In which we explain how time zones affect debate tournaments

Here’s an interesting item. I have heard that there are arguments abroad about this on the interwebs, that if a tournament, to wit, Rather Large Bronx, is set in its own time zone, it must somehow be at fault. 

Jeez Louise.

 

Let’s look first at the mechanics of an online tournament. We’re seeing pretty clearly that at any major event, single-flighting is the way to go. You could possibly argue this, but even if you were to win that argument, everything I’ll be saying here still holds, with a slight adjustment of arithmetic.

 

To conduct an LD round at the circuit level, it is expected that teams have 30 minutes prep time. Then there’s showing up in the e-room, and 15 minutes (I’m being generous here, but I’ve run a few tournaments where I’ve seen that that generosity is not misplaced) of tech-check time, email chain setup, etc. The round itself, max, is about 65 minutes, allowing for some tech issues and that the judge might want to think for a minute or two about the decision. That gets us to 30+15+65= 110 minutes. (If you double this and think about it, you’ll realize that 2 LD rounds > 1 CX round, which is why I’m using LD as the example.)

 

Pairing a round with MJP can take up to half an hour. (A 240 cap means 120 rounds.) This assumes that you are not just blindly following tabroom, which is less than desirable. For one thing, we usually set 2-3 matches preferable to 1-2s, which tabroom can’t do. We really want bubble rounds to be advantaged as much as possible, which tabroom is pretty good at, but once you’ve addressed the 1-2/2-3 issue, you can usually improve bubbles a little bit from there because of the resulting judge changes. If you threw in per-round obligations—which, thankfully, we’re not using anywhere at virtual tournaments—that would make things take even longer. Let’s allow about a half hour from the last ballot in to the posting of the next round. 110+30 = 140. Or, in human terms two hours and twenty minutes. 

 

Let’s say we want five rounds a day. That would be 5 * 140 = 700 = around 11 and a half hours. Since shit happens, let’s round it up, and say that 5 rounds a day takes 12 hours. You could round it down if you want. But a looser schedule means the odd bathroom break and quick meals.

 

So, if you start at 9 in the morning, you end at 9 at night, maybe somewhere before nine if you’re lucky. If you start at 8, you end at 8. If you start at 10 or 11, you end at 10 or 11.

 

Just for reference, IRL tournaments usually also run about 12 hours, if their schedules are rough, and fewer hours if they’re trying to be humane. I’ve been to tournaments where the days were even longer. (Being in tab, btw, means they’re longer still, since you start and end before everyone else, but admittedly it’s not quite as hard as being in all those rounds consecutively during that long day.)

 

Getting to the point, a couple more things. Everyone, presumedly, is debating at home. The vast majority of PF judges are, presumedly, parents. Every individual in a round needs three essentials: at least one unique device, good internet access, and an undisturbed setting. And here’s where we start getting into trouble. The demands on a student’s home (magnified when that student’s parent is judging) can challenge the three essentials, and I would suggest that these challenges are directly related to the financial situation of that home. The greater the family income, the lesser the challenges. Everybody has their own room, their own computer, the latest zippy mesh wifi, debater downstairs, daddy judge upstairs, no siblings, no distractions? Happiness. Start eating away at that, happiness not so much. 

 

Oh yeah. One more thing. There’s a pandemic going on. Unemployment is through the roof. At the same time many employed people are working from home hogging tech resources. You can add to this whatever, but it cannot be ignored. It’s what started this whole thing in the first place.

 

So let’s look at virtual tournaments. One of the great opportunities virtuality gives us is the removal of travel and lodging expenses. This is a great leveler. On paper, this means that anyone can attend a tournament anywhere. My hope, and the direction I’m giving my tournament runners, is that we can open things up primarily to economically underserved programs that would normally not be able to attend. We prioritized the waitlists at Bronx exactly that way. This year we will see teams that, sadly, will probably never come again. That means that some teams will finally get a chance in an otherwise rough year to do some circuit debate. Given the numbers we’ve been seeing, I’m guessing they’re champing at the bit. 

 

At the same time, these teams that I’m championing are the most likely to have the greatest challenges with those three essentials mentioned above. It was no great stretch to decide early on—and not just me, but plenty of other coaches as well—that if hardships occurred, the greatest hardships would occur at night. The decision to try to get tournaments over by 8:00 if possible, 9:00 at the latest, was an easy one to reach. (Note that PF, without the extra pre-round prep, will take less than the full 12 hours, but if you have roughly 600 rounds happening during any given time slot at a tournament, don’t count on things going smoothly all day. That never happens IRL, so why should it happen virtually? Throw in one complicated rules challenge, and the best laid plans…) 

 

When we said earlier that virtual tournaments remove travel and lodging expenses, allowing  anyone theoretically to attend a tournament anywhere, we weren’t suggesting that somehow virtuality eliminates geography per se. Geography, and time zones, remain fixed. So what about teams that aren’t in the same time zone? Most of those will progressively be starting an hour earlier per zone, up to three hours for Pacific Time. That is, a 9:00 start Eastern Time is a 6:00 start Pacific Time. Granted, that sucks. A 10:00 start Eastern Time is 7:00 in Malibu, which isn’t all that great either. But what’s worse is that the end is now 10:00 p.m. in Miami. Adjustment further makes things even worse. An 8:00 a.m. start in Oakland is an 11:00 finish in Boston.

