I spent today at what is, in some respects, a highlight of the college bowl season: the CBI regional tournament for New England.

CBI (in long form College Bowl, Inc.) is what most people think of when they think of college bowl. Allan Ludden asking questions to smartly-dressed future ad execs from Princeton, Dean Jones getting everything right in those Disney movies, or any of a number of TV shows which has some hackneyed quiz game where the featured performer gets a clutch last second question to win.

It is the oldest, and generally the least favored, form of quiz competition. The reasons for this vary, but generally boil down to four things:

1. The questions are often misleading, based on some minor personage dredged out of the depts of either Encarta or the Congressional Record, or based on the info box on the front page of USA Today ("Hey, Ecuador is the world's largest per capita exporter of gypsum... that's a question!).

2. The volunteers are often clueless.

3. The format is generally disfavored, as there's a general shift (among teams that play regularly) to more academic based, untimed games of uniform length and subject distribution. CBI questions use a lot of current events and random crap, are timed, and often have packs that at least have the perception of being weighted towards a subject (that may stem from CBI not having a public distribution, but perception often equals reality).

4. It's expensive. Between the mandatory question purchase to run a campus tournament and the fees for the regional, you can spend over $700. Heaven help you if you buy equipment through CBI, because you're easily talking four figures at that point.

My day was spent primarily as moderator (the person who reads the questions). I was also coach/institutional rep for the Babson team, as each team must have some sort of full time staff person with them at the event (because who can trust four young nerds at loose in the big city?).

Of the above four points, the first one was in force all day. CBI questions are an acquired taste, and reward the player who is (a) fast, and (b) willing to ring in and say the first reasonable answer that pops into your head. They are not questions with a lot of nuance, or facts for that matter.

These conditions perfectly suited a guy named James from Providence College (aka "Rain Man" for his tendency to stare into space before ringing in very quickly), which is how they wound up going undefeated into the final match against... BU, host and perennial third place finisher. More on how that turned out later.

The volunteer issue was a little less critical than in past years, as the BU team was able to provide a number of competent people to take the roles required by CBI. Which is another problem with the format: it requires 4 people to run a game. You have the moderator, the scorekeeper, the judge, and a person who works the clock and recognizes people who ring in to answer questions.

Which gets to one of the major issues among people who don't like the format. When a player rings in to answer a question, they must wait for recognition. Never mind the light that's on in front of them, they have to wait for someone to spit out their school name and personal name. When the person doing this isn't very good, it leads to a lot of fumbling and the occasional recognition of someone who didn't ring in. Not to mention it's just a pain.

If that rule was waived, you could run a round with 3 people, as the scorekeeper could work the clock. In theory, if the moderators were good enough you could even dispense with the judge, which would get staff down to 2 per room, which is ideal.

But the sticking point in many regions, including this one, is the moderators. And to understand the reason for that, we have to delve a little into how CBI runs things.

CBI does not run the tournaments per se (at least the regionals). They are in a partnership with ACU-I, the Association of College Unions - International, which is a professional organization of all people who work in college and university student unions. It's these folks who run the tournaments, and in pretty much all cases this is the only tournament they run all year (unless they run the on campus tournament).

Because it's a professional organization, you have people within it who are long-standing members of the community. Throw in then you also have people who, through this partnership, have also participated in college bowl for a while. What this results in is a tournament run by an ACU-I member who, not surprisingly, leans most on the other ACU-I people.

The problem is that the best moderators are generally not ACU-I people. The best moderators tend to be the people who read more frequently, and thus can read faster, clearer, and with fewer mistakes. They are generally folks from schools with standing college bowl teams.

I don't claim to be perfect, but I will say that I think I do a better job moderating than someone who only reads 10 rounds a year, because I often read three times that amount in a month. Even folks who don't read with that frequency anymore are better moderators because they have done that, and retain the experience. Moderators who've never done this can't replicate it.

So what wound up happening at the regional is that there were 9 moderators, about half of whom only have regional type experience. A good chunk of the other half (myself included) apparently weren't even included in the original moderator count (if you take the pre-printed named on the "best moderator" portion of the team ballots as evidence).

But when the smoke cleared and we had an idea of who was around, we were assigned randomly. Meaning that you had as good a chance of someone who gets through 12 questions a round reading an important match, while a skilled moderator read elsewhere.

This generally worked out OK, though there were a number of byes created by teams that didn't show (Connecticut College) or quit during the day (Northeastern and Middlebury). One hopes the latter teams get some sort of penalty other than spending a lot of money for nothing. But it did lead to the problem of some moderators being out there who didn't always grasp the rules, or the idea that you should only accept the correct answer. There is one moderator who is especially egregious about this, and who has been noted by a range of teams over the years as a lousy moderator, but who continues to read mainly because he's been around forever and can rely on his status to keep coming back (those who've played in the region know who I'm talking about, and those of you who haven't have no idea who he is, so I'll leave it there).

Back to game play, Providence and BU faced off in the final, the first final ever for BU after 10 years where we mostly came in third after losing to Harvard in the semis. Notable exception was our very first year, where Joel Kitay sealed his fate by drawing a letter that had us play eventual national champion MIT in the first round of a double elimination tournament. Two and out.

BU's had quite the year so far, qualifying for 2 national tournaments, but on this day they couldn't make it three. James from PC was too quick (and too good at giving the obvious answer) and BU seemed to get the worst bonuses at the worst times (worst in that they were on material they didn't know, though some of the questions were probably written poorly, too). That bonus problem let PC off the hook in the first game, which they won close. BU won the second pretty well, but got jumped on early in the last game and couldn't fight back.

So Providence gets to go to nationals... at Kansas State. It's almost like losing the battle and winning the war, except BU could get a berth via wild card. Wouldn't the joke be on them them?

PS- curse count is at 18 and rising. I don't think I'm going to get credit for Lent if this keeps up.