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Mon Jan 24, 2005, 01:55pm
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This is slightly off-topic since it doesn't deal directly with officiating, but considering everyone here is interested in football I thought it would be appropriate to post it here. As indicated, please don't post entries here, but instead mail them to the address provided.
Football Rare Entries Contest There have been numerous general knowledge rare entries contests, but as far as I know this is the first that is American football-specific (although in the past we've run a general sports contest, a golf contest, and an Olympics contest). The object is to: a) Answer each question correctly, and b) Give answers that will be given by as few other people as possible. ================================================= Reply ONLY BY EMAIL to [email protected]; do not post to any newsgroup. Your subject line should say "Football Rare Entries." Entries must reach me by 6:30 p.m. (U.S. Eastern time zone) on February 6, 2005. Results will be e-mailed to all entrants, and then discussion will take place on rec.games.trivia and rec.sport.football.pro. See below the questions for a detailed explanation of the contest rules. ================================================= All answers must be given in English, and in all cases "football" refers to American football. 0. Name a primarily defensive player who scored during a Super Bowl. 1. Name a quarterback who has thrown for at least 7500 yards during his NFL regular-season career while primarily throwing with his left hand. 2. Name a Super Bowl Champion who during the course of the postseason defeated a team it played but could not beat in the regular season. 3. Name a school that has played in a bowl game that is currently one of the BCS bowl games, but has not played in *any* of those games since 1980. 4. Name a city that was part of the name of an NFL team the year after that NFL team moved there from another city. For the purposes of this question, a team has not moved if the city officially associated with the team name has not changed. 5. Name a theatrical-release motion picture in which at least two major characters are involved in playing or coaching American professional Football 6. Name a league that played professional football in America and had at least one game televised regionally or nationally. 7. Give a one- or two-word name for a specific type of legal, non-kicking offensive NFL play. The name must be something that the announcers of a game might normally use to describe the play to the viewing or listening audience. The name of a specific player may not be part of your answer. General-specific scoring will be used for this question. 8. Name a stadium that is the regular home stadium of a Division IA school, currently seats more than 80,000 fans, and at some time has changed their playing surface from artificial turf to grass or a surface resembling grass. 9. Name an NCAA Division IA school that has a live, nonhuman mascot present on the sidelines for at least one home football game each year. Mascots that consist of humans dressing up as nonhumans are considered human. ================================================= Directions: As usual, for each of the items above, your objective is to give a response that (1) is correct, and (2) will be duplicated by as FEW other people as possible. Feel free to use any reference material you like to research your answers. Your message should preferably consist of just the 10 answers, numbered 0 to 9, along with any explanations required (put in parentheses next to your answer), and your name (if it won't be in the "From:" line). I may ask you to supply further information or to justify of an answer, and I reserve the right to make a posting to consult on any judgment issue before my final decision. If you know your answer will require justification, you should probably save us both some time by including supporting information with your entry. Often a web address is sufficient support if it is for a reputable site. You can expect an acknowledgement when I read your entry. Your email address will be posted in the results if I don't see both a first and a last name, or an explicit request for a particular form of your name to be used. Questions are not intended to be hard to understand, but normally no clarifications will be given during the contest. Only the first answer you submit counts; no changes are allowed after submitting an entry, nor alternate answers within an entry. For my convenience please do not quote this message when responding. Mail only your answers, and these in plain ASCII or ISO 8859-1 text: no HTML, attachments, Micros--t character sets, etc. (People who fail to comply will be chastised in the results posting.) ================================================= Scoring: The scoring is a little complicated, but that needn't worry you. Just try to give correct answers that you don't think a lot of other people will submit. However, here is how the scoring works: If your answer on a category is correct, then your score is the number of people who gave that answer or an answer I consider equivalent. If wrong, or if you skip the question, you get a high score as a penalty. The scores on the different questions are MULTIPLIED to produce a final score. Low score wins; a perfect score is 1. All entrants will be listed in order of score in the results posting, but high (bad) scores may be omitted, and the answer slates of the top few entrants will be posted. The penalty score for a wrong question is the median of: - the number of entrants - the square root of that number, rounded up to an integer - double the highest score for a correct answer on the question For example, say I'd asked for a member of the Beatles. 