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Select Tournament Myth

Tim Mohoney recently made reference to the NDT and suggested that CEDA might
want a "Tournament of Champions."  Contrary to what appears on paper, the NDT
has become a de facto open tournament.  My two years of experience with the
administration of the tournament found that the "bid" process worked to the
exclusion of fewer than 10 teams each year.  A look at the w/l records of
some qualifying teams (moving westward) was frightening; one qualifying team
had a w/l of 19%!!!

Does this mean the NDT is not special?  Heck, no!  The spcial nature of the
NDT comes from its status as a national tournament at the end of the year.  A
tournament does not have to be selective to be special.

In addition, there are other factors which suggest that a TOC would not be a
great idea.  What if one team wins CEDA and another wins TOC?  In such a
case, a TOC would dilute the effect of winning the open national tournament,
which I don't believe is fair to the students who bust their butts to be the
best team out of over 200.

Post-national tournaments are also draining to teams who have advanced far at
nationals.  I suspect this to be the case in NDT and CEDA; ask any debater
reaching the final round.  I suspect the last thing they may want to do is
attend another national tournament after nationals.

I am not suggesting that nats should be the end-all of student recognition;
but it isn't.  Students should be judged on the basis of their performance
over the year and over their careers, not one or even two tournaments at the
end of the year.  A team considered by many to be one of the best ever in NDT
(Loveland and Maguire, UNC) never won the NDT.  I had a team at Southern Utah
that cleared at every national level tournament in 1988-89, placed 3rd at
Heart and SIU, and lost in the first elim at nats.  I certainly hope they are
not judged lesser because their one bad tournament at the end of the year was
nats.

Tim did make one point I think is worthy.  Select tournaments, such as round
robins, should make an effort to use objective and egalitarian criteria for
selecting teams.  Designating tournaments is unfair to those in particular
geographic regions and benefits those with larger budgets who can attend all
the aulifiers.  I suspect that if a RR/select invited any team winning an
open division tournament about 10-20 teams would show up at the most.

This will be my last post on CEDA-L for some time.  I should be reconnecting
in a few weeks as I enter the second career.

-Tom Murphy, Miami University
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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