Competition Structure and Requirements

10. Regional Competition Requirements

• Each regional competition site will be managed by a local Regional Bowl Coordinator, and may also have Co-coordinators or Assistant Coordinators to assist with additional responsibilities.

• A regional competition must have a minimum of eight teams from eight different schools to be a sanctioned event.

• Regional Bowl Coordinators will choose a competition format that allows for the maximum amount of time for the teams to compete.  They will choose a format which may include a variation or modification of the following options:

- Round Robin[1] tournament.
- Single Elimination[2] tournament.
- Double Elimination[3] tournament.

• Teams must be informed of competition format and method of breaking ties before the competition begins.

11. Round Robin Tournament Formats

• In a Round Robin tournament, teams will be placed in divisions by drawing lots with the number of teams per division as equal as possible. Each team will play every team in its division.

• In a Round Robin tournament the winner is determined by a tally of wins, ties and losses. Tallies are scored as follows: regardless of the overall score, two points are awarded for a win; one point for a tie; and zero points for a loss. There will be no tie-break questions during the Round Robin matches if followed by single or double-elimination games.

• The number of divisions in the Round Robin rounds will determine how many teams in each division will advance to double elimination.

12. National Finals Competition Format

• The Finals Competition uses a combination of a Round Robin tournament for the preliminary rounds and a Double Elimination tournament for the final rounds.

• 25 teams are divided into five divisions for the Round Robin tournament.

• The top three teams in each of the five divisions advance to the Double Elimination competition. A single wild card team, based on the best fourth place qualifiers in each division, will be selected based on the tie-breaker/seeding rules (see rule #54). This brings the number of teams qualifying for the double elimination competition to 16.

• Teams will be placed into the Double Elimination competition based on the results achieved during the Round Robin competition.

• NOSB will be piloting a Policy Briefing component at the 2011 NOSB Finals Competition. Additional information about this new component will be announced at each of the regional competitions and official rules for this new component will be provided to the teams advancing to Finals and posted online during the first week of March 2011.

[1] A round-robin tournament, or all-play-all tournament, is a type of group tournament in which each team plays every other team or team within their division an equal number of times.

[2] In a single elimination tournament or a sudden death tournament, the team is immediately eliminated after losing to a single opponent. A full schedule of pairings (brackets) is established before the competition starts and each successive round halves the number of competitors remaining.

[3] In a double-elimination tournament a team ceases to be eligible to win the tournament’s championship upon losing two games or matches. A double-elimination tournament is broken into two sets of brackets, the Winners (W) Bracket and Losers (L) Bracket.  After the first round, the winners proceed into the W Bracket and the losers proceed into the L Bracket. The W Bracket is conducted in the same manner as a single-elimination tournament, except that the losers of each round “drop down” into the L Bracket.