ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ

Introduction

The following policies apply to tournaments run on ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ questions that involve teams or players from more than one school. Except as noted, they apply to all such tournaments, regardless of their level or nature, unless ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ has explicitly waived or modified them for a specific tournament or host. Some tournaments (such as collegiate Sectional Championship Tournaments and Community College Sectional Championship Tournaments) are subject to additional policies not covered on this page.

ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ’s Responsibilities

ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ will respond promptly to inquiries from tournament hosts (and prospective hosts), coaches, players, and others to help them make informed choices about events they run and attend.

In most cases, ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ will make questions available to attendees through their Study Library (if set up) after a tournament’s results have been received and processed.

When assigning question sets to tournaments, ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ will consider geography, local circuit conditions, tournaments’ audiences, whether tournaments take place in person or online, and other factors with the goals of ensuring that quiz bowl is widely available to interested programs and that tournament hosts have reasonable opportunities to draw the types of fields they seek.

Hosts’ Responsibilities

Hosts must give ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ accurate information about the intended audience of the event, the date(s), and any other information necessary to ensure that suitable questions can be assigned and delivered to the event. This includes prompt notification of any changes. Due to internal question-production deadlines and other factors, ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ cannot always accommodate date changes.

Hosts must pay for their questions according to the listed prices (unless otherwise agreed in advance).

Hosts must uphold ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ’s policy on question security. Most notably, this entails telling attendees and prospective attendees what question set(s) will be used.

Hosts must remind attendees not to share question content on the Internet in any form, no matter how private they think the communication may be. This includes the fact that matches may not be recorded or streamed.

Hosts must notify attendees of their obligations under the ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ Honor Code, and hosts must abide by this Honor Code themselves.

Hosts must follow ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ’s licensing policy. Most notably, this means that hosts may keep a printed copy of the question set, and may give a printed copy of the question set(s) to each school in attendance, but may not distribute the set in any other form, nor to anyone else at any time. Staff may not retain copies of the question set(s) after the end of the event (unless they are also affiliated with the host or an attendee, in which case they may only retain a printed copy). However, due to ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ granting Study Library access, distributing printed copies is usually unnecessary.

Hosts must not publicly post (or otherwise make widely available) scoresheets, category statistics, “advanced” statistics, or other results beyond what ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ posts on its website without permission in advance from ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ. Such data may be shared with coaches and players of teams in attendance provided that those people agree not to distribute them further.

Within two weeks of the end of the event, hosts must tell ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ what schools attended and how many teams attended. If any pseudonyms were used, identification of the actual schools is still required. ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ strongly prefers to get more complete results (including team contact information) and incentivizes doing so by charging an extra fee for failing to provide this information, but identifying the schools and number of teams in attendance is an absolute requirement for question security and proper billing. Events in championship series organized by statewide athletic or activities associations are exempt from this rule because ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ will work with the associations to obtain the necessary information; events that are not for schools (such as summer opens) are exempt from the school portion of this rule because it would not make sense for such events.

Hosts need to recruit their own staff (moderators, scorekeepers, statisticians, etc.). Hosts are permitted to require that teams provide staff, or incentivize them to do so; however, hosts may not require or incentivize any specific person to work at a tournament, except that coaches may require their own players to do so.

The preceding list is not intended to include tasks like “find teams and staff” without which a tournament simply could not occur. Rather, it primarily covers aspects of a host’s relationship with ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ.

ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ may waive or modify these requirements at its discretion.

Recommendations to Hosts

ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ strongly encourages, but does not require, hosts to do the following:

• Inform prospective attendees what other nearby events (if any) will use the same or overlapping question sets, to help them maintain question security.
• Use ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ’s registration system. This provides a number of tools to make hosts’ lives easier and also helps us maintain question security.
• Tell attendees about the national championship(s) for which the tournament is a qualifier (if any).
• Inform ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ of any players who competed in their event but who are ineligible, or whose eligibility status is in doubt, under the relevant set of ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ eligibility rules:
  • For middle school tournaments, the Middle School Eligibility Rules
  • For high school tournaments, the High School Eligibility Rules
  • For community college tournaments, the Community College Eligibility Rules
  • For four-year college tournaments, the Collegiate Eligibility Rules
  This recommendation applies to tournaments that do not use ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ eligibility rules; the main purpose is to prevent ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ from inviting ineligible teams to national championships, rather than having to revoke invitations after the fact due to ineligibility, but the recommendation applies even to tournaments that are not qualifiers.
• Report results to ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ promptly after the event. This enables ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ to invite top teams to its national championships, and we charge an extra fee for failing to do this.
• Provide ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ with contact information for each school in attendance (if we don’t already have it). This is considered part of reporting reuslts, so there is a fee for failing to do this.
• Report any errata in the questions to ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ.
• Inform ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ of any cases of cheating or other gross ethical violations, or well-founded suspicions thereof.
• Inform ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ of any other unusual situations.
• Tell ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ about any high-quality staff who might be interested in working at ÎÞÓǶÌÊÓƵ’s national championships.