National Debate Tournament

As a follow up to all the Liberty University nonsense, I thought I'd mention that this weekend is the NDT championships. They're being held at Northwestern. Tonight is the opening ceremonies, where they give away the Copeland Award to the top team during the regular season. This award is voted on and this year the top three are teams from Harvard, Berkeley and Michigan State. I just got off the phone with Will Repko, the MSU coach and a friend for nearly 20 years, who was on the road with his team on their way to the tournament and I wished them luck.

MSU probably has 2, maybe 3, teams in the tournament. The top team of Ryan Burke and Casey Harrigan has the highest winning percentage of any team in the country. They've finished in the top 3 at several major national tournaments, including Harvard, Georgia State, Wake Forest, and Wayne State. Perhaps even more astonishing, they finished in the top 8 (quarterfinals or better) of every tournament they entered this year. In 2004, when MSU won the national championship, they also had a second team make the semifinals for a top 4 finish (they closed out one of the semifinals and advanced the top team directly to the championship round).

We talked about the attention Liberty is getting and he just kind of laughed it off. He said the Liberty team likely wouldn't make the elimination rounds of the tournament. He also said that a lot of people on the debate circuit are very angry about all the dishonest press they've been getting, but that he doesn't really feel that way. He figures the attention is good for debate in general, which is probably true. I told him that I would bet the Liberty coach $500 that his team wouldn't make it past the octofinals at the NDT. He said, "No way he's gonna take that bet."

Anyway, good luck to MSU at the national tournament. Bring home another championship. And good luck to the "#1 ranked team" in the nation at finishing with a record above .500.

More like this

I can't believe they spelled it "Northestern" on their own web-page.

Anyhoo, good luck to all contestents, and especially good luck to the #1 team in the country (you-know-who from Virginia!). How can they lose?

Bad scheduling! Up against NCAA basketball, and it's Spring Break at NU! That means no screaming, purple-painted home-team fans dogging the Boyz from Looney, I mean Liberty. Hey Bob Schieffer! How's you Debate Bracket look with Liberty NOW?!

J-Dog:

No one shows up to cheer at debate tournaments anyway. Hell, no one understands a thing being said there other than the debaters and the judges. It's not exactly a thrilling spectator sport.

Ed - Maybe things can change... BTW, remember to get your bracket filled out before the first point is made.

Call me crazy, but I see a new, Duke-like type of debate crowd. Screaming fans, hot, jumping cheerleaders, beer... WATCH OUT LIBERTY, YOU'RE GOING DOWN! White hankies in the opponents' eyes during rebuttal... Can the SI cover be far behind?

Later dude, I got to go watch some Chess.

Wow, I debated under James Copeland 30 years ago or so, long time since I saw that name. Looks like debating is still going strong, but I wonder if all the little quote cards we used to do are all computerized these days.

Markk wrote:

Looks like debating is still going strong, but I wonder if all the little quote cards we used to do are all computerized these days.

No more cards are used, but they're also not all computerized. Evidence is mostly on sheets of paper, organized in briefs for or against specific arguments. But these days, a lot of people are flowing on computers, which is something I would have to really work at to get used to.

I told him that I would bet the Liberty coach $500 that his team wouldn't make it past the octofinals at the NDT. He said, "No way he's gonna take that bet."

Just as well I think, I doubt gambling is on the favorite activities list at Liberty.

And if there ever were to be a Debating Hall of Fame, you might have a Pete Rose situation...

My recollection is that when we hosted the NDT at Utah in 1973 (I think) we got the local AP and UPI bureaus to do one or two paragraph pieces on the winner, with just a short note to the bureaus. It's a major frustration to me that the committee doesn't figure out that they need to do at least one press release to get the news out. This is the national championship, for Demosthenes' sake!

Would you perform the service, and maybe keep us posted on who breaks out, and what happens from there? It'll be months before the NDT committee gets around to posting stuff on the website, or getting anything into print . . .

By Ed Darrell (not verified) on 23 Mar 2006 #permalink