In which we make another of our modest little proposals

I don’t know if this makes sense or not. But it’s worth thinking about.

The Pups is designed to fit 160 VLD and 100 JVLD. That 260 is a constant.

At the moment, we’re filled to capacity, with 104 and 50 waitlisted entries, respectively. Because of my attempt to keep things even, everyone got 3 entries. Assuming that, as usual, things won’t change much, everyone will end up with 3 entries.

What’s wrong with this picture?

First of all, very few teams want 3 entries. 5 or 6 is much more normal.

A lot of teams travel a great distance to attend. They can be handled fairly well in the IEs, but not in LD, obviously. (Nor in PF, for that matter—161 waiting list—but that’s another issue. They’re looking at about 240 entries at the moment, which strikes me as crazy big.) The thing is, limiting the number of entries can have a chilling effect on travelers. Not that I think it would affect the Pup bid, for those interested in such things, but it’s worth noting.

At the very last minute a few slots will open up because of the latest plague, sending a handful of teams home to bed and chicken soup, and those slots will go to relative locals. But at best of few of them will get one more, and that’s about it.

We run the Pups LD divisions in the same building at roughly the same time. Are you starting to see where I’m going with this? I mean, I could simply change the balance a little, on the assumption that more V is good and less JV is inconsequential, and that’s not unreasonable, given the demand for the tournament. But it wouldn’t help terribly unless we went down to 60 JV, which would mean 2 or 3 per school in that division. Not great, but it would be what it would be. Wouldn’t it make sense to dump the JV division altogether and have one single division? Cap it at 220, and break to triples. This will create a triples run-off of about 20 debaters. For that matter, you could cap it at 240 for about the same results.

Obviously this is not an issue for this year, but one does live and learn. I’ll bookmark this for presentation after this year (assuming that the Pup management at the moment is ignoring their membership in the VCA until after they get the tournament in the books). It’s worth thinking about, one way or the other. A better tournament? I don’t know. A more satisfactory experience for the teams in the general? I think so.

I wouldn't be surprised that 200/60 balance is the winning bet, thus maximizing entrance fees (a reasonable issue for anyone throwing a tournament). We'll see.