 

Conversely, a tournament with a Pacific Time start of 8:00 a.m., say, starts and ends at the opposite 11:00 a.m. and p.m. in New York. The only way that New Yorkers or Floridians could realistically attend California tournaments is if those tournaments were to start at 6:00 in the morning. Which is what the Californians are objecting to with the New York 9:00 Eastern time starts. Let’s face it, bubbeleh, the Californians ain’t gonna do that. None of them. Period. End of story. Yet I hear that they’re whining that New York won’t do it for them? 

 

Get [expletive deleted] real. 

In which for once we didn't have that long, lonely drive home down Route 84 through the unexplored Connecticut hinterlands

And so, the weary warrior returns from battle. In this case, the Massachusetts Speech and Debate League Online #1. Or Maspandeleon #1, as I prefer it. Sort of sounds like the sacred book in some second-tier fantasy series. “Seeketh the holy Maspandeleon, young warthog, and thou shalt be rewarded.”

Whatever.

 

It wasn’t a big tournament. A couple of PF divisions of 27 each, plus a pesky little 8-person LDer. Most attendees, judges or debaters, had no problems with the tech. There was an outage of the rooms that lasted for a remarkably short period of time, and when things spun up again, everyone went back to what they were doing without a glitch. Hardy souls, those Massachutes, or whatever you call them. Massachuwegians?

 

(Speaking of the outage, read this: https://www.azuen.net/2020/09/26/the-loneliest-moment/

  Some folks may need the particular reality check therein.)

 

A couple of days before the tournament I hosted an open house for judges to check their tech. Maybe a third of them took me up on it. This was an idea Pennsylvania Jeff had floated on our Tab Slack, and I think it’s a good one, and I’ll continue doing it. Coaches and students have NSDA memberships and team rooms and all sorts of resources for practice. The odd parent judge, not so much. Inexperienced parents worry about a lot of issues, especially not screwing things up for the students. They shouldn’t have to worry about literally getting into the back of virtual room.

 

Another issue we discussed on our Tab Slack was that when students’ tech failed, not to allow everyone to go off to a private room. We would go so far as to make this a DQ for all involved. We did have one poor schmegeggie at the Maspandeleon that no amount of shaking the tech could could straighten out, and I did allow private sessions since I knew the players well enough to trust them. But even that one was problematic, and took up a lot of my time. At a tournament with, say, 3 divisions of 270, as compared to 2 of 27, no way. In other words, the idea of banning side trips was confirmed in the tournament crucible. 

 

Virtual tab rooms are sort of fun. But the Maspandeleon was small, as in me doing all the pairing, Massachuwegian Josh Cohen pulling all the other levers, and Tim “Laundry Sorter” Averill horse-whispering the judges. Judge whispering? Anyhow, some others dropped by as well, so it was an easily personable assemblage. I even played some music from the tab playlist for a while. It was almost like being there. Thinking ahead, I’m planning on separate event tab rooms at the big tournaments, with one group tutti-of-the-fruitis tab room for business other than pairing. That is, when Catholic Charlie and I are trying to find 2-3s to replace the 1-2s at Bronx, the last thing we need is to hear Sheryl Kazsplaining judge obligations to someone remote in Papeete.  (Or someone in remote Papeete, if you will. A Papeetwegian?) 

 

And I’m starting to believe that running unrunnable divisions is becoming my specialty. That LD with 8 people, 4 of them from the same school—try to do that on an empty stomach. 

 

This coming weekend, I’ll be a spear carrier for Catholic Charlie at a tiny local. Then the week after that, Byram Hills, at which the debate numbers have become quite respectable. The wrinkle there will be double flights, which Kaz apparently thinks are the devil’s workshop. You can’t imagine my joy and rapture knowing that I’ll be finding out for myself soon enough.

 

 

 

In which we crunch a few numbers

The word is that NSDA Campus is working well this weekend. Single flights are definitely a help at a big tournament. But we’ve been saying that from the beginning. They’re the logical thing to do, as Mr. Spock would put it. 

Needless to say, the tournament I’m doing the most work on at the moment is Rather Large Bronx. The numbers say it all. In an average year, counting all the divisions, maybe we total about 900 entries. That’s not humongous compared to some of the Ivies I work, but it ain’t hay. This year, we have well over twice that registered, pretty much hitting all our caps, plus another 1200 or so on the waitlists. Parsing out who gets in has been real work.