20 people say Ringo Starr, 1 says John Lennon, 2 say Richard Starkey, and 4 say Yoko Ono. After looking up Richard Starkey I decide it's the same answer as Ringo Starr and should be treated as a duplicate answer; then the 22 people who said either Ringo Starr or Richard Starkey get 22 points each. The one person who said John Lennon gets a perfect score of 1 point. The four people who say Yoko Ono are wrong, and get a penalty score. The penalty score is the median of: (a) number of entrants = 27 (b) sqrt(27) = 5.196, rounded up = 6 (c) double the highest score = 22 x 2 = 44. Thus, in this case, the penalty score is the median of 6, 27, and 44, which is 27. ================================================= Judging: As moderator, I will be the sole judge of what answers are correct, and whether two answers with the same meaning (like Ringo Starr and Richard Starkey) are to be considered the same. It is also possible that I may consider one answer to be a more specific variant of another: in that case it will be scored as if they are different, but the other, less specific variant will be scored as if they are the same. For example, if there was a contest with a question for which three people answered 'Ford Taurus,' five people answered 'Plymouth Breeze', and two people answered 'car,' the scores for that question would be Ford Taurus = 3, Plymouth Breeze = 5, and car = 10 (assuming all answers were judged to be correct). Thus, it is in your best interest to make your answers as specific as possible while making sure they still answer the question correctly. I will do my best to be fair on all such issues; if you don't like my judgments feel free to say so or to run a contest of your own. Many thanks to Brian Van Dorn, who was extremely helpful in the preparation of this quiz and who wrote several of the questions. Without his help, this contest might not have been possible. It was a true sacrifice on his part because he'd like to enter more than anyone, and he's no longer eligible. I'll no doubt ask for his assistance in judging as well. Incidentally, this contest is for fun only; there is no prize other than the respect and admiration of your peers. Good luck and have fun.
__________________
-LaxRef 
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Mon Jan 24, 2005, 05:49pm
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The address [email protected] does not accept email. What is the right email?
PS - when this is over, can you also post answers and results here?
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Mon Jan 24, 2005, 06:57pm
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Quote:
It was right in the original post, but I still screw up .com and .net myself sometimes. I'll try to remember to post here, but in any case everyone who enters will get a results e-mail.
__________________
-LaxRef
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Fri Feb 11, 2005, 07:42pm
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Football Rare Entries Contest Results
[This will look best in a monospaced font like Courier]
Football Rare Entries Contest Results This was, unfortunately, a bit small for a rare entries contest, perhaps because we made a few of the questions too difficult and people were scared away. In any case, congratulations to Carolyn for getting an almost-perfect score of 2. Here are the final scores for all contestants: Final Scores Carolyn 2 Anjan Gnyawali 24 John Chapman 192 Steve Cox 192 Eric Maddy 216 Joshua Kreitzer 288 Robert G. Gross 1152 Michael Crowder 9216 and answer slates for the top 2 contestants (normally, we do top 3, but there was a tie for third place and there really isn't room for 4 answer slates): ---+------------------+----------------------+ | | Anjan | | Carolyn | Gnyawali | ---+------------------+----------------------+ 0. |Herb Adderley |Larry Brown | 1. |Boomer Esiason |Mark Brunell | 2. |93 Cowboys |Pittsburgh Steelers | 3. |Minnesota |Harvard | 4. |Indianapolis |NE Patriots (WR) | 5. |The Replacements |Paper Lion | 6. |AFL |XFL | 7. |lateral |Deep Out | 8. |Michigan Stadium |Kyle Field | 9. |U of Texas |Georgia Bulldogs | ---+------------------+----------------------+ Individual questions: 0. Name a primarily defensive player who scored during a Super Bowl. Jimmie Jones 2 Larry Brown 1 Herb Adderley 1 James Washington 1 Mike Hegman 1 Reggie Harrison 1 Bruce Huther WR Blocked kick, but no evidence he scored 1. Name a quarterback who has thrown for at least 7500 yards during his NFL regular-season career while primarily throwing with his left hand. Ken Stabler 3 Jim Zorn 2 Boomer Esiason 1 Mark Brunell 1 Frank C. Albert WR Did not pass for 7500 yards The most obvious answer, new Hall-of-Famer Steve Young, was omitted. Michael Vick came up short on yards. Scott Mitchell is another famous lefty who qualifies. 