The Battle of the (Debate) Bands, Pt 1

In the comments, New Coach asks why UPenn and Harvard are on the same weekend, and if they could go on separate weekends.

So much history. So little time.

First of all, in debate, you’ve got to understand the concept of weekend. A weekend is an item of time that is devoted to debate tournaments. If a tournament has been around long enough, it is perceived as owning that weekend. So let’s say that, for argument’s sake, there is no tournament in a region on the second weekend of November. That would be an open weekend. Any school wishing to claim that weekend can start a tournament thereon. If the tournament is any good, it will get a reputation and people will show up in decent numbers, and before long, that weekend belongs to that tournament. By the same token, if the tournament sucks, it will also get a reputation and people will stay away in droves; that weekend, in the state of debate nature, is seen as up for grabs.

Some tournaments work toward attracting a national audience. The same rules apply, at the beginning, but if they work real hard and eat all their vegetables, they too can become national.

In the northeast, there is a debate tournament every weekend. Some are really local/regional/limited; e.g., NYCFL tournaments are only open to schools in the region of the archdiocese who are also members of the organization. Others are open to one and all and attract members of the region, and perhaps a few outliers, at varying numbers; Bump, for instance, fills up all its rooms and brings in folks from the northeast and down the coast a little, with the odd Pennsylvanian. Still others are national, like Big Bronx. The thing is, every one of these events is always on the same weekend. There is no point for me to decide that I want to move to the Big Bronx weekend, for instance. It is their weekend, and I would obviously put them completely out of business with the attraction of fewer award ceremonies and a handsomer tournament director, but I’m too fond of them to make same suffer such ignominious disgrace.

So by unwritten agreement, we all take our weekends and run with them. If someone new comes along who wants to run a tournament, they can try going up against an established tournament, or they can wait for an opening. And openings do come. I used to run in December, subject to the ice and the snow. When NFA decided not to run anymore on their weekend in early November, I quickly claimed that weekend, at which point Ridge took my December weekend. (Of course, there was discussion among the metaphorical Five Debate Families about this, to be sure that everyone was on board and didn’t have a conflicting claim.) Occasionally a tournament looks dead in the water but refuses to go away. In those cases sharp hunters may come a’ stalking—there’s no law that says a tournament has to run forever, if it’s not serving its constituency. Which is why, on TVFT, we advise that if someone wants to start a tournament, they should have a good reason to do so, and a meaningful constituency they want to attract. Just doing it because you want to do it won’t work, especially if you don’t have a reputation in debate. For instance, when Scarsdale opened up, they had a clearly established record as a serious debate school, and JV instituted some interesting new wrinkles that were very attractive in the region, especially the V judging the Ns, adding a whole new educational aspect. People showed up from day one because they knew they could trust the venue to do a good job. The event has been growing ever since, and is now a fixture.

Tournaments can be dicey, though, as everyone knows who has ever been to one. There is, to begin with, the ebb and flow of life in general. Changes of leadership of a team can change a tournament, for the better or worse (or not at all). Tournaments that work hard to make their experience a good one for all and sundry tend to thrive. Tournaments that work hard to collect your money and do not provide amenities or good judging (that you’ve often paid for) or whatever, tend to earn people’s distaste and distrust, and those people will, as a result, vote with their feet. If I look at a tournament as a bad experience, I don’t go. I’ve got plenty of tournaments I do go to; more than enough, actually. Why would I support one that doesn’t suit my needs or doesn’t deliver the goods? It’s not my money, after all. I’m spending the school’s dollar. They deserve a decent return on their investment.

(Cont'd next time.)