Kentucky '25 Musings
What we can learn from the end of the beginning of the season.
Housekeeping
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Who Cares / Is This Necessary?
That RR post sure got some mixed feedback.
One reaction was — what's your motive? Are you trying to provoke someone into getting into an internet fight with you? No. My motives at the moment are:
- Push people to improve. Maybe some people are short on coaches or the ones with coaches haven't run through the thought exercises like I did.
- Entertain
- Get better at writing
- Provoke not for internet fights, but for debate to dream bigger about what it can be. Specifically, I do not like debate tournaments happening then becoming dust in the wind. I instead want to treat them like events worthy of discussing out loud instead of in discord cliques
Another reaction — a predominant one — was "who the hell is this?" or "that guy is a dick."[1]
To that, guilty as charged. But I am not overly happy about that reaction. It was my intention vis a vis the RR post to be direct and critical. My goal was not to coach the RR teams directly on getting better.[2] Instead, I hoped to expose a gap between what happened and what could have ideally happened, and show that outworking and outcompeting these RR teams is achievable for aspiring squads. Don't assume the winning team was doing everything correctly. Don't assume those RR debates are the peak of what debate can be.
Another aspect was experimental. That was a lot of public criticism I suppose. I was testing some limits and gauging some reactions. I would guess what I was saying was not unique. Debate cliques were probably echoing what I was saying in private — I just said it out loud.
People mostly settled on either liking what I said[3] or saying "I came on too strong." People rightly pointed out that I had disappeared for 4 years and people don't really remember my schtick. I am generally skeptical of "I am ok with what you said, but not how you said it," but still want my writing to be productive and entertaining. I could have done a preamble to the post to calibrate people, but I find that tiresome. Despite the mix of reactions, I am ok with how I did it.
Nevertheless, it would be poor communicating on my part if we did not establish the following:
- The Season Opener + RR + Clay is the most challenging stretch of the debate season.[4] It is very challenging both in terms of how you prepare for the season and how you endure that the three week stretch. I only experienced it as a coach.
- I have empathy for all the debaters out there who are trying to get better. A rundown of my experience. High school in Colorado. Debated at two bid tournaments lifetime. Went to Liberty. Started in JV. Qualified to the NDT three times. Never a first round. Would say I did not really produce arguments capable of existing at a high level of debate until my third or fourth year coaching. Coached at Kentucky for 9 years. I know what no coach looks like, I know what NDT underdog looks like, I know what big school debating looks like.
- I am not coming back around to bully anyone. I am coming back around because I felt strongly, and I still feel, that what has been in circulation the last few years was not the highest level of argument quality debate can achieve. Debate is not self-improving, going through the motions doesn't make each subsequent debate better than the ones that came before it. Improvement comes from specific interventions and pushing. We do not have to let debate go the way of every other field vis a vis criticism.[5]
To put a wrap on this, there are two options. You can ignore what I am saying / do the opposite because I am an idiot. Or I have a point, in which case you should let iron sharpen iron.
Tournament at a Glance
Emory GS wins on a 2-1! Top seed. 1st and 3rd speaker. Two split decisions in elims (only debated four due to a walkover). Strong performance by Emory.
In finals Emory was negative vs Michigan BP who was breaking a new aff. More on this later.
Affirmative won:
- 7 of 16 doubles debates (43%)
- 4 of 5 octafinal debates (80%, 3 walkovers)
- 1 of 4 quarterfinal debates (25%)
- 0 semifinal debates
- 0 final debates
That's 12 out of 28 (43%) affirmative win percentage in elims.
Upsets:
- Emory KS (30) d. Kansas HP (3)!
- Stanford LL (21) d. Northwestern NP (12)
- Kansas WW (20) d. Texas FL (13)
- Georgetown AC (19) d. Michigan CS (14)
Pretty chalk after the doubles.
Zooming Out
Across the majors so far:
- The neg won 54.5% of 463 debates at Northwestern, which has a 2.5% chance to occur with a fair coin.
