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top 5% of CEDA (whatever that means) is about top 5% of NDT (whatever that means) in "argument sophistication". but that would mean at least 25 teams for us and about 4 teams for ya'll? just the numbers. if this looks ridiculous to you, consider how far out on a limb you'd need to go to claim even "parity" in "argument sophistication": let's pick the top 10 teams, for example: that's your top 16% but our top 2%. are you really ready to believe that 1 of every 6 teams in NDT is as "academically rigorous" as the top 1 out of 50 CEDA teams? --- end of quoted material --- Simple answer, yes!!!! I think that this is where you are out of it. I would put the number of teams that fall into the overzealous, rigours, and argumentatively sophiticated somewhere around 25. Yes, that is right, at least 30% of NDT falls into the "top bracket" by your numbers. I think this is where you miss the boat, statiscally NDT is way ahead of CEDA based on your numbers. Hell, these days Andre and I end up debating presets that are as tough as competition on sunday and monday at tournments. For example, the first day at Michigan we debate Northwestern FJ (a first round) and before that Wake MY, who are easily in the top 25 in the country. My point is that almost everyround in NDT is between teams of "sophistication". Your insinution that we "aint even close" is way flawed, I would say yall gotta look at the numbers again. In raw terms we probably have 25-30 teams that would match your top 5%, not four. One of the reasons for this probably has to do with our small size horizontally, but big size vertically. We have four teams, Wake at least three, Michigan four, Northwestern a bunch, Emory four, etc all that are "teams of sophistication." When you have deep teams, you are able to have intense group efforts at "sophistication". Research distinctions are so few and far between among most NDT squads that your "sophistication" argument holds no weight.
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