http://net-benefits.net/showthread.php?t=14301

other then that – run T every round, run A spec every round, and run Chewbacca spec while your at it. I enjoy procedural debate and think that as long as you are running it for a reason (like you can justify a trade off with the procedural) then you deserve to defend your links. If there are no justifications I wouldn’t blame a judge for docking speaks, but giving a loss to “teach a lesson” or whatever is bogus.

Besides, the real debating doesn’t begin until NFA and those who have been there (or have told me about it) know it is true, NFA is a different beast. This year will be wicked so I wish you all the best in that venture, but don’t take away my T debate.

yeah they’re not topical

“As judges do we automatically disregard case debate without cards or do we reward negative debaters who try to use their critical thinking skills to engage a case they have yet to research..”

Neither. If case analytics are conceded, give them weight. If the analytics are answered by the evidence, prefer the evidence. But in the end, your framework of judging should not be “who should I reward?” and instead should be “who won.” The former carries with it an immense amount of unnecessary baggage.

When coaching your kids, you should be coaching them to both have solid generic neg strats as well as case neg where required, and further, you should be coaching your kids to have affirmatives that REQUIRE specific case neg to beat. If you look at the affirmatives that the big schools run – Snake River Dams, Blank Check, Mexican Trucking, Space Shuttles, Indian Roads, and even my own Bagram and Asian Carp aff, you’ll notice that none of them can be easily captured by a states counterplan, or outweighed by a mediocre politics d/a. There’s a reason for that.

of the 14 outrounds that occurred in open, only 3 wins were aff

to be fair, the aff/neg split in round 4 was 9/10, so i don’t know if this indicates anything (i am not very good at statistics)

i infer from this that a) negs winning is not really a problem, even lacking published cites, and b) affs need to learn to throw down on generics

AND, separately, if it’s encouraged that affs research thoroughly for their 1ACs, including answers and frontline stuff, and we call that the crux of the education to be had in this event, why then is researching for 12 hours on a killer politics disad/counterplan strategy considered “lazy”? a project for aff, a project for neg, let’s see who outdebates whom

I’m not sure where I advocated a new rule Will – indeed, in my last paragraph I tried to argue that it’s not what any one coach or judge can do but instead the culture of the activity – what do we reward – what do we encourage? As a coach, how do I direct my students in NFA-LD? Do I say “forget case research – let’s just focus on these generic neg strategies” or do I say “let’s spend some time discussing possible cases (like Nick’s comment), and like Brandon wrote, if you don’t have specific evidence still make case arguments” – that’s not so much a rule but a culture of the activity. As judges do we automatically disregard case debate without cards or do we reward negative debaters who try to use their critical thinking skills to engage a case they have yet to research..

There are certainly no easy answers.