Texas '26 Musings

Tournament Recap

Emory GS wins! They defeated Michigan BP in the finals. This is the second final round matchup between the two teams. Emory was victorious on the negative both times. Much more on season-long results in a bit.

By my count, 56 teams have cleared at one of the six major tournaments. Joining the ranks at Texas were Emory AS, Houston FI, and Northwestern AP (both partners have cleared with other partners at previous tournaments). Congrats on clearing!

Did you know there were four major tournaments that had 8 prelims? Northwestern, Gonzaga, Georgetown, and Texas. The only team to go 8-0 in prelims was Kansas LS at Gonzaga and Georgetown.

12 different teams have gone 7-1 in prelims. 4 of them did it for the first time at Texas: Long Beach MO, Michigan SS, Michigan ES, and Berkeley MR.

27 different teams have gone 6-2 in prelims this year. Congratulations to Dartmouth CG, Emory AS, Kansas BW, and UTD PR for joining the club.

If you hosted a major and had fewer than 8 prelims, booo!

Only one upset in doubles, but it was a doozy — Emory KS (26) over NU LR (7).

Binghamton CK (13) upset Kansas LS (4) in the octafinals. No other major upsets to report.

The Affirmative won:

• 4 of 16!! doubles debates (25%)
• 4 of 7 octas debates (57%, one walkover)
• 0 of 3 quarters debates (0%, one walkover)
• 0 of 1 semifinal debates (0%, one walkover)
• 0 of 1 finals debates (0%)

That is 8 of 28 for the affirmative in elimination debates (29%).

The affirmative went 2-4 in finals rounds at the six majors (secondary strikes are T and TSA aff > midterms). Not great!

By my count, the negative won 52.5% of debates at the majors and 51.2% at Texas specifically.

Reject calls for fairness during Black History Month

So ordered. Next.

Adding Highlighting

Just got over the threshold to permit use of the word 'adding.'

Riddle Shit

We must increase our derogatory references. Now, can I blame negative teams for taking the win if the affirmative is going to lose on "sky is blue, vote neg"? Yes, yes I can, and I will. I will make two points.

First, this moral skepticism and determinism shit is the one "debate" that you can solve with LLMs. Just go talk to them for 10 minutes, give them a word limit, and they can write a 2AC that does not suck. That should tell you something about the quality of the negative's argument.

Second, this:

WRONG. Hey, robot that is writing the 2AC to this crap, what do you think presumption means?

The core logic. Presumption rests on a risk-aversion principle: change carries inherent uncertainty, so if the affirmative can't demonstrate that their plan is meaningfully better than the status quo, the default assumption is to stick with what we have. It's analogous to the "burden of proof" in law — the party advocating for change bears the burden of proving that change is warranted.

Ohhhh, presumption has to do with risk aversion, interesting. So would presumption in the typical meaning make sense if there was no free will? What say you, lack-of-free-will clanker?

Presumption presupposes meaningful choice. The entire architecture of presumption rests on the idea that a deliberative body (or a judge simulating one) can choose between maintaining the status quo and adopting the plan. Presumption says "absent a compelling reason to change, we should stay put." But "should" implies "could do otherwise." Under strong determinism, there is no genuine decision point. Whatever the judge votes, whatever Congress enacts, was always going to happen given antecedent causes. The concept of a "default" position — a place we deliberately remain unless moved — becomes incoherent, because remaining in the status quo was never a deliberate act in the first place. It's just what the causal chain produced.

See, the robot thinks you are an idiot. Please shut the hell up with pages like this.

2NC CPs

Let's spin the doc wheel again.

CABE

Oh shit, too far. Eject, eject, eject.

Models Judge

The Tide is Rising

Round 5 - Michigan ES vs Emory RY

Round 7 - Emory GS vs Georgetown AC

Round 8 - Michigan ES vs Emory GS

Negative teams could not deserve it more. Theoretically bankrupt, strategically brain-damaged, and stylistically insulting. Beat them with any means available.

Second Plan

Worse than the first?

The United States federal government should, after Donald Trump is no longer president, should adopt sectoral bargaining for workers in the United States.

Kansas AU

Faithful readers will know them as the giant killers from the Georgetown tournament. They are still out here chopping, and people noticed.

Emory KS

Did Emory KS pull off the biggest doubles upset by beating 7th seed NU LR? God no. Kansas BW and Kansas AU beat 3 seeds at Northwestern and Georgetown. But Emory KS also did that at the Kentucky tournament when they beat 3rd seed Kansas HP!

Granted, that was at a 6-round tournament where the seeds are stupid, BUT nevertheless.

According to my logs, I was introduced to Mr. Shirts in 2023, but he was called Pants at the time, and I asked the following important clarifying question:

Is the persons name actually pants or do they just have a noteworthy relationship to pants

I was not given a description of their relationship to pants.

Emory KS is likely going to be unable to compete at the NDT because of three Emory teams in front of them. They won 3 elims at majors and won the Brick City RR.

If this is the end, they do get the noble distinction of winning the last debate (they got walked over in the octas by Emory RY at Texas).

Assuredly, the NDT is a more vibrant tournament when it, by rule, excludes teams like Emory KS. Yuck.

Summarizing a lot of debates fast

Affirmatives — Federal Workers, HUGE GAP, other random old crap.

Negatives — Court Politics, Midterms, Ks, T-Substantial. BARF

Michigan ES

They have cleared at every major. They have won every doubles debate they've had the chance to debate. They got walked over FIVE TIMES, including in the quarters at this here Texas tournament by Michigan BP. BP walked over them FOUR of the FIVE times.

I unfortunately do not quite have the data from prior years fully audited to say if that is a record, but one has to imagine.

First Round Rankings