Ponies on the trophy shelf

That's what they give for trophies at TOC. Ponies. Thoroughbreds, no doubt, this being right down the road from Churchill Downs, and the Derby often being on the same weekend. Usually going to TOC means missing the Derby, which is one of my favorite sporting events (it only lasts two minutes, you can legally bet on it, and I know more about it than most other people, unlike, say, baseball or football where everybody, including TK, knows more than I do). This year it's the week before the Derby, so I'll get to do both.

In all the brouhaha about the Legion of Doom and DMV and the end of life on earth as we know it, few people discuss the TOC's role in this. While I was part of the official operation, acting on the advisory committee, I felt it was rather hypocritical to criticize the event outside of that committee, but having been summarily dumped from this post (to which I had been invited for no good reason I could detect so I'm hardly upset about no longer being a part of it), I feel I can speak freely. Not that I wish to damn the whole enterprise, now that my lips are no longer sealed. But I think that we need to keep it in perspective. Too many people don't.

I mentioned this before, that I was struck by the comment that the debate community was divided into two segments, the local and national circuits. The more I think about this, the more true I find it. Except for one thing. The so-named local circuit, which we can define at least as whatever isn't the national circuit, is a galumphing large monster comprising most of the activity. The national circuit, on the other hand, is a rather tiny (albeit vocal) group. Let's define national circuit. It's a series of events loosly linked by their TOC bids. And presumably the goal of people attending those events is to succeed well enough to attend TOC. Within that series of events, some are more accessible than others, because of geography, and some are more desirable than others, usually because of the number of bids, especially when mixed with accessible geography. So Glenbrooks or Emory, for whatever other reasons they are popular, are big national circuit events because they have a lot of bids and they are easy to get to. Some of these lot-of-bid tournaments affect exclusivity, like Emory. You have to be a "chair" to get in, that is, you have to be a member of some elite group pre-defined by the tournament, although they let in non-members too after the members have all had their opportunity. Some of these lot-of-bid tournaments let in everyone with a checkbook in their hands, like Harvard. In either case, the result is the same. People who can afford to do so (you can't travel around the country to Georgia and Illinois and Massachusetts without money) pick among these tournaments, sometimes going to almost all of them if their budgets and schedules allow. The same people keep turning up, in other words.

After the lot-of-bid tournaments, there are the progressively-fewer-bid tournaments, ranging from plenty to some to two. These are the so-called (in TOC vernacular) regional tournaments. People go to these usually because they are regionally accessible. They tend to be reliable, repeated events, well-conducted year after year. There's always a lot of bellyaching that certain regions have more bids than other regions, but the reality is simply that certain schools run reliable tournaments and those are where the bids will go, for obvious reasons. California is a good example. There's plenty of people, but not plenty of tournaments. Simple as that.

If you were to add all the TOC-bid tournaments, you wouldn't get more than a few dozen. If you were to add all the attendees of these tournaments, taking away the dupes, you'd have well under 1000. In the northeast, for instance, we have about 200 people that appear at Bump, Monticello, Lex, Scarsdale, Newark, Bronx. Other people ship in, of course, but our region pretty much is that couple of hundred. Presumably it's the same for other regions.

Are there so few debaters in the country? Are there so few people involved in LD? Of course not. But there are just these few people even theoretically involved in the chase for TOC bids. And realistically, of those 200 people in the northeast, for instance, maybe 25% of them seriously are pursuing TOC bids. Not that they might not daydream of marvellous forensic successes, but a history of 2-3s and low-point 3-2s throughout one's career is usually a convincing draught of self-awareness. If they were only in this for TOC bids, they'd be one seriously depressed group. Fortunately, they're in it for a lot of other reasons (they like to debate, they like the people, they like the atmosphere, they like to get out of the house on weekends, whatever). Only that 25% are in it for the bids.

Maybe that's the number around the country. 25% of all debaters are in it for the bids, are in it because they dream of TOC.

Which raises the question, what role, then, does TOC play? Is it truly the highest achievement of the forensic community? Or is it merely the highest achievement of one small segment of the forensic community? And by one small segment I don't mean the debaters who are "good" versus some other debaters, but debaters who give a flying fig about the whole thing versus debaters who are on another track altogether.

More on this tomorrow.