In which we spew venom, again

I have to admit a sense of wonder over the various levels of TOC bidness in PF.  I scoured around the TOC website and I have to admit that I couldn't find any details, but I get the impression that it boils down to Gold and Silver bids. Gold are traditional bids, and Silver are teams who almost got traditional bids. Something like that. This doesn't include the MSTOC, which is another business entirely, apparently a first-come first-served free-for-all for tweens whose parents will do anything to get rid of them for a weekend in May. It is not the same weekend as HSTOC, by the way. The weekend after MSTOC is, the way I understand it, eventually going over to ESTOC, that is, Elementary School TOC, and the weekend after that will be PREKTOC for the toddler set.

I used to think that TOC was only in it for the money. What was I thinking? They've found a way to double high school entries (or something like that) and created a whole new tournament for people who aren't even in high school. If there's any monetary motivation to this, I fail to see it. Then again, since sarcasm is hard to perceive when written, since you can't see the expression on my face, let me put it another way. WTF!!!

Shall I say that, once again, if TOC didn't exist, I wouldn't create it. I strongly doubt that visions of moneybags were dancing in the minds of the original founders of the business, but they are long gone. And maybe the present operators truly believe that they are offering some kind of service to the debate community by extending the hyper nature of circuit debate beyond those who are capable of circuit debating.

Yeah, I'm pissed off. We had a tournament here a couple of weeks ago that couldn't support jv divisions at all, and was pretty small in the varsity divisions. Monticello, coming up with its jv divisions, is also looking fairly bleak. Where is everybody? Around here, there are plenty of debaters, and presumably that means plenty of debate coaches. Is everyone so blind that if they don't see a TOC bid, even for younger students, they simply ignore the tournament?

People need to get their heads out of the clouds. If a tournament dies, a better tournament doesn't come along to replace it. A hole on the schedule doesn't suddenly fill up with an octas bid within walking distance. At best, another tournament comes in, limps along for a while, and everyone ignores it just like they did its predecessor. If we can't support local tournaments that are relatively inexpensive, with lots of rounds for our younger students, just what are we supporting? Circuit debate, period? Or bid tournaments, exclusively? Are we out of our minds????

The best way to kill a tournament is to ignore it. And if you ignore it, its blood is on your hands. Enjoy yourself in Kentucky. Maybe you'll qualify some fifth graders for the Bronze division.

Feh.



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