 

The first step was establishing two things: caps, if any, and setting the entry bar. Caps was easy enough: down-2s break. Since RLB has a history of 7 rounds in VLD and VPF, easy enough, just following tradition. 6 rounds in CX, also traditional, also easy. Then adding JV divisions, all with 6 rounds (because there is no tradition—the Fiddler on the Roof stuff only goes so far), again getting all down-2s to break. The JV rounds were meant to take some of the pressure off the V for the participating teams. Folks get their allotted handful of Varsity, and let’s face it, that allotted handful should be the only ones deemed by their coaches of a chance of breaking. If you have 20 PF teams, well, friend, you probably don’t have 20 teams at bid level. And you probably have some seniors and some juniors and maybe even some sophomores. JV gives you a place for those younger students. Needless to say, we’re pushing JV at all the colleges I work this year. And maybe some other places, like Bigle X. The numbers will no doubt support it. As for the entry bar, official high school entries only. (This doesn’t stop obvious independents from giving it a shot, but the obviousness is preclusive.) Then we set what the community in general was considering a reasonable split of rewarding regulars and bringing in newcomers, 80/20. And with those newcomers, a further eye on various levels of diversity—geographic, economic, etc. This may be the one year that folks who are unable to travel get the chance to participate at some exciting national events. On the other hand, if you’re a hearty perennial, that should be acknowledged. My old saw about tournament management being a brand of customer service holds here. You can’t give everyone what they want, perhaps, but you can do your best job of trying in such a way that customer satisfaction is as high as possible. 

 

The process has been straightforward. First, I assembled a list of all the participant schools of the last few years. You do this by porting the data from tabroom into Excel and de-duping. Let’s say we’re talking LD, with a 240 cap. That means that 80/20 is about 200/40.  (Yeah, I know, but let's stick to round numbers.) When it was time for my first shot at the waitlist, I gave 1 slot to each of the repeater schools. (I didn’t have a list of just repeating LD or any other division’s schools, so I had to let tabroom do the tallying for me.) Let’s say there were 50 of them when I had gotten through the list. When I see that, it’s easy to figure that each repeat school would get 4. (BTW, I’m making up these example numbers so the math will be clear. Offhand I don’t recall the exact numbers, but these are close enough for explanatory purposes.) That got us to about 200. Then, pulling numbers out of the air on seeing maybe 200 more entrants, I decided 2 each for new schools, based on our diversity priorities. When I reached 240-ish, I stopped, leaving a little skoosh room for whatever. 

 

Rinse. Repeat for the other divisions. Speech caps were set at 160. 

Since then, I’ve been able to move a few people off the W/Ls in a few situations. Repeat schools that signed up late (because 2020, hence the skoosh), or divisions that were not at cap (like Duo). 

 

By the way, all of this information—at least the numbers—is readily available for any interested party on tabroom. Caps are published, as are lists of entrants. You can see who got what, and to some extent figure out why. Obviously, if you sign up today for something like VPF (waitlist 345, or as I like to put it, THREE HUNDRED FREAKIN’ FORTY-FIVE!!!), your odds of getting in are about the same as Hillary winning the 2020 election as a write-in candidate. For that matter, the odds of any of the 345 getting off are pretty dismal. 

 

It’s interesting to see what happens when you remove travel expenses from the equation. When all you’re paying for is a share of the rooms and the trophies, and maybe a reasonable small profit for the host of a professionally run tournament, it’s a lot cheaper than hotels, motels, B&Bs (air or otherwise), flop houses, airplanes, buses, pedicabs, phaetons, troikas, etc. You can’t blame people for trying. But then again, where are those people at the non-bid tournaments? We’ve got Byram Hills in a couple of weeks, and while the entry numbers are respectable, they’re not crazy. If all people are looking for is rounds, there are probably plenty out there. On the other hand, if people are looking for glamour on the cheap, it’s not going to come easy. In other words, there are some people out there who need to get their priorities straight. For that matter, there are some tournaments out there that also need to get their priorities straight, but that’s another matter. 

 

Two rules of thumb, one for teams, another for tournaments. For teams, seek tournaments that make sense for your students at their levels: Your juniors who have never debated at the national level aren’t going to somehow turn into circuit powerhouses because there's a coronavirus afoot. For tournaments, run tournaments that make sense competitively and financially: There’s a pandemic this year and it’s hitting schools in the pocketbook harder than just about anyone, so act like it. 

Or maybe just one rule of thumb for everyone, everywhere: Get Real.

 

Anyhow, that’s the story of RLB. Which is smaller than some of the others I’ll be attacking soon enough. It will be keeping me off the streets, but then again, so is covid-19. Somehow it will all work out.

In which we plan to tell everyone where to go

First of all, Bro J has posted this—‪http://www.lifa.org/lifadocs.org/NSDACampus.mp4—which I think will be really helpful to new judges, or at least judges new to virtual tournaments, which is most of them. At the same time I’m working on a packet of info for the judges, and I’ll use this as my starting point. We need to deliver a lot of information in an easily digestible format. 

The thing is, people don’t all necessarily learn the same way. If you’re a teacher, you already know that. Over the years I did a lot of training on technology, and underwent a lot of training on technology myself. Some people learn by watching. Some people learn by reading the manual. Some people learn by hitting all the buttons and seeing what happens. I tend to be of the latter persuasion. (After I bang around for a while, then I might look something up in the manual if I hit a wall, but most good software responds well to an intuitive approach, if you’re a person with good tech instincts.) I’ve also learned by trial and error that manual writing needs to be extremely straightforward. I like to liven things up a bit when I write, which may be fine here, but which a lot of people find distracting when all they want to do is learn that ctrl-C will copy and ctrl-V will paste. (Why a V? Why not a V? Why a duck?) You need the right written material at the right time for the right audience. Much of my instructional material for judges is written in a light vein because it’s not really technical, and is meant to be comforting and reassuring for new PF parents. Humor can help there. But we’ll be looking as well for the ctrl-C/ctrl-V sort of info for virtuality. It will be fun to put all this together over the next week or so. My first tournament is the MSDL on 9/26, so the clock is ticking.

