Greetings, and good afternoon, welcome.

My name is Scott Deatherage and Tara asked me to come in for this afternoon and spend some time with you, a privilege with which I take great honor. I spent a good bit of my lifetime here at Northwestern with the debate and that regard. I came to share with you some of my experiences. A year ago this last April in 2008 along with 21 Northwestern students and staff members I attended the 62nd annual intercollegiate National Debate Tournament, which in college circles we call the NDT. In fact I spent the first half of my adult life as a college debate coach, 22 years to be precise. That is more than a lifetime for you and in many ways for me as well. That trip to Los Angeles a year and a half ago was the last college national championship of my coaching career as director of debate. Three days later I returned to Chicago and began the second chapter and second challenge in my adult life. With that I took on my first responsibility with the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues to host the very first annual NAUDL national championship tournament. I did that with our good friend Ross Smith who, as you know, we recently lost. He joined us from North Carolina to make that first event a huge success. Urban high school students from 21 cities around every corner of the United States, from Los Angeles to Boston, from Miami to Seattle, and from many point in between gathered to crown the first urban national champion. My hope is to make that championship the first of many more to come. Like the NDT I want the NAUDL national championship to see its own 63rd birthday and well beyond. But I didn't really decide to switch directions in the middle of my life for the particulars of any specific tournament like the NDT or the NAUDL national championship. You see from my perspective I have been offered what I consider the opportunity, indeed the privilege, of a lifetime. The chance to help on a national level to build debate programs in the many thousands of high schools across the country that do not yet have them, and where the opportunity has not existed for a long, long time. I am honored to be here with you today to meet and to present to you my own experiences from 22 years of coaching and now from a year and a half of building programs on a national basis. No matter what happens for you in this institute I want to thank you

for taking the time and the intellectual risk to be here. I consider each person in this room, for the simple virtue of the commitment they have made, to already be champions. Over these last 20 some odd years I have participated in as a competitor nearly 1,000 debates, judged 5 times that many, observed countless others, and coached more than 10,000. Far more profoundly to my own thinking I had the opportunity, the honor, and the privilege of working with some of the finest minds that have ever taken flow pad and pen and put them together to take on this most challenging game that we call debate. They include among others 7 college national debate tournament championship teams, 6 top speakers of the NDT, and a number of high school champions from the NFL, TOC, and other venues. That said, I've also worked with scores of others who trophy or otherwise I consider to be champions. You see because in my book a champion is not defined exclusively by what tournament or tournaments you have won, or what records you have set or broken, but rather a champion subscribes to four pillars of success. They are these: Character, Commitment, Teamwork and Hard work. Character, Commitment, Teamwork and Hard work. There will be more on that thread later, for now know that through the many years that I have made it my mission to try and understand exactly what it is that distinguishes the very best debate teams from even their strongest competitors I have tried to distill some concrete suggestions for your consideration. For the aforementioned observations I have attempted to distill my best mastery of those differences, differences between strong and even the very best debaters into concrete suggestions that I offer. They are here today not particular to any specific team, case, argument, but instead are intended to be characteristic in nature they describe a way of thinking about the process of effective rebutting. A process that is at its best instinctive, second nature for a winning rebutalist. As you head into the home stretch of your institute here at Northwestern I ask for this hour of your time to consider these reflections for your own experience and growth. There are 13. Number 1--CHOOSE. Choose. If you leave this institute and this session with only a single principal in tow make it this--choose. The first most essential lesson of effective rebutting is choice making. No matter the speech; be it the 1NR or the 2AR or any point in between. No matter the argument type be it critique,

