Unfair Harvard Inside the biggest scandal in quiz bowl history.

Alan Siegel:

Three weeks ago, North America's pre-eminent quiz bowl organization announced it had discovered scofflaws in its midst. In a blog post, National Academic Quiz Tournaments revealed that four players--MIT's Joshua Alman, Harvard's Andy Watkins, Michigan's Scot Putzig, and a Delaware high schooler--had improperly accessed Web pages containing tournament questions. Though NAQT reported there was "neither direct nor statistical evidence that [three of the players] took advantage of their prior access in game situations," their behavior still went "against competitors' expectations of fair play." (NAQT believes there is statistical evidence that MIT's Alman used ill-gotten information to improve his tournament performance. He denies the charge, saying in an email, "When I competed in tournaments, I was hearing the questions for the very first time. I did not cheat.") As a consequence of their actions, all of the players' schools were stripped of their tournament victories.

Multiple major news outlets pounced as soon as the quiz bowl scandal hit the Web. Predictably, all of the stories focused on Andy Watkins and Harvard, which was forced to vacate the national championships it won in 2009, 2010, and 2011--the quiz bowl equivalent of the 2004 USC football team losing its BCS title. "For me, it's just amusing at this point how the only time quiz bowl can ever get coverage is the typical 'Harvard sucks' or 'Harvard's corrupt' kind of story," says Ted Gioia, one of Watkins' Harvard quiz bowl teammates.

But Watkins wasn't just the media's main target--the quiz bowl community has focused its rage on him as well. After all, neither Putzig nor Alman did as much damage as Watkins, who helped his team win multiple now-tainted championships. (Putzig did not respond to requests to comment.) Quiz bowler Jarret Greene, a student at Ohio State, puts it simply: "He accomplished the most from his cheating, and therefore his actions hurt quiz bowl the most."

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 10, 2013 5:02 AM
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