 

The numbers at the Massachusetts Speech And Debate League Online #1 (or as I like to call it Maspandeleon La Partie Une) are slowly coming together. I know from experience with the NYCFL that local events tend to come together closer to the tournament date than big bid tournaments, for which people sign up at the first ding of the opening bell. The PF divisions are fine; we could use a little goosing in LD and CX. They’re also hosting Big Questions, which at the moment has the Littlest Field. Maybe they don’t like asking the big questions up in Massachusetts. Maybe they’ve never recovered from Mitt Romney.

 

The other open local event, if local is a word we can use to define an online region, is Byram Hills. LD and PF are hunky dory. Speech, less hunky and dory. Again, this is probably a factor of late local signups. But the thing is, one does need to get one's rooms in a row, and paid for, before the event. One can only wait for so long. 

 

And we are putting the finishing touches on Little Big Bronx, their Sunday novice event. That opens on Friday. As I think I’ve said before, it seems awful early to me, based on my own experience with novices over the years. But some schools have been in session—and I use that term advisedly—longer than our local learning factories. I’d be happy to see a big turnout. The bigger the tournament, the easier it is to run. Until it gets too big, at which point all hell can break loose. 

 

Ain’t 2020 fun?

 

In which the digging continues in

There may have been second thoughts about doing the Nov-Dec PF topic early. Regisian Eric talked to me later in the day reporting what was essentially a “Wait. What?!?” moment after the NYCFL meeting. He made good points about his team already working with their novices on October, and the situation with the Manhattan league. As I have no horses in the race, I’m happy to bow to those who do. We’ll see what happens. This year the October CFL is 10/24. Next year it’s 10/30. What a difference a day makes.  

The Usual Tab Suspects spent a bunch of time over the summer polishing ideas for schedules. As it eventually played out, any event with major numbers needs to be single flighted. This does, of course, put a burden on the teams to bring more judges, but on the other hand, the way teams are signing up for everything that isn’t nailed, some sort of brake is needed. I’ve seen people copping 75 TBAs, covering every division, for schools I’ve never heard of. My never hearing of them is relatively meaningless, but there is a point where if you sign up everyone for everything to a tournament you’ve never attended before, it might be nice if your name was something other than genericdebateclub@gmail.com. Sigh.

 

Speaking of waitlists, the numbers at Rather Large Bronx are, well, rather large. At the moment, as a matter of fact, the waitlist is about 50% larger than last year’s actual entries. Of course, there’s the usual run of bogus entries, but even taking them out, the numbers are staggering. Since we’re setting meaningful caps that break all down-twos, this situation isn’t going to change much. I have to admit it’s been a bit of a brain-buster sorting out the percentages of new vs regulars, and it’s going to get worse as we get closer to reality. Stripping out the TBAs will help, but that never does as much as one might like, and it will probably make even less of a difference this year. 

 

Getting back to schedules, we have also worked out numbers for a double-flighted day. You can get in 4 rounds with some sanity, the good Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise. But double flights require a lot of potentially fraught hoo-ha no matter how you slice them, and I wouldn’t want to see them anywhere that the stakes are high, i.e., a bid tournament. I’ll be breaking the double ice at the Byram Hills event. We’ll see what happens. 

 

 

In which we start digging in

All right. We’re back. Not that we actually went anywhere, aside from a few days up at Mohonk. We are starting to venture out, inch by inch, but we aren't anywhere near going crazy. There's plenty of covidiots out there to do that for us.

And, of course, there’s a lot going on in the forensical universe, some of which is pretty interesting. Let’s see…

 

First of all, since Kaz will be in the virtual Midwest that day, she asked me to help out at the MSDL debate tournament the end of September. Of course, sez I. I worked at their championships last spring, where we piloted NSDA Campus, and I certainly know most of the players. Some of them, like Tim Averill, I’ve known forever. Speaking of whom, the sorting of his laundry during the championships in our virtual tab room is indelibly imprinted on my mind, and probably the minds of the rest of the tab staff as well. We’re hoping he sends things out to the cleaners in advance this time.

 

A key thing happening between Mass and the NYCFL is the pooling of, well, our pools. In a virtual world, we can open up more opportunities for students, and make better events at the same time. Often when we run a local event there’s a lot of same-school debating because we just don’t have the arithmetic diversity in a given field. For instance, if you give Regis unlimited slots for PF, they take them, plus a few more. (I think the formula for that is  

but my math is admittedly rusty.) I gather the same is true of Lexington and Policy up in the Commonwealth. After that MSDL September event mentioned above, there will at the very least be the season starter “Regis” NYCFL debate, now open to Masswegians, and a few weeks after that my favorite Little Lexington combined with the Bronx Fall Local, which I guess will be called the Not-So-Little-Anymore Bronxington Local with Connecting Stops to Boston, Howth Castle and Environs, Etc.

 

(And you thought I couldn’t get a finnegans wake reference in here anywhere.)