- The neg won 61.9% of 21 debates at the Run for the Roses, which has a 19% chance to occur with a fair coin.
- The neg won 52.8% of 405 debates at Kentucky, which has a 13.7% chance to occur with a fair coin.
- In total, the neg has won 53.8% of 889 debates, which has a 1.1% chance to occur with a fair coin.
'No neg arguments,' indeed.
Kentucky Pref System
I was there when the pref experiment started. Since then, "the tournament will aim for within 25% mutuality" has been added. I don't think this is the best addition because it counterintuitively makes a team want to put their most preferred judge in the 25 to 35 percentile range to maximize the odds of getting them instead of putting their most preferred judge at #1. That is pretty confusing. Unclear if this even counts as a pref system, considering there is no weight accorded to teams' absolute preferences as opposed to the mutuality of their preferences.
The experiment was supposed to pierce MPJ bubbles and force people to adapt. I don't think there is much evidence of that occurring. It is still a noble goal. There is an optimal way to debate in front of anyone, that remains true. But people do not have the time or desire to sus that out for 145 judges. That is not reasonable from a debate team's perspective.
The same teams who do well at MPJ tournaments largely do well at Kentucky, and have been since the start of the experiment.
There is still an open question on the best way to develop judges if they get MPJ'ed out of the best teams and elimination debates. That is a sticky question.
Ultimately, the purpose of a system is what it does[6] and if there is a gap between intention and result it is on the system to adapt.
'No X impact'
It has to go on the record that you are forfeiting an opportunity to express meaning with tags like this. Reducing it further to a one syllable grunt would be better because that saves more time while expressing the same amount of worthwhile information.
Negative FW Interpretations for Ks
It is not clear to me what negative teams are up to. Historically, the negative wants to read link arguments that are not about the plan, but the broader 1AC. The affirmative says you should only evaluate arguments tied to the plan text. The negative makes a competing interpretation, generally arguing that the affirmative should defend more than the plan text.
Sometimes, the negative would make an explicit argument about the order in which to evaluate things. Evaluate both teams' ontologies first. Old heads called these prior questions. Or other times the negative would be explicit about why the debate should not be about the plan text.
Through two tournaments I see negative teams making interpretations like:
"Counter interpretation: Affirmative should have to defend the 1ac as a rhetorical research project"
And presuming stuff like this + saying fiat is illusory means the affirmative gets no plan. That is not correct. The plan is part of the rhetorical project. Another part of the rhetorical project is imagining a world where the plan is enacted. Is that rhetorical project bad? It could be. Is the plan bad if all the rhetoric to support the plan is bad? Probably. But you didn't exclude the action of the plan from the judge's thinking when arguing like this.
Something to keep in mind!
Number of Prelims
8 prelims is better than 6 at majors for the open division. We switched to six prelims in 2020 when the tournament was online. At the time the decision centered around how to make an online tournament 3 days instead of 4 days when one factors in four different time zones. The solution at the time was six debates. The last in person Kentucky tournament I hosted was 2019 and that tournament was 8 prelims.
I thought we basically solved scheduling at the time:
GOAT'ed schedule. Two breakfasts, two lunches from real restaurants and one dinner. The good ole days!
Broadly if you have the choice between doing more prelims or more elims a tournament should do more prelims because all the teams participate. This is particularly true for divisions like JV and novice. Also, if you have a choice between making day 1 and 2 better or day 3 better, you pick day 1 and 2 for the same reason. Only two teams will participate in the totality of day 3, but you have 150 teams on all of day 1 and 2.
Kentucky did 6 prelims in JV then a partial octafinal that involved four teams. ADA rules required doing it this way. That is 10 time slots of debates to crown a winner. They did 4-4-2 (4 rounds day 1, 4 rounds day 2, 2 rounds day 3). I think the optimal way to do that was 7 rounds and cut to quarterfinals.
Georgetown AC Presets
Georgetown AC (RR winner) debated Northwestern AT (doubles at the OLC) and Kansas LS (quarters of the OLC, semifinals of this tournament).
