In which we enjoy the winter weather

This is the point where all is done for a tournament, and all you can do is stare out the window at the snow and read your book and be happy that it will end later today so that you’ll have no trouble getting to Philadelphia tomorrow. It’s that whole idea of freezing fees a few days before the tournament that finally slows things down, halting people in their tracks even though they really want to keep changing everything up through the final round. As a species, forensics coaches aren’t exactly at the top of the organization game. They're even more skinflinty than they are disorganized, meaning they really don't want to pay for non-existent entries. But you knew all of that already.

After a lot of backing and forthing yesterday about the storm, Kaz took off late last night to head to the chez and did pretty well, making it as far as Danbury, about an hour away, before giving in to sleepiness and checking into the Trump Danbury Days Holiday Inn Express Western Ramada. Or something like that. She claims they have food and drink, so maybe it’s a step up from the usual debate venue, which usually only has those tiny corn muffins in the morning and that watery orange juice in those shot glasses and CNN fake news on the overhead screen. In any case, tomorrow morning we should be on the road as planned. Round 1 is at five o’clock for 4 divisions. Piece of cake.

I’m beginning to realize that this is my last major tournament of the year. It’s been a satisfactory lead-up, with lots of waitlist management and the like, but after this, it’s just Lakeland and CFL Grands and out. Sigh. By the way, for those of you who update their IOS (and I’ve noticed that is not everybody), the good old Debate Mobile app is not going to work in the next upgrade. Nor will any other app where you’ve been getting that notice about that particular app slowing you down. I polished up my old Excel pyramid, since that’s the most important part of the app, i.e., how many people will break into what. I’ll post that on my tournament director’s page. It’s a useful thing to have handy.

In which we bask in the glow of the run-up having almost now completely run up

One of the points I made in my presentation on how to run a tournament is that there is no such thing as too many judges. You can’t run a tournament without more judges than you know what to do with. My recommendation is that you have about a 10% overage in each pool. This covers all contingencies, most especially the dreaded judge drift during the late rounds. Everybody wants to go home. If you hire a lot of judges, and don’t pay them until you’re willing to let them go home, you will be ahead of the game. Too often this year judges have been released too early, and those of us running tab have not been consulted, and the next thing you know, whatever warm body can be found is in there in the back of the room. This is not the way to do things. Needless to say, I’ll be pointing this out to the Penn folk. No one leaves unless I say they can leave! Tie that to the payment, and we should be fine.

In the end, Penn did a very good job of acquiring hireds. And the teams who were short judges and it was oh-so-impossible for them to get any also did a good job. The debate community can’t really get by without everyone doing their best to contribute. It is a community, and that’s how communities work. Yes, there still are a couple of places short judges, but no, that heinously high fine won’t go away.

I’m especially taken when a school with tuition greater than Harvard for their kindergarten asks for a break on the fines for their late changes and drops. Seriously now? Schools that scrape together nickels and dimes to pay the fees? Let me see what I can do. Schools where everyone is used to having the hired help do it? Maybe not. I realize that this is discriminatory on my part, but I would suggest that it’s justified discrimination. Schools that aren’t doing their bit tend to register early and then attempt to buy all their judging for 30 entries, and wonder why their promptness isn’t rewarded. Well, it’s about need, not when you punched the clock. You need a judge, I’ll find you one. You think you’re entitled to a judge, I’ll recommend that you pull those parents off the couch and pack them in the luggage compartment of the bus and put them to work. As I used to say to my own team, if your parents didn’t want to judge, they should have kept their hands off each other that night 16 years ago… Acting like a parent comes with the job, people. I mean, in PF? Seriously? Feh.

Anyhow, changes and whatnot have been flowing in steadily, and given that there will be snow tomorrow and no school for anyone, there might actually be a break. That would be nice. Kaz is planning on coming down early to beat the blizzard of ’17, so we’ll all be able to drive down nice and early on Friday, singing along with my iPod’s greatest hits.

IPod? What’s an iPod? Well, sonny, it’s this thing we old-timers used to listen to music on. It replaced the gramophone.

//// 

In which we fondly recall Baby Bump

And Baby Bump II is now just a memory.

Once again we ran 4 rounds in a single day, and honestly, the field sizes weren’t bad. It was novice and Academy (i.e., JV) PF and LD. There does seem to be a need for smaller tournaments for younger students in the region, now that there’s no MHL. Granted, the MHL sort of evaporated, but the need for the MHL (even while it existed and was progressively more ignored) is eternal. RIP. Maybe more events like Baby Bump will pop up to replace it. The Paginator is doing something similar at Delbarton on Prexy weekend. Let’s see if he gets the numbers.

B Bump was very  much a throwback. Paper ballots! How quaint. But I just didn’t trust the Hud Hens to get the wifi right, although it seemed to be marginally okay, at least in the tab room, which was a first. Also, no PF flip. (Or, I guess, pflip. PFlip?) If there’s only 4 rounds, do 2 of each. We’ve already eliminated the flip in the local CFL, following the national organization’s lead. Honestly, I don’t know anyone who is in favor of flipping anymore. I wonder how long before major tournaments eliminate it. Who wants to be the first? I dare you. I double dare you. Hell, just putting in a handful of PF strikes caused a major uproar when we first started doing it. Is there anything as conservative as a debate coach over the age of 21?

