2) As Zvi would have it, consider how this can be both true and the strongest possible true statement:
I reviewed all Tournament of Champions semifinal and final round recordings from 2015 to 2023, and found that about two-thirds of Policy rounds and almost half of Lincoln-Douglas rounds featured critical theory.
One huge part of the answer is that Standard Operating Procedure on the Negative side is to throw out several arguments against the Affirmative team’s case, suss out where they were weak (or just blundered their reply), sever the rest and pile on that one. I don’t think there’s a more standard first-year CX debater strategy than starting the first negative speech with “I’ll have 4 off and case”. Meaning something like:
Off-case argument 1 (Topicality): Your proposal is not in-bounds on the official resolution because [tiny, dumb, technical reason out of the list of ten I prepared] and therefore you should lose.
Off-case argument 2 (Politics Disadvantage): Your plan is going to make [political faction] mad and they’ll block [other thing] which is more important because it will prevent a nuclear war that kills everyone.
Off-case argument 3 (States Counterplan): Instead of [your plan], do [basically the same thing] at the state-by-state level. This is good because [something about federalism] and also it avoids the politics disadvantage.
Off-case argument 4 (Capitalism K): Your plan has [capitalist element], capitalism is bad because [reason], in fact plans that are based on capitalist reasoning categorically suck because [reason].
On-case arguments: You claim [advantage] but actually you make the problem worse because [reason], also your plan doesn’t solve the problems you identified because [reason].
...and all of that will get delivered (with citations and quotes from references) in eight minutes. I said “first-year CX debater” because really this would be considered amateur stuff, and a “real debate” would more often be six or seven off-case arguments (extra Topicality objections, disadvantages, or counterplans), plus case. I can probably still deliver a Topicality argument in 30 seconds, from memory.
So when Maya says that two-thirds of policy rounds “featured” K, I am entirely unimpressed that two-thirds of 1NC speakers stuck some 1-minute K module in their opening speech at least to see if the Aff would fumble it.
(The next thing that happens is the 2AC speaker gets 8 minutes to reply to all of the arguments, then the Neg gets 13(!) minutes to either continue the spray-and-pray or dump on the single contention that the 2AC answered weakest.) Sometimes you would see the second Aff speech throw up a “come on, judge, letting them throw up eight things and sever seven of them is unbalanced and abusive”, but I have never, ever seen an Aff team win on that. More often they’re just doing it for the “time skew”—to make the Neg spend more time responding than it took the Aff to make the original claim.
Honestly, I’m shocked it’s as low as 2⁄3 of TOC elimination rounds; I would not have been surprised by something like 7⁄8.
2) As Zvi would have it, consider how this can be both true and the strongest possible true statement:
One huge part of the answer is that Standard Operating Procedure on the Negative side is to throw out several arguments against the Affirmative team’s case, suss out where they were weak (or just blundered their reply), sever the rest and pile on that one. I don’t think there’s a more standard first-year CX debater strategy than starting the first negative speech with “I’ll have 4 off and case”. Meaning something like:
Off-case argument 1 (Topicality): Your proposal is not in-bounds on the official resolution because [tiny, dumb, technical reason out of the list of ten I prepared] and therefore you should lose.
Off-case argument 2 (Politics Disadvantage): Your plan is going to make [political faction] mad and they’ll block [other thing] which is more important because it will prevent a nuclear war that kills everyone.
Off-case argument 3 (States Counterplan): Instead of [your plan], do [basically the same thing] at the state-by-state level. This is good because [something about federalism] and also it avoids the politics disadvantage.
Off-case argument 4 (Capitalism K): Your plan has [capitalist element], capitalism is bad because [reason], in fact plans that are based on capitalist reasoning categorically suck because [reason].
On-case arguments: You claim [advantage] but actually you make the problem worse because [reason], also your plan doesn’t solve the problems you identified because [reason].
...and all of that will get delivered (with citations and quotes from references) in eight minutes. I said “first-year CX debater” because really this would be considered amateur stuff, and a “real debate” would more often be six or seven off-case arguments (extra Topicality objections, disadvantages, or counterplans), plus case. I can probably still deliver a Topicality argument in 30 seconds, from memory.
So when Maya says that two-thirds of policy rounds “featured” K, I am entirely unimpressed that two-thirds of 1NC speakers stuck some 1-minute K module in their opening speech at least to see if the Aff would fumble it.
(The next thing that happens is the 2AC speaker gets 8 minutes to reply to all of the arguments, then the Neg gets 13(!) minutes to either continue the spray-and-pray or dump on the single contention that the 2AC answered weakest.) Sometimes you would see the second Aff speech throw up a “come on, judge, letting them throw up eight things and sever seven of them is unbalanced and abusive”, but I have never, ever seen an Aff team win on that. More often they’re just doing it for the “time skew”—to make the Neg spend more time responding than it took the Aff to make the original claim.
Honestly, I’m shocked it’s as low as 2⁄3 of TOC elimination rounds; I would not have been surprised by something like 7⁄8.