Wyoming Imperialism K
I liked it a lot. Good looking topic K. "Democracy and empire: Labor, nature, and the reproduction of capitalism" looks like an awesome book.
Hiding ASPEC as a standard
Cowardice. Do not do this. Saw this happen with new affs bad. You are a corny loser if you do this, sorry about it.
The Polycrisis
In a musings first I am just dropping a pile of cards. Let's do the affirmative minus invoking the idea of polycrisis.
Let me be radically transparent — when I thought of this gimmick on Saturday it was pretty funny to me. But now that it is Tuesday I am not really going to get this thing over the finish line. I do not work for you all.
So my pile is at the bottom of this post, and you can treat it like food for thought.
Long DAs
MSU GL read a DA that was 8 cards. It had one impact. Anybody have a DA that took 9 cards for one impact?[7]
Hybrid Tournament
I thought hybrid tournaments would be more annoying. Maybe it depends on the campus? Kentucky has lots of spots to hide and judge, so that's nice. I did judge a team where partners attempted to speak into the other person's computer. Do not do this, whether you are the online team or the in-person team.
It seemed like the online teams I saw had very minimal setup / had not thought about their tech very much (microphones, stands, computer chargers etc). This is usually how things go in debate. Everyone was very worked up at first about paperless debate. We literally had to give opponents a computer so they could read our evidence. You had to be very quick to distribute the evidence. You had to make sure your computer did not crash. You had to not look ahead in the document. People were very prickly about what counted as prep time[8].
Then that gave way to what happens now which is technically rampant cheating in terms of looking ahead and stealing prep. But everybody does it so who cares?
Guess the 2Ns!
Unions Not Racist
Here is a Michigan card I thought was pretty good:
Curbing DA vs Court Stripping DA
How do we feel about this rebrand? I think it erases our history. I think Michigan would give woke reasons about curbing and stripping being technically different. Don't care!
Michigan read this in the octas (and other times) and it was 7 cards, but it was for two impacts. Doesn't hold a candle to MSU's DA!
Federal Workers Neg
Federal workers proved to be the dominant affirmative of the first chunk of the season. Lots of movement from the negative at this tournament:
- MSU GL vs Dartmouth CG — Dartmouth goes for a sort of starve the beast/don't give Trump a competent bureaucracy strategy. Aff wins.
- Kansas WW vs Texas FL — Texas goes for T-subsets. Aff wins.
- NU LR vs Michigan SS — Michigan goes for Shutdown DA and T have to be legislation. Aff wins.
- NU LR vs Baylor DL — Baylor goes for T-subsets. Aff wins.
- Emory LY vs Kentucky GS — Kentucky goes for T "The right to join a union is outside the scope of collective bargaining rights." Neg wins.
- MSU GL vs Stanford LL — Stanford goes for the US Code CP and T no courts. Aff wins.
- Georgetown AC vs Emory KS — Emory goes for Virginia Politics DA! For the curious they got this done in 5 cards. Aff wins.
- NU LR vs Emory GS — Emory goes for a DA about Article II power and an Advantage CP. Neg wins.
- Georgetown AC vs Michigan BP — Michigan goes for the Curbing DA[9] + case. Neg wins.
- MSU GL vs Emory GS — Emory goes for Deregulation now and good, the plan stops it. Neg wins.
Ok so maybe that was less innovation than I remember, but does seem notably better than NUSO and the RR.
Preseason Preparation
NUSO, the RR and the Clay are all over. I believe you have four weekends before Gonzaga. The season should enter a different phase. You can now look back and think about how you anticipated and prepared for this topic.
Did you write Federal Workers? Is your affirmative clearly better than Federal Workers if you did not write it? Are you telling the truth?
Did you predict that Federal Workers was going to be the biggest Affirmative? Did you correctly predict what the advantages were going to be about?[10]
Did you view negative preparation along three tracks across the first and second tournament,[11] which consisted of Federal Workers neg, K neg and everything else? Did you show up to the first tournament without any good Federal Workers neg?
What did you not see coming? What did you think was going to be a big deal that has not been?