The tab room staff at B Bump was marginally capable. Catholic Charlie, JV, the Paginator. Me, a lttle bit. What’s that saying about flies and elephant guns? (Actually, is there a saying about flies and elephant guns?) Anyhow, with probably the most high-powered tab team in America, things tend to go rather smoothly. In fact, we collectively spent most of our time on other tournaments. I was room whispering for Penn, Charlie and JV were looking at Districts, and the Paginator was regaling us with epic tales of his adventures making his car payments. Somehow along the way we found the space to add a run-off PF round on Sunday at Penn, which is a very nice thing indeed.

I would say that the idea of B Bump will go on. The weekend is there, the attendees are there, so why not? For me it’s a piece of cake; I can practically walk there. The only problem was that the library was freezing. Next time I’ll wear my longjohns.

///

In which we share our only slightly fictionalized email

The following are from my emails, more or less, mostly sent during the Super Bowl, when, shockingly, I wasn’t reading them.

“Hi. We are an abject team of lost souls from an extremely expensive and/or elite private school whose parents figure they can buy anything, including non-existent judges. Do you really mean it when you say there are no judges for hire? Is it all right if our undocumented housekeeper covers our JV entry?”

“Hi. We are the biggest school in forensics in the country, and not one of our alums is willing to judge for us this weekend, even if we pay them, because their experience at our school is one they will be spending the rest of their lives trying to forget. So you’re kidding when you suggest that this is somehow our fault, right? And, please, we insist on getting hired judges.”

“My judges are coming, I promise you, only I don’t quite know their names yet. Is that all right? One of them went to Central Southeastern North HS, if I’m not mistaken. Or maybe not.”

“I bought a plane ticket for this person on the assumption that having a plane ticket would guarantee entry into the tournament. Now what am I supposed to do?”

“You are having too many rounds, and making my life miserable. If I’m going to pay for this tournament, can’t you make it shorter and faster?”

“Hi. I’m just catching up on my January emails. Are you serious about this whole freezing fees business? Is that really tonight?”

“This is my very first tournament, and I haven’t a clue what to do. I realize that it is late in the process, but could you please explain everything to me in excruciating detail?”

“I registered myself as an independent unaffiliated entry. Your rule refusing independent unaffiliated entries violates my civil, natural and human rights. Why haven’t you accepted my entry?”

“I started registering my teams yesterday. Is there some reason I got put on the bottom of the waitlist?”

"You instructions for ballot is unclear. I do not see ballot on my Apple or Android advice. I am so too confused. Can't you English speak like normal a person. Feh on you and your offspring for a thousand generations, or until Trump blow up planet, whichever come first."

///

In which we call a spadoodle a spadoodle

In the divvying up of my social media life, there is Twitter for Trump, since that’s where he likes to make his messes. There’s Facebook for mostly debate friends, because that’s where they gripe about debate. Unfortunately a lot of them also like to gripe about what is shaping up into the Second Civil War, but I’m already saturated with that from Twitter, so I’m just mostly posting entertainments, amusing myself more than anything, and tiptoeing through the carnage. There’s Slack for work, because media people think it’s the coming thing and who am I to question it? I do work for a media company, after all, even if I am in the old-fogey corner of it. Then there’s blogging (here) for long form (-ish) discussions of, during the season, the tournament business, and out of the season, whatever. And that is enough social media for any one person. I have to admit that it is Twitter that absorbs me the most lately. I’ve become obsessed with watching our country be degraded by an ignorant clown and his self-serving cronies, treading within the first few weeks into remarkably dangerous territory that could literally bankrupt us and/or bring us into a shooting war. The damage already done to the meaning and the values of the US is inestimable, and the clown has only been in office a couple of weeks. But, as I say, I’m not going into that here. I apologize for bothering the VCA with these thoughts. I figure it is highly unlikely that you don’t already have them yourself.

I’ve just sent out a cri de coeur over policy judges at Penn. The bottom line is, we ain’t got any, and nobody wants to bring any. In a nutshell, this means that, unless things change, there won’t be any policy division. It is small to begin with, and I think represents more of a desire by the Penners to be a full-service tournament than any real dedication to the art. But when the waitlist for JVPF is twice as large as the whole Policy division, I think the situation explains itself. I would point out that, for those who run tournaments, PF is twice as profitable as Policy because you can squeeze in twice the teams into the same rooms for the same amount of time, and, well, the entries are there wanting to get it. I made that point in my presentation to the NDCA last year. It stands today. I don’t make the facts, I just report them. Who would have thought, back when Ted Turner Debate pulled out onto the runway, that it would end up like this? At the time, LD was the thing, the up-and-comer, the growing concern. Now? Not so much.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes…

Meanwhile, as the tide turns to qualifiers for CatNats and NatNats, Mar-Apr LD is guaranteed housing. In the US, this certainly stretches our rights vision, but internationally it is often considered a basic human right. Something tells me that if this were being argued in 1997, it would be rather interesting. In 2017, maybe occasionally interesting, maybe a mess. I do like the subject area, in any case. Students should be thinking about what does and does not constitute the responsibilities of government. If we presume that government exists to protect rights, then what are those rights. Of course, I believe that government has a responsibility to do what only a government has the capability of doing, so I approach the question from the position, do we live in a society where individuals may no longer be capable of securing their own housing, making that a government responsibility? Health care would fall under this line of thinking, i.e., is health care such today that it goes beyond the abilities of individuals to maintain it? Of course, this line of thinking is not what the rights-oriented resolution asks, so it’s just bloviation on my part. Still, what should the government do? What should the US government do? Is it doing it? Or is the US government just all a bunch of dogmatic idiots incapable of doing much of anything?

Am I giving myself away here?

///