/1
Virginia A beat Maryland B 425-150.	 Andrew : 6/2    Brian : 6/0
					 Phil : 1/1  Alice : 1/0
Virginia A beat Maryland A 440-140.	 Andrew : 10/3  Brian : 5/0
					 Phil : 0/0  Alice : 0/0
Virginia A beat Roanoke 475-10.	 	 Andrew : 7/4  Brian : 3/0
					 Phil : 4/0  Alice : 3/0
Virginia A beat Wake Forest 410-165.     Andrew : 7/1    Brian : 3/0
					 Phil : 3/1  Alice : 3/0

	Then, of course, we left.

Team B, consisiting of Jamie Plummer, Daniel Hodes and Anthony Airne did not keep such meticulous numbers. Team B went 1-4 before they decided Ruby Tuesday's provided more intellectual stimulation than Harvest Bowl.