Good time to review your process!
The Finals
Michigan read: "The United States Federal Government should substantially strengthen collective bargaining rights through broad-based automation bargaining." Lots and lots and lots of AI impacts.
Emory, in the year 2025, on a labor organizing topic, when confronted with a 1AC that was entirely about automation and artificial intelligence went for topicality.
But fine, let's seriously discuss the issues in the debate.
For fuller context on this set of T evidence, you can read this.
There are a few cards from a set of cases involving transit workers being popularly used to define the phrase "collective bargaining rights," including in the finals. This is not surprising; at face value, these cases seem to use extremely clear "no subsets" style language.
Here are Emory's cards about this idea:
And here is Michigan's 2AC card:
You might be noticing some similarities between these cards. Emory noticed this too, and won in substantial part by arguing that Michigan did not meet their counter-interpretation.
Over the long-run, however this is a trap - and these cards are less useful to the neg than they might appear at first glance. To see why, we need to understand the context of the cases being cited.
The cases center on a dispute about language in Section 13(c) of the NLRA. This provision arose from a specific historical concern. When private transit companies were being acquired by public entities using federal funds in the 1960s, Congress worried that workers would lose protections they enjoyed under federal labor law, since public sector employees often had fewer rights under state law. The statute thus required that federal funding be conditioned on ensuring "the continuation of collective bargaining rights."
As these acquisitions went through, many transit workers did, in fact, lose specific benefits and protections to which they were previously entitled under private collective bargaining agreements. The Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) sued on behalf of these workers, claiming that collective bargaining rights have not "continued" if any of the rights previously guaranteed by collective bargaining agreement have been lost.
In response, defendants argued that "continuing" "collective bargaining rights" only requires that the right to collectively bargain continues, rather than any particular benefit that had previously been bargained-for. A new public sector agreement might provide a worse pension plan — to take one example — but "collective bargaining rights" aren't weakened as long as workers still have the right to bargain collectively over pensions.
Understanding this context reveals that means that neither of the parties to the case has arguments that are actually useful to the neg:
-
If the first perspective is right, then loss of any collective bargaining rights implies a failure of "continuation." But if weakening any element constitutes a failure to continue, the same must clearly apply to strengthening any element — exactly what the aff wants to say in a subsets debate.
-
But, if the second perspective is right, then neither the aff nor the neg really benefits from these cases. Collective bargaining rights, under that understanding, are the abstract entitlement to negotiate. They "continue" if they exist, and are discontinued if they don't - a low bar that has nothing to say about the spectrum of rights strength implied by the wording in this topic.
If you think T-subsets is going to save you on an ongoing basis, I would maybe revisit that assumption or try to find some different cards.
Kicking People Out of Debates
I attempted to watch Kansas LS vs MSU GS in the Doubles. I picked this debate because K vs K debates interest me. The argument themes are likely to be more timeless. More gets said between the lines in such debates, making a first-hand account more valuable.
Right before start time Kansas LS said I needed to leave the room. The stated reason was that I "write recklessly on the internet."
This moment chastised me to my core. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for all my transgress...
Just kidding.
My sources think kicking people out of rooms started around 2014. There was a Texas tournament in 2016 where there seemed to be a shenanigan occurring every debate, at least on day 3[12]. Doing stuff like this before rounds start and litigating all manner of thing in the actual debates is very common practice in 2025.
Another active coach wanted to watch their debaters debate in an elim. The opposing team said something akin to "no coaches, get out." The coach pushed back. The opposing debater did establish they were serious and they were not open to the idea that there were two sides to this issue. The coach did leave the room. The team doing the kicking out then read a bunch of off and went for T-subsets? Odd.
Funnily enough on day 3 this team came up to that coach and said they might reconsider doing things like this in the future, since they thought the coach had a reasonable interest in watching their debaters. Interesting.
I understand where some of the impulse comes from. People want to flex what they got. Who gets access to the documents, who gets access to the room, what can be litigated with a ballot? The types of currency accessible to debaters are limited, so you have to work with what you got.
