Robert Meredith

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Dr. Robert L. Meredith (November 8, 1945-August 12, 2005), was a professor and innovator in the domain of quizbowl. While an assistant professor of English at the Georgia Institute of Technology, he became coach of their College Bowl team in 1973. Meredith instituted "The System" that Georgia Tech, and later other successful quizbowl programs, followed continuously to this day to develop players, requiring team members to produce questions on a regular basis for practice. Meredith retired from coaching in 1989.

Meredith innovated the now standard match format of twenty toss-ups, untimed, on all thirty point bonuses all on academic material, thus making him a forefather of the Academic Competition Federation . It is for primarily this reason the ACF national championship trophy is named the Meredith Cup in his honor. Doc Meredith coached Tech to three non-College Bowl, pre-ACF, national championships in the 1980s. Undoubtedly Meredith's greatest campaign was his last in 1988-89 when Tech's 1st and 2nd teams placed first and second, respectively, in the aforesaid national championship, the All-American Academic Championship at the University of Tennessee.

Under Meredith's tutelage a number dominant players competed for Georgia Tech, including Chris Moody, Albert Whited, Norman Kreutter, Jim Dendy, Scott Gillispie, Steve Taylor, Robert Forsythe, and David Levinson among others.

While himself a student, Meredith was chosen to represent the University of Kansas (Lawrence) in the College Bowl Radio Competition in 1967. Due to scheduling shifts the Kansas squad was bumped from the competition that year and Meredith never got the opportunity to compete at the collegiate level.