I would say I'm feeling better this week. I needed a weekend of rest and recovery from everything online, and proceeded to make a massive effort at cleaning up the yard and garden. I hadn't mowed the mound of the septic tank yet this year, and the grass had gotten tall enough for the weed whacker to need to be called in before I brought the tractor over it. With effort on Friday night, Saturday morning, Sunday morning, and Tuesday night, I've managed to get it down to a dull roar, and discovered that the raspberry bushes at the end of the lawn were ready to be picked. That, plus blueberries and peas to pick finally gave me the win I needed to continue, and clear my head of all the doubt I've been having.
So my second big problem that could extinguish the circuit by 2044 is a very simple one: what if the circuit is too costly to maintain in its current form? This is an independent question of last week's question: "what if questions cost too much to produce?" and it can still kill the circuit even if a way to keep question production at a low enough cost.
The basic expenses a team has in going to a tournament are: cost of travel (gas/tolls/car/hotel/food/parking/and time spent traveling), and the cost of the tournament itself (effectively reduced down to your registration fee, and if it's a submission tournament, cost of writing the packet.) The cost of travel ls a loss of the circuit as a whole, while the cost of the tournament itself remains within the circuit. The higher percentage of payments that remain in the circuit, the cheaper the circuit is to exist within, and the more events the circuit can effectively support.
2. What happens if not enough money is captured by the circuit?
This is less tied to inflation than the increase in prices inflation leaves in place, the cost of travel in terms of fuel, hotels, food. All of these expenses required to get a team to a tournament can be compared to the expense of participating in the tournament. Essentially, money that goes to a host has a multiplier effect, and money retained by the circuit gets recycled back into the next event. Travel cost is essentially a frictional loss for the circuit in general. The more friction in the system, the less activity.
Prior to 2020, I was able to plot out the expected circuit growth in a year by noting how far under $3 the price of gasoline was nationally. I recognize there's a lot of other factors which correlate with gas price which would affect this, but if you have to have one warning light to keep an eye on, that was the best one. And yes, the main change in 2020 was the acceptability of online tournaments which does create a relief from this financial stress.
For in person tournaments, the thing you notice about the travel costs are that they increase very quickly the farther you go for a tournament, and if you can't make it back in a day, the cost increases even more rapidly. I know this is basic mathematics, but we state it here as a first principle. In contrast, the cost to manage a tournament as a host is much flatter, only becoming a cost issue when you are short moderators and have to pay to import and feed them. The host usually factors that into their registration fee up front so to a team it's a fixed cost.
If the cost of travel goes up, (and I have very little reason to suspect it won't,) the team is faced with the option of not going to a tournament, or going for reasons other than cost (tradition, reason to visit the location, strength of field), or substituting a lower cost alternative. I think that third option is key, if we can't substitute lower cost alternatives, a lot of circuit teams will simply not go to as many tournaments. That is a problem as it also prices a lot of schools out of competitiveness by limiting the game experience they can accrue.
Making sure that third option is available for most teams means finding opportunities for teams to compete with little travel cost. For hosts of in person events, that's teams local to them. For online hosts, that's teams with a strong online presence that will reliably show up for events, but this seems to be an unlikely method of capturing teams unless extraordinary circumstances like a pandemic exist. And even if you're online, you are still local to some schools.
What will decline look like, and can we stop it?
We'd feel the economic crunch in our daily lives before we'd notice it in quiz bowl. There would be distinct patterns in quiz bowl. We would first see decline in travel, fewer instances of teams traveling over state lines to compete. We'd also see a general decline in field size at events. If tournaments couldn't get critical masses of field size, they'd begin to cancel events. But we might only see the patterns in regions, or very locally. It might take an entire year or multiple years to get the whole picture. And by that point it might be too late to recover quickly.
If we find ourselves in decline, hosts really only have two solutions to the problem, neither of which are very satisfying: Raise prices on tournaments, or accept that you as host have to do more with fewer teams and less funding. The hosts that are most in danger from that are hosts that make their fields large on the back of attracting a field from a distance, and they would be the canary in the coal mine for a decline.
Teams have a few options to guard against decline due to economic costs, but all we've discussed so far are reactions to the situation. It's easier and less stressful to act as if the decline were always imminent, and employ a strategy that will combat decline when you're facing it, and will result in growth when you're not.
As a coach, what are our options to combat it?
Make our teams stronger/better funded. Within your own house, the method for counteracting this is to increase your budgeting expectations for the year. If you have to budget your team over the year, recognize that your team's going to need to pay a little more to get to tournaments this year over last, and budget accordingly. If you requisition by event, recognize you're going to have to have the talk with your bursar/activities office/whoever pays your team's bills.
Recruit furiously within your school. It is hard for a school to defund or underfund a successful program, but it's not impossible. It is nearly impossible for a school to underfund a growing program. Even if not everyone on the team travels to tournaments, have them as part of your team. In the book I make the case to overrecruit, and nothing here goes against that logic.
Encourage your neighboring schools to join in playing. I've previously mentioned the value of cultivating rivals. It's a lot easier to get funding by playing on a rivalry that your school already has with another school. It puts competition in a simple, understandable way that provokes the right emotion in someone predisposed to make their team better than that other team.
Host an event for local teams. It keeps the competing teams' costs down, and you may inspire them to hold one for you to compete in.
As a host, what are our options to combat it?
Find out what teams are actually local to you, rather than social media aware. Invite the local teams repeatedly to your events, and make your invitations personal, not postings. Learn who the coaches are out there, and engage with them, even if they've never been to your competition or any competition you consider quiz bowl. In previous years this meant investing in non-internet methods of promotion: snail mail, phone calls and researching how to contact coaches who are probably not tied into the circuit. People were reluctant to do this because it not only took time and effort, but it cost money. I footed the bill for college teams to contact all of Western Pennsylvania's high schools for several years, and it rarely paid the investment back that year. But it's necessary protection against a circuit decline.
Develop the teams close to you not just through your own competitions, but year round. Get the local coaches’ input on scheduling your tournament. If you're having summer practices, on campus or on zoom, invite the local teams. If you’re training your readers with practice packets, a practice packet needs a practicing team. Invite them to come see what a tournament is like. (This one advice is tricky, question security dictates teams or coaches that might play on a set shouldn't spectate, and I’m not advocating this for events that have repeat competitions afterward. But witnessing the game played is also one of the easiest ways to hook them on competition.)
I kind of put my money where my mouth is on this issue this week. We were invited to present flyers at the SkillsUSA national conference. SkillsUSA works primarily with vocational/technical education and their national convention consists of 115 separate competitions, only two of which are what you might consider quiz bowl. We were invited by a buzzer manufacturer to help sell their product to the attendees. I pushed hard for us to do something here because while it might not be quiz bowl that the circuit recognizes, the teams are competing on questions, and we can help them get better. I also reasoned that some of their local competitions used one of the question providers that ended in 2023-24, so they may not have a provider for next year, and probably won't or don't know where to turn. Do I think that will provoke some massive migration of vocational teams to quiz bowl? No. I just think it's an opportunity to stop the possible decline here and now. In two weeks, we'll start to find out if it did any good.