The charitable interpretation is debaters should have safe debate spaces and they get to be the arbiters of what that entails.
I have already gone on the record that doing this is not a good idea[13] and those arguments are still true, but let's talk about it some more.
I think you can theorize the situation in two ways. One way is to say that debate teams as organizations/institutions have a role to play in fostering debate, expanding debate and making debate thrive. Debate teams should not allow individual debaters to do things that hinder this role. One reason for this is that individual debaters compete for four or five years, but theoretically the debate team and debate as an activity will exist longer. Debaters now shouldn't do things that will be worse for future generations of debaters. Generally future generations always get hosed, regardless of context.
I think debate coaches have not been leaders on this issue because if you push back hard enough it become can become an issue in debates. Debates that litigate extra-curricular stuff are very annoying. I can understand a coach who does not want to create problems for their teams. If you squat in a room, it is likely to come up in the debate. Even if not that debate, anything that happened at any time apparently is fair game to become an issue.
Those coaches are making a mistake, however, when they set no standard for what should or should not be debated or failing to provide an alternative way to deal with these grievances. It is free riding, it makes this the norm and everyone's problem. It cements false consciousness in the debaters with grievances. It leads to showing up to a public space to participate in a public speaking activity, banishing people who do not kiss the ring, and then saying with a straight face that this version of debate is good. That's not really how any of those things should work. The practice is bad for the activity if one ever stops and considers the perspective of the many people in the world who have not been red pilled by debate.
I think there is merit to the idea that teams' interests are more important than individual debaters', but you can think about the issue another way. You can theorize that everyone at a tournament is a stakeholder in debate as an activity and its future thriving or wilting. Everyone can be an adult.
What does it say about debate's credibility if a round is:
- the teams pick the judges
- the teams pick the audience
- there is no visual of the debate, video or pictures, nothing.
- there is no record of the arguments made in the debate
- there is no public discussion of the debate after it happens.
That model seems untenable. Ultimately, debate should want to get bigger and widen the circle of who participates. We cannot let offense/defense brain, residual link brain, link of commission brain etc. get in the way of recognizing that debate, for a while now, is not on the healthiest trajectory. Budget cuts in the last 6 months have amplified the precarity. You could describe the last fifteen years of debate in a lot of ways, but I am not sure if the word vibrant would ever come to mind. That is a problem. We need to dream bigger.
One could certainly say that was just 850 words of pure cope. I can hear "you are just butt hurt you got called out."
It is really not that. I was called out to my face this weekend over stuff I wrote by a few people.[14] I can be right, I can be wrong, people can disagree, whatever. That's all fine.
It was not a good idea for teams to do this in 2014. At the time, I did what everyone else did and just complained behind the scenes. I was a coach who did not want to create new issues for my debaters[15]. That was a mistake. A mistake other people continue to make.
I hope for a version of debate that figures out how to hash out their conflicts in a different manner.
This one got said to my face once too, now that I am recalling. ↩︎
One would assume that would involve more constructive criticism, but as my former debaters will attest that post and my coaching were very similar to one another. It's an acquired taste. ↩︎
Obviously all the reactions are not strictly negative, where would the fun in writing be? ↩︎
I was going to link to a previous post of mine like a real author, but I cannot find it. I swear I said this out loud at some point. ↩︎
The Guardian - Movie reviews and cultural criticism erasure, Decoding Everything - The death of film criticism, Om Malik - Death of the critic, The New Yorker - In defense of the traditional review, Reactor Mag - It's not the death of criticism again ↩︎
One impact is fine, I am just excluding politics and midterms DAs that have multiple impacts. ↩︎
Basically everything counted as prep time. ↩︎
Court stripping ↩︎
Be honest. ↩︎
And the RR if you were invited. ↩︎
Could have been occurring day 2 as well. ↩︎
For the record, that's well and good. It is fun! ↩︎
We had enough extra curricular nonsense to deal with. I don't really remember a lot of getting kicked from rooms as a coach personally - I probably self-censored and didn't push any buttons. ↩︎