 

One other thing for now: today was the NYCFL advisors meeting. On Zoom, of course. Eric D won the prize for best looking digs (it’s got roughly the same number of paintings as the Louvre). The biggest deal, as far as I was concerned, was my suggestion that we run the Nov-Dec PF topic at our late October events. This was amended to running Nov-Dec only for novices (which I had in the back of my mind, but I wanted someone else to suggest it). I know that for a lot of novices, that one October event is the only time they’ll debate that topic, which is sort of nuts. Now they can learn the ropes and dig in for a longer haul before they get into the main swing of the event’s fast topic turn-around. Way more educational, if you ask me. The idea of a permanent novice rez, on the other hand, doesn’t really work in PF, which is so based on current events. Making this change, btw, is a lot less cumbersome than our work back in the day on the Modest Novice for LD. But the same general principles apply. I think it’s a good move. 

In which we reminisce, ruminate, and prognosticate

Just for the record, the Sept-Oct 2020 PF topic is pretty much a rerun of the 1962 debate topic that I argued back in my freshman year of high school with my partner, Duncan. No doubt my great-grandchildren, if any, will be debating it sixty years from now. Once a chestnut, always a chestnut. Not a bad topic, but also sadly a sorry commentary on medical care in our country. Just for the record, the goal of for-profit medicine is the highest number of patients spending the most money; the goal of government-funded medicine is the smallest number of patients costing the least money. Although the topic is not really about that, it’s something to keep in mind. 

 

As for the LD topic, I’ve always liked this idea, and certainly I like the resolution. In the US, where the number of voters is somewhere between pathetic and anemic, I wonder what it would result in vis-à-vis the President. Especially if voting in primaries was mandatory. You would never have seen either Trump or Clinton in 2016, I would imagine. The biggest horse’s ass in America versus the most hated woman? What are they odds either would survive the common folk? 

 

Meanwhile, I love reading the papers every day for the [sarcasm] clarity [/sarcasm] on the school reopening issue. I have to admit that I’m glad I’m not the one having to decide anything on this. There’s no winning side. Kids suffer from not being in school, unquestionably. The dangers of kids in schools spreading the virus are manifest. Crocodiles to the left, alligators to the right. A lot of folks seem to be of the let’s-open-the-schools-and-let-nature-take-its-course persuasion, that is, open them for two weeks until you have no choice but to close them. Creating successful virtual education? One doesn’t hear much about that particular puppy. Like anyone reading this blog, I’ve been to an awful lot of high schools in my day, and the idea that these are somehow safe environments does tickle the old funny bone. Seriously? And colleges are no better. 

 

Life is going to continue to suck for a long, long time. 

 

In which we don't believe a word of it

I’ve been working regularly with the Usual Suspects on just about every aspect of virtual tournaments. As the season draws near, the reality of staffing e-vents has helped concentrate the hive mind. It isn’t all just push a button and take a nap. Not even close.

 

I, for one, think that the ridiculous number of people signing up for just about everything does not, in fact, represent real registrations. Most schools still have no real idea what they’ll be doing this year in terms of classes, much less what they’ll be doing in terms of tournaments. Still, one does sign up optimistically; I can understand that. And independents are sliming down the cliff walls, presumably in the hopes that no one will notice or care, and I know that there are tournaments that indeed don’t care. IRL, as I always say, independent minors running around your hallways puts the responsibility for their safety squarely in your hands (you’re the one driving them to the emergency room when they start bleeding from every portal), and virtual tournaments relieve at least that, but I’ve already seen at the one little e-tournament we had back in June that—SURPRISE—independents don’t necessarily feel a responsibility to show up, or let you know that they aren’t showing up, which you find out about 15 minutes after start time. Sigh. Oh, well, the VCA knows well my feelings about independents: the poor dears go to a school without debate? Then teach ‘em to play football, which the school also doesn't have, and then have them sign up as independent football players at high school events. The logic is the same. 

 

In any case, my guess is that despite big numbers early on, events will eventually boil down to the neighborhood of the caps. (You’re going to a tournament without caps? Seriously? Why don’t you just send them a check and be done with it?) Reality will set in, probably relatively soon. Schools will open one way or the other, craziness will happen, people will settle down and realize that there’s still a pandemic raging that kills people, and tournaments will be what they will be. We all just have to hang in there. 

In which we provide a manifesto

 Executive Summary:

            Bid events meaningfully capped

                        With single flights (LD/PF)

            Create additional JV and Novice events

                        Double-flighted

                        Meaningfully capped and, if numbers warrant, multiplied (i.e., possibly 2 JV divisions)

            Create Open Non-Bid events

                        Provide rounds for students shut out of bid divisions

                                    This is an alternative to getting simply shut out, period

            Eliminate trophies and lower fees

            

Details:

 

Debate has evolved over many years into what it became the last few decades. The events evolved, the tournaments evolved, and the system pretty much worked. There were plenty of debaters, and plenty of good tournaments to choose from. There were different paths to take for different teams, different ages, different styles, different needs, different budgets. Never perfect, but often striving to do its best.

 

We are now, however, in the middle of a pandemic. We need to adjust accordingly. 

 

And someday we won’t be in the middle of a pandemic. We need to prepare accordingly.

