Academic Bowl is a tournament-style academic competition. Each school may enter one team, consisting of four students, who will answer questions correctly for points. These students must remain on the team throughout the competition. The tournament will be double-elimination style, and each team will place according to their ranking in the tournament.
Competition will consist of at least fifteen rounds of questions asked from the Bible, electives, and the four core subjects (math, English, history, and science). These questions are taken from 7th-12th grade curriculum, and the questions may be visual (meaning they use pictures or maps). Team members will need to state which two of the four core subjects in which they will be answering questions. They will stay with their selection throughout the competition, but any team member may answer Bible and elective questions.
The moderator and timer/scorekeeper will supervise each round. The score will be announced after the fifth, tenth, and fourteenth round. During each round, there should be no talking, video/audio taping, or note-taking by any person in the audience. If the moderator is not comfortable with the audience conduct, they have the choice to continue the game without the audience.
Important Notes
- The time of each school’s competition is posted outside the Academic Bowl room. It is the responsibility of the sponsors and students to be punctual to their scheduled competition.
- Each team must select one of their members to be the team captain.
- Teams may take nothing with them to the competition table. Scratch paper and pencils will be provided.
- To answer a question, a student should press their assigned button. The student who presses their button first gets to answer first.
Toss-up Questions
- Toss-up questions will be asked simultaneously of both teams. Either team may answer by pushing the button. The first person to push their button must respond to the question.
- There may be no conferring with other team members.
- Each toss-up question will have a value of five points. If a team member responds with an incorrect answer, the team loses five points. At that time, a new toss-up question will be asked.
- If a team member answers a question for a category in which they were not designated, their team loses the toss-up and the points, even if they answered correctly.
- All teams will be given fifteen seconds in which to answer any toss-up question. (The only exception is math calculation questions which will be given thirty seconds.)
Bonus Questions
- If the contestant answers the toss-up question correctly, the team earns a bonus question. Each bonus question will have a value of ten points.
- The team will be given fifteen seconds in which to answer the bonus question. (The only exception is math calculations questions which will be given thirty seconds.)
- On bonus questions, team members may confer with one another, but only the team captain will be permitted to give the answer.
- No points will be deducted if an incorrect answer is given for bonus questions.
The moderator will ask questions until fifteen toss-up questions have been asked. For the final question, a correct answer must be given before a winner is declared. The team that answered the final toss-up question will be given an opportunity to answer a bonus question if it makes a difference to the outcome of the competition.
The decision of the moderator is final.