2. Name a Super Bowl Champion who during the course of the postseason defeated a team it played but could not beat in the regular season. Los Angeles Raiders 2 Tampa Bay 1 Pittsburgh Steelers 1 1967 Green Bay Packers 1 1993 Dallas Cowboys 1 1978 Oakland Raiders WR Did not win 1978 (or 1979) Super Bowl 1972 Cowboys WR Not in the same season Some latitude was allowed on this question. One could argue that, for example, the 1967 Packers are the team that played the Super Bowl in 1967, but the year usually refers to the regular season edition of the squad. This was a difficult question to answer off the top of one's head, but not very difficult after consulting football reference sites. All three Raiders champions, for example, qualify. This years Patriots do too, since they beat Pittsburgh in the AFC Championship game, but they won SB XXXIX after the contest deadline. We decided before the contest that we'd use general/specific scoring on this question, but it didn't come into play here. If someone had said "Raiders," though, they would really have gotten hammered. 3. Name a school that has played in a bowl game that is currently one of the BCS bowl games, but has not played in *any* of those games since 1980. Carnegie Mellon 2 Arizona State 1 Baylor 1 Fordham University 1 Harvard 1 Minnesota 1 Missouri 1 Plenty of correct answers, especially among teams that are no longer football powers. 4. Name a city that was part of the name of an NFL team the year after that NFL team moved there from another city. For the purposes of this question, a team has not moved if the city officially associated with the team name has not changed. St. Louis 2 Detroit 1 Indianapolis 1 Oakland 1 Dallas WR No NFL team moved to Dallas, although an AFL team moved form there to Kansas City. New England Patriots WR Not a city No answer WR No answer This question was not intended to be particularly tricky, but people had trouble with it. Omitted answers include LA (Raiders), Baltimore (the question was worded to allow this answer; even though the "Browns Franchise" did not move, the team did), and Phoenix (they were the Phoenix Cardinals for a few years before they changed their name to the Arizona Cardinals.) 5. Name a theatrical-release motion picture in which at least two major characters are involved in playing or coaching American professional Football North Dallas Forty 3 Paper Lion 2 Heaven Can Wait 1 The Replacements 1 Houston WR No such movie Brian's Song was a famous one not mentioned. 6. Name a league that played professional football in America and had at least one game televised regionally or nationally. WFL=World Football League 2 NFL 2 XFL 1 AFL 1 United States Football League 1 Regional Football League WR Televised only locally AFL was a risky answer, since it would have been judged to be more general than "American Football League" and "Arena Football League." No one mentioned the "World League of American Football," or whatever they're calling it these days. I think even the Arena2 league has games televised regionally. An interesting call would have been if someone had answered CFL. Given the wording in the question this would have been correct. They had franchises in Baltimore and Shreveport in the early 90s, and their games were televised on ESPN. But they played Canadian football, and the disclaimer at the start of the contest said that all questions referred to American football. Thankfully, a ruling was not necessary. 7. Give a one- or two-word name for a specific type of legal, non-kicking offensive NFL play. The name must be something that the announcers of a game might normally use to describe the play to the viewing or listening audience. The name of a specific player may not be part of your answer. General-specific scoring will be used for this question. Spike 1 Deep Out 1 Waggle 1 hook-and-ladder 1 Fake Reverse 1 Hail Mary 1 lateral 1 screen pass 1 I forgot to specify "non-hyphenated," and my first thought was that "hook-and-ladder" was 3 words, but I can't say that definitively so it was allowed. This would have been a better question had there been more entries, although I probably should also have disallowed pass patterns as being the names of plays to further restrict the options. 8. Name a stadium that is the regular home stadium of a Division IA school, currently seats more than 80,000 fans, and at some time has changed their playing surface from artificial turf to grass or a surface resembling grass. Kyle Field 3 (Texas A&M) Williams-Brice 2 (U of South Carolina) Michigan Stadium 2 (U of Michigan) Alumni Stadium WR (Boston College) Doesn't seat over 80,000 There are a lot of correct answers here. About 20-25 years ago I would guess the majority of football stadia with over 80,000 seats had artificial turf, but thankfully each and every one switched to grass. I know Camp Randall Stadium in Wisconsin used to be the largest holdover at 77000, but they also switched two years ago. I don't know what the biggest one is anymore, which is a good sign. 9. Name an NCAA Division IA school that has a live, nonhuman mascot present on the sidelines for at least one home football game each year. Mascots that consist of humans dressing up as nonhumans are considered human. U. of Southern California 2 Traveller, the Trojan Horse U of Texas 1 Bevo, the Texas Longhorn Colorado 1 Ralphie, the Buffalo South Carolina Gamecocks 1 Cocky, the Gamecock Georgia Bulldogs 1 Uga, the Bulldog Rice 1 Sammy, the Owl Stanford WR No official Stanford mascot College football lore is replete with live mascots, leading to a lot of possible answers.
__________________
-LaxRef
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