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.