topicality, politics, case or counterplan. The first and most fundamental lesson of effective rebutting is choice making. Young debaters, so anxious, every argument they consider to be they hang on, they think to be important, especially in rebuttals. My experience is precisely opposite of that rather instead it is the best arguments and the strongest points that make the effective rebutalist the winning champion in the debate. As you begin each constructive speech consider your alternatives. You lay out in the first negative speech a potpourri of alternatives, a variety of suggestions for the judge, different ways for how you can approach winning the debate in the 2NR. That said, you must in the end decide on an effective strategy for the judge. Choose for them what is the best avenue to prove conclusively that the coherent set or complete package of arguments you present as a totality in the last speech constitutes a way, a road, an avenue by which they achieve the effective end of concluding for the negative. Even great debaters sometimes take time to learn this lesson. I remember going back to my own final debate in the octofinals of the National Debate Tournament in 1984. We were debating one of the most respected teams in the country from Harvard, and we had actually a legitimate chance to win the debate. At the conclusion of the 1AR it was my thought that we were, in fact, leading on all the essential elements of the debate topicality, our disadvantage, our case arguments, and our counterplan. Rather than making a choice my own decision was to give the judge that same potpourri of selections headed into the 2AR. And the result was that the last affirmative rebutalist was able to effectively close the debate in his favor conclusively and clearly, because we had convinced the judge of a lot of nothing. I once coached a young man by the name of Michael Gotlieb. He is probably the most successful debater, in some respects, in the history of the National Debate Tournament. He won the tournament itself twice in 1998 and again in 1999. He was also the top speaker in each of those two years. In his senior year he and his colleague won 43 out of 44 available ballots through the course of the tournament itself. He was debating in the semi-finals before the last major tournament of his senior year prior to the NDT. I had listened to the debate in and out while I was judging next door; our prep time was in-synch. My instinct was, in fact, against Northwestern's own now Daniel Fitzmeir, director of debate. My sense was that we were ahead on every critical argument in the debate. Mike came out I didn't hear

the 2AR, I was judging, Mike came out and I said, "What do you think?" rather I said, "What did you go for?" He said, "Everything" And I said, "Mike, lesson number 1" Sure enough thirty minutes later the decision 2-1 affirmative from Emory. I also remember back to a final round at the National Debate Tournament in 2005. A debate for which Northwestern was affirmative and Berkeley negative. My sense was that we were in fact behind by a substantial portion for a big chunk of the debate. Berkley had substantial advantages, substantive advantages, on essentially every critical issue in the debate, but began, when the time came for the 2NR, the last rebutalist for Berkeley decided to extend every major issue in the debate, and the result was against the best affirmative rebutalist in the country we were able to sufficiently close and come up with a 3-2 decision for the affirmative. The most important lesson of effective rebutting is choice making. Number 2. Offense, Offense, OFFENSE! Offense, Offense, OFFENSE! Don't ask questions, argue. Don't ask, ARGUE! They often say about different situations in debate that teams on either side play defense, but they make defensive argumentation in order to try and fend off what the other side is bringing to the judges plate. My own view is that effectively presented there is no such thing as a defensive argument. The key to offensive argumentation is this; you have to anticipate your opponents warrants and to undermine their credibility BEFORE your opponent develops an explanation in the first instance. Let me repeat that, the key to offensive argumentation is to anticipate your opponents warrant and undermine their credibility BEFORE your opponent develops an offensive explanation in the first instance. Consider a typical first negative constructive it is often full of short-circuited arguments. It's full of disadvantages that lack internal linkages, it is full of counterplans that have brief explanations for why the counterplan is competitive against the

affirmative plan, it's full of generic critiques that have only a vague reference or relationship to the first affirmative constructive. The key to winning those debates is the hard hitting 2AC, the one that not only wonders what the relationship between the particular disadvantage is, but in fact instead anticipates what the negative block will offer in regard to that explanation and undermines its effectiveness before the negative has had a chance to develop it in the first instance. For example I understand here at the institute we're working on a politics disadvantage has CTBT as its ultimate impact. Those political capital implications of the plan will undermine the effectiveness of President Obama in getting Senate support for ratification of the CTBT. Now stop and think about that for a minute. How does it present itself in the first negative constructive? It says in the first negative constructive that the plan requires substantial political capital and that will stop passage of the CTBT in the Senate. What's missing self-evidently is the connection the inherent intellectual relationship between why, for instance, health care reform on the one hand would have any impact or relationship on the passage of a major foreign policy question on the other hand. So rather than the typical 2AC which says what is the link between health care and the CTBT question mark. Anytime your statement ends in a question mark you are making a defensive claim without an offensive argument. Rather instead the argument you ought to make in the second affirmative is NO link the CTBT will be decided on the basis of foreign policy relations with China and North Korea. Health care is utterly and completely irrelevant to the calculation of what the Senate thinks about nuclear testing PERIOD. Number 2 offense, Offense, OFFENSE. Anticipate what relationship they will draw in the negative block or future speeches and undermine the credibility of that relationship before it happens in the first instance. Number three--clash. Clash. Clash is the meat of logos or reasoning what Aristotle called logos, the reason why one argument ought to trump another. It is the most difficult skill in debate to teach and the most difficult skill in debate to learn. Clash is the raison d'etre or that which weaves the judge to reach the conclusion when he or she sets side by side two competing alternative visions of the world as they ought to be. You see the judge doesn't operate in a vacuum alone. He or she understands