 

Covid has rendered virtually all 2020-21 tournaments virtual. Virtuality eliminates geography, to a degree. It cannot eliminate time zones, but those who are willing to adjust might be willing to ignore them. Virtuality also eliminates travel and lodging expenses. On the other hand, virtuality has its own demands, primarily technological, but also social: adequate access to equipment and adequate space to perform. In other words, although virtuality eliminates some issues, it creates others. These others are still new to us, and we will learn about them along the way; with luck, we’ll figure out ways to solve some of them. 

 

One thing we have definitely seen already in the Covid Era is exponentially increased demand for slots at tournaments. Varsity PF waitlists at roughly 600. VLD waitlists at 360ish. Yes, some of this is hot air, but even at half the number, PF at 300 is problematic. And honestly, it is unlikely that people are signing up nonexistent team members. That is, if you have 6, you sign up 6; if you have 3, you sign up 3, not 6. So, most likely, these numbers indicate strong demand, enabled by the elimination of geography.  

 

Competition, to achieve its desired effects, has to be meaningful and responsible. It evolved that way pre-covid. We need to keep it that way during the pandemic. And when we finally sound the all-clear, we need our debaters to be prepared to jump back into the real world. Let’s assume that 2021-2022 is that moment; 2020-2021 needs to be the bridge to get us there. The onus is on those who run tournaments, especially those popular tournaments that offer TOC bids. Suddenly access to those tournaments is, in a sense, universal. Early numbers demonstrate this dramatically. These tournaments must rise to the occasion. Changes must be made. We must get through this year, and be ready for next year. 

 

We must do the following.

 

Bid Events: Since it is unlikely (and not recommended) that TOC will change its qualification structure for this season, tournaments with TOC bids need to manage their divisions in such a way that access to bids is fair and meaningful. A division of PF with 600, or 300, offering 8 or 16 bids, would be neither. 

 

1)    Bid events need to be 6 rounds. 

a.     I’m sure someone could parse out breaking to sextuples or something to break all 10-2s or whatever, but there are only so many hours in the day, not to mention the aggro generated among the 9-3s.

2)    Bid events need to break all or most 4-2s. Assuming large numbers of potential entrants, this means breaking to triples. To achieve this, division caps need to be set.

a.     There is a tossup here. A 180 cap = c. 62 4-2s. A 220 cap = c. 76 4-2s. There are some who are willing to say that not all 4-2s should break, and that breaking some of them but not all is acceptable. That is an option, but I don’t recommend it, because it is not necessary. There are other options, discussed below. 

3)    Bid events need to be single-flighted. (CX, of course, needs to be reined in tighter; I won’t belabor how—just fit it in with your LD/PF)

a.     There is really no way around this. The first round of the day is at 9:00, then 11:30, 2:00, 4:30, 7:00.

                                               i.     Rounds starting later than 7:00 PM impose an impossible burden on many students finding access at home difficult. 

                                             ii.     Rounds starting before 9:00 AM impose a difficult burden on coaches organizing students for the day (presumably on their virtual bus)

4)    Bid events need to stretch over 3 days.

a.     2 rounds on Friday, 5 on Saturday, 5 on Sunday. (Again, adjust down for CX.)

b.     Eliminate for PF from the below example the half-hour prep time (i.e., 15 minutes from round posted to everyone in room)

 

 

5)    Bid events should be sorted roughly 80% regular attendees, 20% new to tournament. (You can grab previous years’ attendees out of tabroom and port into Excel to figure who’s who.)

a.     You owe it to your regulars to favor them, as they’ve supported you year after year

b.     You owe it to the community at large to let in newcomers previously prohibited (probably financially) from attending

 

Non-bid events, traditional: This year should see a lot of new JV divisions. This will absorb some of the demand out of the bid divisions. 

 

1)    If you don’t have a JV division in every debate event you offer, create one. Division is limited to students in their absolute first or second year of debate.

2)    Double-flight. The judge burden of single flights on teams is high. Imposing this burden on your bid events is one thing; imposing it elsewhere is asking perhaps too much of most teams. This means a judge ratio of 1-3.

 

 

3)    Here’s where things get interesting. Cap at 90. This breaks the top half of the 3-2s. 

4)    Create multiple divisions at the same level. Let’s say you have, oh, 270 JV entrants on the waitlist. In that case, break them down to 3 divisions, JV1, JV2, JV3. Keep schools together in a division to minimize judge burden.

a.     This means that ALL your JVers have a reasonable chance of good competition and breaking to elims. 

b.     This requires some manipulation on the tabbing end, but nothing too strenuous. Registrants simply choose JV when they sign up; you sort on the back end. 

c.     If numbers dwindle over time, you can always combine divisions later.

5)    HS graduates and up as judges. The idea of seniors judging folks who may be juniors is rife with potential shenanigans.

 

Novice events should be handled the same as JV. Open registration to absolute first-years, double-flight, 1-3 judge ratio, caps at 90 and multiple divisions if necessary.

1)    Seniors with a minimum of 200 NSDA points are eligible to judge in the novice divisions

 

It might appear that all these multiple divisions would be something of a headache to manage, but not really. They’re all of the push-button variety requiring little on the tabbing end to pair. Getting them up and running will take peoplepower, but two divisions of 90 is no more onerous to start than one division of 180. This might be a little cavalier, but then again, these are not bid divisions, and are intended to give the most people the most rounds, a seriously important goal. A cavalier attitude makes sense.

