Tekneek

Speaking of him, why do they make him go through the pomp and circumstance of "Drum Major So-and-so, is the corps ready?" when it means nothing and the Bluecoats blew him off entirely.

This makes me wonder, where do you guys think these two particular judges went wrong? Here are their numbers for yesterday : GE Visual Repertoire 17 Mandarins 8.00 16 Blue Stars 8.10 15 Capital Regiment 8.20 14 Crossmen 8.30 13 Spirit from JSU 8.40 12 Colts 8.50 11 Glassmen 8.60 10 Boston Crusaders 8.70 8 Madison Scouts 8.80 8 Carolina Crown 8.80 7 Blue Knights 8.90 5 Bluecoats 9.20 5 The Cadets 9.20 4 Santa Clara Vanguard 9.30 3 Phantom Regiment 9.60 2 Blue Devils 9.80 1 The Cavaliers 10.00 Visual Performance Tech 17 Mandarins 7.80 16 Capital Regiment 8.10 15 Blue Stars 8.30 14 Crossmen 8.40 13 Colts 8.50 12 Spirit from JSU 8.60 11 Madison Scouts 8.70 10 Glassmen 8.80 9 Boston Crusaders 8.90 8 Blue Knights 9.10 7 Carolina Crown 9.20 6 Bluecoats 9.30 5 The Cadets 9.40 4 Santa Clara Vanguard 9.50 3 Blue Devils 9.70 2 Phantom Regiment 9.80 1 The Cavaliers 10.00 Please pardon the formatting, if you will.

Oh, no, I wasn't saying they are the same at all. I was saying the corps have been grouped together and what I meant was that their scores are more meaningful in relationship to each other in those blocks than to the other corps in the top 12. Like the spread between Cavaliers and Bluecoats doesn't really mean anything anymore. It is the spread between them and SCV/Cadets that has meaning now.

Quarterfinals drum scores - 1. Phantom 19.55 2. Blue Devils 19.05 2. Bluecoats 19.05 4. The Cavaliers 19.00 5. The Cadets 18.65 6. SCV 18.45 7. Madison 18.30 8. Boston 18.25 Now Semifinals 1. Phantom 19.55 (no change in placement or score) 2. Blue Devils 19.30 (up .25 - still second) 2. Bluecoats 19.30 (up .25 - still second) 4. The Cavaliers 19.15 (up .15 - still fourth) 5. SCV 18.90 (up .45 - up one placement) 6. Boston 18.65 (up .40 - up 2 placements) 7. Madison 18.60 (up .3 - same placement) 8. Cadets 18.55 (down .1 - dropped three placements)

There is some slotting at play here. It has been determined that the top 3 are a block of corps, so those three may move around together. Cadets, Bluecoats, and SCV are the next block and may move around within their block. Crown, BK, and Boston appear to be the next block. Glassmen and Madison appear to now be together and Glassmen may have a chance to move up 1 slot. Spirit is all alone in 12th and don't look to have any movement potential at all.

I know there are boxes, but they are ranking them too. The top three are pretty much in the same boxes, so ranking and spreads are comparing apples to apples at that point (IMO).

Expect scores to go down for the early corps tonight so that they aren't working into the mid 9s before they get to Phantom, BD, and Cavies.

But, if they were better than 1 tenth above BD's 9.8, or Phantom's 9.8 in the other sub-caption, what do you do? Give them just a 1 tenth better score although you feel they are much better than that? The problem is not the scores the Cavaliers got, IMO. It's the scores given earlier that didn't allow enough room for the difference in quality between the top three and everyone else.

Garfield doesn't follow my thinking, but that was also 23 years ago and the way things work in DCI today seems quite a bit different to me. Look at the excellence Cavies had to turn in year after year before finally ascending to the title : 1986: 3 (Blue Devils win) 1987: 3 (Garfield win) 1988: 5 (Madison win) 1989: 3 (SCV win) 1990: 2 (Cadets win) 1991: 2 (Star win) 1992: 1 (Cavies finally win) It looks to me like there was always somebody else that was getting the benefit ahead of them. The door didn't swing open until after Star snuck around them in 1991. Star was the first new champion since Garfield in 1983. The first new champion before them was BD in 1977, Madison in 1975, SCV in 1973, and Kingsmen in 1972. When Cavies finally won, they were just the 7th corps to win despite DCI being around for 21 seasons. Nobody new has ascended to that title since Cavaliers did it. Instead, Cavies have repeated several times and established themselves as a member of that championship circle. I love the Bluecoats. Other than Spirit, they were the only other corps I legitimately thought about trying to march with. I love where they have gone and what they have accomplished. SCV has had multiple bumps along the way starting in the 90s. Still, they have the tradition and reputation that can move them at times when maybe they shouldn't. I'm not saying judges really think about which corps it is when they are giving out the numbers, but there is something to the "late season pushes" these corps are known to make. The fact that they have earned these jumps in the past makes it that much easier to give them a jump today. To make a football analogy, because Deion Sanders was such a good defensive back, he was able to get away with things that other players couldn't. A corps with a history and tradition of winning and having late season jumps is more likely to earn them in the future, and a corps that is knocking on that door may be the first to be jumped. I hope so. We haven't had a new champion in 14 years. I'd love to see it be the Bluecoats! (Sorry, I disregarded Phantom's tie for first). Phantom is a strange one, but they had to work really hard for their shot as well. Phantom has had its down years and I still think they will have to outperform BD for a third time in a row (I thought they were better than BD at Quarters and Semis) to even get a slight nod over them tonight. EDIT... I haven't had enough caffeine yet today and I'm at work, so all this crap may not make any sense. :) Ultimately, I think Bluecoats are better than both Cadets and SCV this year but just aren't going to get the credit at championships this time around (apparently).