not only the vision of the debate world or universe that you offer for their consideration, but they also consider the similar credibility in most circumstances of the alternative vision of that debate world that is offered by your opponent. The critical question in the debate is how does the judge choose between those two competing alternatives? By what yardstick, by what ruler, by what measure, are they to choose are they to decide which team is right when a question of close call comes before them? Understand this too, in the judge's mind almost all the calls are close calls the room is full of grey areas, but rarely are there black and white decisions to be made as arguments are compared to one another. The game in that respect is first and foremost a game of what I call argument resolution. That means that the team that best defines the essential difference between their own position on the nexus question, the nexus question is the tipping point of the debate the place where if the judge had to say one and only one question was determinative to my thinking about all subordinate issues the nexus question, the tipping point. It is the team that most clearly defines its own relationship to the nexus point, that team is the one that is likely going to persuade a judging panel in a close debate. Clash is the most fundamental building block of any winning strategy. To return to my earlier example it sounds now after the second affirmative that it is virtually impossible to recover the CTBT disadvantage. You after all on the negative have frankly ZERO evidence that says Chinese-American relations are not relevant to the determination of the CTBT. Why not? Well, because they are, the Chinese-American relationship is the starting point of the determination of what we will do with the CTBT. You have no evidence for the negative side that US-North Korean relations or North Korea's posture in East Asia is not critical to the determination of the outcome of the CTBT. Why not? Well, because here is the 411 on that it is the most important thing to determining the outcome of the CTBT. So what are you to do? Simply wave your white flag surrender and go to lunch? Take your 27s? Well not precisely. To return to clash the critical question is then how can you draw as the nexus question for the judge to decide the relationship between the health care reform demanded by the affirmative plan and the outcome of blocking effective passage of the CTBT in the United States Senate. It can be done, don't give up. It can be done in a

relatively simple manner. The question is how in fact are they related? The way they are related is this--in order to accomplish the affirmative plan President Obama faces opposition within his own democratic caucus despite the fact that democrats enjoy majorities in both the house and Senate of the United States. The result of that is that he will have to call on every political chip possible in order to achieve the necessary votes in both chambers to get the health care plan that he wants which he will use to do the affirmative plan. If you allow the affirmative by fiat to adopt health care reform as the means to provide social services they can accomplish that only by virtue of giving up all of the political capital necessary in the short term for future political endeavors the President desires. The net result is that when Obama goes back to the well in the United States Senate he will have used so much political capital and will have zero capacity to again draw upon that well for what he need to accomplish passage of the CTBT. The relationship I confess is tenuous, but it is feasible if you give the judge guide posts and clash. If you show the judge why your vision, your strategic sense, of what the debate looks like is what it should be. You have to control the ground of the debate, you have to control the clash of the debate, and you do so by virtue of clash. Clash the most fundamental building block of any winning strategy. The time you devote to resolving arguments, to resolving the nexus question in rebuttals is the most valuable time you spend in the debate. Number 4--It's all about the link. It's all about the link. The outcome of the debate is first and foremost a fight for control of the ground. It's first and foremost a fight for control of the ground of the debate. The team that wins the debate is the team that convinces the judge that their framework is the most compelling. That their offensive argument is most relevant to proposed changes. That is not just about affirmative plans; it is in fact about affirmative plans, what are the disadvantages, what are the critical arguments against affirmative plans. But it is also about negative counterplans, what are the disadvantages what are the reasons that they may be undesirable? It is about critical alternatives and the way that critique alternatives function to change a world vision in ways that may be positive or negative. It's about anything that constitutes a competing alternative, the plan vs. a counterplan, a critique vs. an affirmative plan, a