 

 

Non-bid events, non-traditional: Here’s where we get into the fun part. What about the juniors and seniors who don’t fit into JV, and are shut out of the varsity bid division? This, I imagine, will be a sizeable number at many tournaments. 

1)    Create an Open, non-bid division.

a.     Lots of conversation has ensued, and lots of possibilities offered, on what to name such a division. It has, to be sure, the odor of not being the really top event. But here’s the thing. The top event, the TOC bid event, is limited. You have two choices if you don’t get into it: stay home and stew, or enter the non-bid division. 

                                                        i.     The onus here is on the coaches to reasonably decide who belongs where. Needless to say, limited bid events are going to mostly be competitive bloodbaths. Plus, you’re only going to get a couple of teams into them in any case. Coaches can manage their teams in the era of CV, or not. Tournaments offering non-bid varsity are doing their best for the community. Coaches need to do what is best for their students. 

b.    The Open NB division is, literally, open to anyone. 

c.     Single flight, 1-2 judging, prefs. Same as the bid events, in other words, without the bids. 

d.     No cap. It is what it is. (If the numbers prove outrageous, however, splitting divisions as with JV might make sense. Time, and intelligent tournament management, will tell.)

e.     This division is not created until after the registration opens. If the numbers aren’t crazy, i.e., more than twice the cap, it might not be necessary. But you’ll see what’s happening almost immediately. Quick action can and should ensue. 

f.      Allow waitlist entries. Clear this waitlist after clearing the bid events. Allow TBAs until after this division is cleared. 

                                                        i.     This way coaches can see how the almost literal lottery of the bid divisions has gone, and sort teams accordingly. 

g.     Publicize the possibility of an OPEN NB event in the invitation, and explain why, as outlined here. Tournaments should openly explain themselves, especially in the CV Era.

 

 

And now for some general thoughts. Some of these are tough. Some of them are heretical. You have never done them this way, you can’t believe it’s even being suggested, everybody panic!!!

 

Forget it, Jake. It’s coronavirus.

 

1)    Offer no hired judges.

a.     This puts the burden on the teams to cover their entries. This will help eliminate some of the flakier entries that are not quite unofficial. (Of course, we are only considering bona fide official entries from high schools.) 

b.     Nevertheless, hire lots of extra judges for each division. Things happen, and you’ll need them. Good judging, CV or no CV, is the hallmark of good tournaments. 

c.     One exception for high schools is that they might want to offer hireds for the novice divisions, using their own surplus upperclassfolk and making a few extra dollars. 

d.     Not offering hireds is based on, first, a tournament’s need to hold back judging resources for its own purposes, and second, the idea that there simply may not be that many extras to go around. If the latter prediction proves wrong, then offering hireds would be fine. (But using them to cover parent-entered singletons and the like would not make sense. This is an extension of the usual general rule that no school can hire to cover its entire burden.)

2)    No trophies.

a.     Yes, you heard that right. No trophies. 

b.     Did we say no trophies?

                                               i.     Trophies are an acceptable hassle in an IRL event. In a virtual event, they are a potential nightmare. Sorting, packing, mailing: the costs, never low, are possibly doubled. 

c.     Forget it, Jake. It’s coronavirus.

d.     If you must, just do medals. They’re cheap and thin, and while they’re still a hassle, you might feel obligated to provide them. 

e.     Because of “3”, below, people will understand and, perhaps, applaud you.

3)    Lower your fees substantially. (You can read the rest of this after they’ve picked you up from the floor.)

a.     Forget it, Jake. It’s coronavirus.

b.     If you eliminate (or minimize) trophies, your only expenses are judges and rooms. 

c.     You have two options. Pass along your savings during the greatest educational crisis any of us have ever faced, or sock it to ‘em. 

                                               i.     If you really read that as a choice, you need to adjust your sarcasometer.

d.     Tournaments do deserve to make a profit, of course. You’re doing a lot of work, and providing an important service.    

                                               i.     Do your homework and estimate your costs per student as best you can. 

                                             ii.     Charge that cost, plus, say, 25%. 

1.     Remember, if it’s a team event, with no trophies, two students cost the price of one!

e.     This may not be the year you make enough money to send your team around the country to prestigious tournaments. Then again, there are no prestigious tournaments around the country to send your team to anyhow.

f.      Forget it, Jake. It’s coronavirus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In which we count the numbers

I, for one, do not believe half of the entries on tabroom for some of the upcoming tournaments. On the other hand, I do believe the other half, literally, which in many cases is way more than the norm. Way more. It is going to be one of a tournament’s greatest responsibilities this season to manage entries in an era when there are no travel or lodging fees. 

 

Of course, the first option is to let everybody in and devil take the hindmost. Needless to see, I find this option odious at best. 

 

In the case of bid tournaments, there needs to be a reasonable expectation on the part of entrants that the bids are achievable. The IRL rule of thumb has always been that the best situation is that all down-2s break. This requires a balancing of event caps and the number of prelims and elims. Quite doable. This season, sadly, it will leave a lot of entrants on the cutting room floor, but it’s probably better not to get in than to win 5 out of 7 rounds, and maybe pay a goodly fee, and not break.

