The disqualification of the Corpus Christi College team, after they had won the 2009 University Challenge competition, rather beggars belief and sits uneasily with common sense. One competitor has been ruled bot to be a student at the end of the series, but had begun the series as a student, having made it clear that his course would end before the end of the filming.
There are a few salient questions whihc deserve to be answered, quite outwith an understanding that rules were broken, and the forfeit is entirely reasonable as a response to a broken covenant.
When it was clear he would not be a student at the end of the filming run, why was he accepted as a competitor?
How likely is it that having completed his course during the period of programme filming that he would have improved in order to offer his team a competitive advantage?
He did get a couple of starters, and that’s all well and good, contributing to the final score. The tragedy is that the wonderful Gail Trimble, easily the greatest recent competitor on the show, now exits without a victory, because one of her team mates didn’t take personal responsibility to read and/or stick to the terms of his agreement.