I have to remind myself not to do this from time to time as well, but you just have to stop focusing on the actual number. The judges involved do need to take some heat for it, but the entire reason it happened is because of this : In Visual Rep GE : Everything looks ok until Phantom comes off and pulls down a 9.6. BD comes on and the judge thinks they are 2 tenths better and gives them a 9.8 (presumably thinking Cavies could only be 1 tenth better saving him from giving out a 10 at Semifinals). Then Cavies come on and this guy thinks they are definitely 2 tenths (or more) better than BD..."woah, I have to give them the 10." If you look at order of performance, you can see how Rich Kemp got caught : SCV 9.3 Bluecoats 9.2 Cadets 9.2 Phantom 9.6 (!!!) Blue Devils 9.8 Cavaliers 10.0 When Phantom got that 9.6, that left .4 to fit in two corps. Handing out the 9.8 to BD then meant Cavies could only get 9.9 or 10 if they were better. If you thought they were definitely better than 1 tenth over BD, you have to give out the 10 (you now have no other choice). Visual Performance (John Howell) ran into a similar situation... BK 9.1 Crown 9.2 SCV 9.5 Bluecoats 9.3 Cadets 9.4 Phantom 9.8 (!!!!) BD 9.7 Cavies 10 Again, once the big 3 came up the scores jumped and you had a similar situation to the other one. He had given out such a high number that he had little room to fit a corps in that he felt was definitely better than 1 tenth above his 9.8 score.

In order for Bluecoats to beat 'elite corps' like Cadets and SCV (when they are close) at Championships, they will have to come back out next season with a program at least as strong as this year. I'm not entirely saying Cadets and SCV are not earning their numbers, but their reputation/history requires that Bluecoats leave absolutely no doubt to finish ahead of them this time of year. If any of the judges have any doubts, they are going to slide the 'Coats over and give that number to these former champions.

With the high numbers given to Phantom and BD in those two sub-captions, the judges had backed themselves into a corner. I look for BD and Phantom to get slightly lower numbers as they try to allow for Cavies to beat them by 2 tenths without being backed into handing out 10s.

If Cavies had gone on before BD, I bet they don't get any 10s and the leading score going into finals is much lower. Judges let themselves get pushed into handing out 10s.

Cannot be true, unless Cavaliers are getting one too.

I'm sure ol' Curt Gowdy would be surprised to hear that Kansas City Star is no longer on the field.

I don't know if even Cadets should be beating Bluecoats, but this is the time of year when a corps with big reputation will easily get the benefit of doubt over another that is placing higher than usual.

Maybe it is way too expensive to get theater slots on friday nights. There is a business side to this as well. Would you prefer it to be Semifinals if you had to pay two or three times as much to watch it?

Most of my experience with DCI video work comes from the mid-80s to the mid-90s. Seems to me, starting right around 91 the video work hit overload mode. Last night just seemed like an extension of that for me. I guess I missed most of the decade in between where the video work was superior. I should have prefaced my comments with that information.

I didn't think any of it was offensive. I thought it was just the sort of thing I'd expect corps people to say.

I saw a little bit of them on the Cinecast. They were awesome. If they had been at Quarters, I figured they would've surely made it to Semifinals based on that clip.

The camera work was just about what I expected it to be. I would think that only someone with very little experience watching DCI videos would have been outraged over what happened. I knew where they were going to bungle it and they were right there doing it. It is NEVER better than being there in person and NEVER will be. Worse than the camera work were some of the fools in the theater audience. I really wondered why they spent $18 to chat with their buddies all night and make jokes about the various corps yet not having a clue how hard a corps actually works just to make it to Quarterfinals regardless of where they place.

I still thought it was bad. The only acceptable misuse of amplification was Capital Regiment, in my opinion.

If you could get into somewhere reasonably close in Canada, you could then have multiple options to get to Madison.

It makes more sense than ever before with championships being there for a full decade. Now that I think about it, it's hard to believe that Star has been gone for 13 years!

I thought security was supposed to be tighter than ever before. If that is the case, why can't they get back on schedule? I guess this is an admission that security may not be as tight as they would want us to believe. That stinks. Hopefully you can get a refund since this is clearly out of your control.