critique vs. a counter-critique. Any way that a team poses two systems against one another it is all about the link, In this sense the notion of offensive arguments is a broad one, not a narrow one. It is a broad one, not a narrow one. For the affirmative case arguments, case advantages are offense, performance criteria is offensive, and critical frameworks are offensive. For the negative the concept is also broad one competitive counterplans are offense, disadvantages to the plan are offensive and critiques are offensive. Working from this framework both teams must work to maximize the probability that their own set of offensive arguments are those that the judge views as most credible. In order to accomplish that both teams must work to strengthen the link to their offensive argumentation as much as possible. They must strengthen the link to their offensive argumentation as much as possible. In my own view, and I will confess for a moment that this is a bit of old school thinking, you will hear a lot of controversy about this amongst the faculty here at the institute. It is not just the faculty at the Northwestern Institute; I am probably in a 1/3 to 2/3 minority on this. My own view is that debaters focus far too much on questions of impact and far too little on questions of linkage. See the judge as I said, is first and foremost a skeptic. They do not believe anything that you see. They are paid to work in a state of disbelief, not in one of acceptance. Don't preach to them as if what you have is gospel and what the team offers is nonsense. Instead understand that what you offer is something they seek to understand, that they seek to know more about, but that they begin from skeptical positioning. As such they are typically skeptical of most any assertion made in debate, evidence or otherwise. What that means it that their skepticism starts with the link arguments, because the link arguments are where most issues in the debate typically begin. When the affirmative presents a perceived claim one that is built on a series of linkages the judge brings a sense of skepticism to the table they don't really believe that the steps required to prove that poverty ultimately ends up in a complete economic collapse are in fact credible. The affirmative says that economic collapse results from poverty, they are skeptical of this, because they have seen it happen before we have had poverty for years and years. They've seen the great depression happen or at least they learned the

historicity of the great depression and the know that even in that calamitous environment of poverty that while things were certainly bad we avoided global economic calamity in the sense that the affirmative describes it. In the sense that it can grab hold and end the world. And so accordingly it is the process of building the relationship between cause and effect that you have to focus on first and foremost. The link question that you have to begin for building the effective persuasion of the judge. The result, we used this example before, but the proposition on first blush to the judge that passage of health care reform or that social services plans or that plans that create greater deficits will in the end prevent President Obama from accomplishing political ends in the foreign policy realm seems fanciful at best. So the judge's skepticism focuses on the first series of linkages the relationship between the affirmative plan and the desired outcome the negative chooses to present as its offense. The result of that is that debaters must aggressively work to construct not only a tenable link but a highly credible case for the link for the world that they wish the judge to envision. That is not a matter of repeating generic link arguments in the negative block, or repeating taglines and solvency arguments from the 1AC. If you read your critique argument for instance to attempt to describe labeling people as being impoverished somehow codifies their status as impoverished stop and wonder about that for a moment. What did you think when you first heard that argument? Well one of the natural reactions that you must have had to it, but a lot of people are impoverished and we didn't make them that way by calling them impoverished. The judge has the same thought in his or her mind, and the result that in order to make that claim credible you have to reach not just to the generic language of what your link argument and evidence reaches but instead you have to go beyond that to the particulars of what the affirmative has said the exact claims the affirmative has made. What that means is that in the negative block we want to build what is called a link wall. A link wall is a series of arguments that creates the credibility of what happens when the plan passes, were it in fact to be passed. The corollary to this is that uniqueness and link arguments in my mind meld together as one and the same. How many times have you been in debates so far in your young debate career where the affirmative team has

