Until advocates of good quiz bowl make an effort to at least make contact with all 430+ quiz bowl sponsors in the state, rather than just stick to an elite circuit among teams in St. Louis, Mid-Missouri and KC North/St. Joe, a "joke format" remains the statewide standard. Hopefully this time next year we can start talking about the good quizbowl circuit expanding deeper into the Bootheel, Green Hills, and Ozarks.
Do you honestly think this is not what happens? That MOQBA just is an organization that runs tournaments for the same elite teams over and over again? Of course we do everything in our power to contact as many active teams as possible for all our events. Who do you think the teams are who show up to our events infrequently and/or don't make the playoffs routinely, and who come from all over the state to our events? (Also, your 430+ sponsors is a false picture, in reality nowhere near that many teams ever play anything all year, including districts, and lots of those registered teams don't have any kind of quizbowl program at all.) I don't know that I can think of one tournament all year that didn't include teams that could in no way be considered elite or especially active in the high quality circuit, and/or teams from well outside the areas MOQBA is currently entrenched in. We don't have anywhere near universal participation, I know this, but damn, we're doing a whole lot better than you're giving us credit for. We can't be everywhere, and we can't fix everything in only 3 years. Given that we didn't exist when I was in high school, and almost nobody anywhere really cared about good quizbowl, the speed at which MOQBA has caught on is in fact something really mindblowing. Sorry we can't be omnipotent, but I don't appreciate your attitude about us on this issue.
In any case, your response to me is a complete non-sequitur. What does it matter if MSHSAA districts is what the majority of teams in the state are preparing for? That doesn't change that the format is a joke (not a "joke," in quotes, but a bona fide disaster that would be even funnier if not for how horribly it's ruined our circuit), and that Ladue is a team that understands that fact and is doing everything they can to run a tournament that is not a joke. I think rebounds are good, and non-rebounds are also good, but whether or not one is better than the other, what MSHSAA thinks about this does not even enter the equation to a TD who really cares about making their event the best it can be, because what MSHSAA thinks about quizbowl is something that is easily dismissible out of hand. Preparing teams for MSHSAA play is not a priority here, and you should have had enough sense to figure that out when you saw that the tournament was using the 20/20, 30 point bonus format with powers and negs, and not anything close to the MSHSAA format to begin with.