 

When there are no bids at stake, there is still a responsibility on the part of a tournament to create a meaningful competition. 340 entrants debating 6 rounds = 117 4-2s. 240 entrants debating 6 rounds = 83 4-2s. Those are tough odds if you're breaking to a triple. Breaking to a double? Fuhgeddaboudit. I would prefer creating more events. If I have a bid division capped at 170, say, and 300 leftover registrants, maybe I’d begin by creating a new division for JV. That would alleviate a lot of the pressure on the bid division. There aren’t a lot of JV divisions in the wild around here these days. There’s Yale, which is early in the year when former novices are just cutting their teeth on sophomoring, that toughest of all debate seasons, and that makes good sense. Putting second-years into a fierce bid battle their first time out is a recipe for gloom with a side order of doom. They will sink to the bottom in the presets, and will never be heard from again. Putting them against other sophomores? That’s their peers, and it’s where they belong. There will be time enough later in the season to dash their dreams in the demolition derby of varsity debate. Then there’s Harvard’s JVing, but they’re only in it for the money and they’ll do whatever they can for whatever numbers they can reach, so I don’t really count them. There used to be other JV divisions later than Yale in the season, but as a general rule these were in lieu of novice divisions and were, in fact, lousy with novices. I always pushed to change them to literal novice. But now, when we know that there are a lot of second-years looking for rounds, and that they’re simply otherwise not going to be able to get them, I think we’ll see—and I will push for—JV events at all big tournaments. (And for that matter, novice events where they do not already exist. Why not? We’ve got the [virtual] space.)

 

Early in the pandemic we talked about some kind of off-bid division, and I see some tournaments taking to this idea. “Rising Stars,” say, or something like that. I think the jury has yet to deliberate on these. I was gung-ho early on for this idea, but others have been disdainful, worried that these divisions will simply become the Not Good Enough For Prime Time divisions. They do need to be in the mix of possibilities though going into the season. 

 

The one thing virtual tournaments can do is expand to meet the demand. Expanding into new divisions has to be the way to go. But schools are going to have to come to grips with the fact that expansion will be only so big. Nobody is going to get a dozen entries in a bid event this year. Not even close. 

 

Which brings us to the other problem. Who do you let in? Again, we’ve talked about this. Once the barriers to participation are lowered, there will probably be more potential participants. A tournament with a history will need to evaluate its past to determine its regular customers, and give them priority, while at the same time evaluating the new customers and ensuring that as many people as possible get a shot at entry at popular events. That’s going to be a killer. 

 

If nothing else, tournament directors are going to earn their whoppingly high salaries this season sorting all of this stuff out. 

In which I am reminded that I occasionally set reminders for myself

I set a reminder for myself, long ago, to update the registration procedures in the Toolkit. It popped up this morning, just in time for me to delay it for a week and to realize that, yes indeed, registration procedures will be, oh, 100% different this season. Just like everything else. I’ll get on it shortly. Today, instead, it’s golf, which is practically the only thing I do these days out in the world. Helps keep me sane, as much as golf can keep anyone sane.

 

Absent a vaccine/cure, I realize that it’s going to be a particularly long haul of social distancing for me during the season, as it makes no sense for me to rub elbows with anyone who has been in a classroom. Needless to say, I have fears for those who might have no choice but to be in a classroom, namely all my teacher friends. Of course, some may be lucky enough to work in acceptably sterile situations, but certainly not all of them, because that paradigm does not and will not exist. Throw the dice, see what happens? That, I’m afraid, does not sound like a plan. But there isn’t much point in me bloviating about it. That’s a job for other people, many of them in decision-making positions. The only decision I have to make is to tab everything from home no matter what happens. I’ve always felt I could do that anyhow, given how at some tournaments we are so far flung from the action that we might as well be in Neverland. If it wasn’t for the social side of tab rooms, there would be no point whatsoever in being there, at least for me, being teamless. 

 

So it goes.

 

I have noticed a few things. The UKy tournament, for instance, has more people signed up than Goya has beans, and they haven’t even enlisted Ivanka as their spokesperson. 500 VPF entries alone, most of them TBAs, of course. I didn’t bother to count how many were waitlisted, but it seems to be only those over a specific team cap. I gather they simply opened enrollment and let the multitudes flow in. We’ve been recommending event caps that advance all 4-2s (or 5-2s, in some cases) in the most competitive (read TOC-bid) events, and management of entries around 80-20 good regular customers and new worthies (especially those who might have previously been unable to afford the cost of travel to a national event). In other words, some tournaments we’re involved in will not have an open-door policy. Then again, some will. In the early days of discussion, everybody felt that virtual tournaments offered opportunities that eliminated geography. But those opportunities have not eliminated common sense. (Not that I’m accusing UKy of lacking same; I wouldn’t know them if I found them huddled in my basement going through the box of orphaned power cords. Still…) For that matter, the Logan tournament in January—JANUARY—is open and has 81 VPFers rarin’ to go, some of them noted even by name. Schools know today who they will send to a tournament on MLK weekend? I mean, not just a team with one lone wolf for a full battalion? Formidable, as they say on the French barricades. 

 

So, yeah, it’s going to be a crazy season. It already is.