Third in a QB post trilogy.
A particular archetype of quiz player:
1. Skillful enough to convert tossups (and make good buzzes) on questions in any/every discipline, as well as to get the easiest 10 points of any given bonus.
2. Doesn't bring any particular depth of knowledge or categorical dominance to the table.
3. Not quite good enough to beat teams singlehandedly.
You'll see this person do very well individually, especially on B teams or at less-than-championship caliber programs. With a category specialist or two he could go far, though once you add the second category specialist, depending on the breadth of their strongest subject area, it's not long before the point where this heretofore dominant player doesn't add much to the team and certainly doesn't push the team to a championship.
Posted by Matt Bruce at October 20, 2006 04:22 PMI think that might describe my profile when I was at QU, though I was deep enough in a couple of categories to also contribute to a strong team at Wisconsin in the days of Steve Watchorn and Gautam Bharali. But at QU, I would occasionally make all-star shoot-outs and stuff mainly by bottom-feeding.
Posted by: Brian Ulrich at October 21, 2006 10:28 AMThe "goodness" or "badness" of this kind of player seems to me to depend somewhat on the types of formats that are being emphasized generally. If formats such as CBI are popular, then it's good to have a quite of few generalists who are active on the buzzers and can get questions on various subjects and nail questions on their particular interests. In that type of atmosphere, players then tend to move on to formats that emphasize a greater depth of knowledge and may eventually hit some kind of ceiling with that approach.
More recently, players in the most competitive programs are probably better off have various defined interests at the very start and then perhaps developing more general knowledge by hearing and writing lots and lots of questions and learning about the types of things that are asked about with some regularity. Instead of deepening as may have been the case in the first scenario, these players actually broaden in knowledge as they play over the years.
Then again, the players that most impressed me, such as Jeff Johnson, seemed to have deep and broad knowledge and appeared to have acquired this knowledge because of some innate curiosity.
Posted by: WestBerkeleyFlats at October 21, 2006 02:06 PM