offered uniqueness arguments against your disads that you had no specific evidence? Claims about Obama's political capital or his credibility and the affirmative will say x, y, or z have already eroded his political credibility, and you have no evidence for the counter attack the specific proposition that his position on gays in the military threatens his political capital in the status quo. So the result is that you have to convince the judge that the plan, which is about the plan, which is the critical breaking point that you define what that's about. For the negative it is about reading more evidence. Catch this one, believe it or not, I advise people to read more link evidence on the negative to their generic arguments in the negative block EVEN WHEN the link argument is barely or not at all challenged in the 2AC. Now I'll put a caveat on that, and my caveat is not true when the only thing the affirmative does is impact turn your argument. But in every other circumstance even when the affirmative barely challenges your link arguments, you read more link evidence in the 2AC. Why would you possibly do that they didn't challenge the link argument we read? Because the judge doesn't believe you, they don't, they really don't. And so you have to hammer it home, you have to make decisively, and clearly, and conclusively the case that you are right about the link question. That might open up the opportunity for the 1AR to make some kind of impact against the link but in the end I think you are on stronger ground the more that you build the link. For the negative it is about using specific warrant in a precise fashion. It is about using specific warrant in a precise fashion. Don't say the affirmative talks about. Scratch the phrase "talks about" out of your vocabulary. Eliminate it completely and totally. The phrase is "The Smith evidence says" and then quote the exact phrase from the evidence in question that you are using from the affirmative that you are using to relate to your offensive argument. It is not about generalizing what the claim the affirmative has made it is about being specific about what their evidence has proven and using the exact phraseology to accomplish that. For the affirmative on the other hand. This is about drawing credible connections between the plan and anticipated outcomes. It is about making that connection believable it is about using

your evidence aggressively and in a specific and precise fashion. Again it is not our evidence says, but instead it is Our Jones evidence proves and I quote and reach in and use those exact and precise claims not generalizations about them. For the affirmative it is about not ever, ever, ever, letting the negative characterizing the plan with unchallenged link arguments. It is about never, ever, ever letting the negative getting away with telling the judge what your plan means at the link level. That is a prescription for a negative win every single time. They make a link argument you counter it fast, you counter it hard, and counter it offensively, offensively, offensively, you use the framework of the first affirmative constructive to do so. You use the 1AC in an offensive and retaliatory fashion to control the ground of the debate. Number 5--control the framework of the debate. Control the framework of the debate. You will learn soon enough in the next few minutes that I am a great sports fan and I use a lot of sports analogies I will try to make them accessible to those of you in the room who are not sports fan in particular. When I think of control the ground of the debate I think of it this way, they say that football is a game of inches. And of the thousands and thousands of inches that are fought for in a close football game only a very few determine the outcome, in a close game at least. I think back, for example, to watching some years ago the Tennessee Titans who were once the Houston Oilers being a Houstonian myself play in the Super Bowl. They won that Super Bowl, but for an extra four inches, they didn't have an extra four inches because they didn't have time on the clock. The outcome of that game could be won by one team and there were probably 10,000 inches worth of ground covered in that game. Debate, similarly, is a game of words. The outcome of a debate is determined on the basis of a few words, not many. In the same way that a close football game might come down to one or two essential plays the outcome of a good debate might come down to a single strategic decision or a particular tactical argument. The entire debate is first and foremost about the essential question upon which outcome turns. What that means in practical terms for you is that if it is your desire to win the debate by proving that your advantages outweigh the negative disadvantages then you have to do that first and foremost, by

convincing the judge that the framework by which he or she should decide the outcome is impact based. Similarly if you are on the negative and you want to win an impact comparison most likely you have to convince the judge that the outcome of the debate is probability based. The probability of our impact may be small, the probability may be small, but the significance of it is so important the risk may be minimal but the significance of the impact is so severe that you should choose probability instead of how to think about the choice between the versions of the debate. Similarly, in critical situations, you will learn more and more about as you grow older. Framework analysis is critical to the outcome of almost every critical affirmative and almost every negative. The framework analysis is principally a fight for control of the ground of the debate. Framework analysis is almost exclusively an argument about who controls the rules for which team should be the one that governs the decision making criterion for the debate. And so both must be done. Number 6--cover smart. You see one of the things that you learned during the years who have been engaged in the game is that at first the debate game seems pretty easy. You start the beginning of your novice year and you've got these files that these older students on your team have given to you or that you got from off the web page of some workshop or wherever you had gotten them. You are a pretty smart kid you zip through them and you are on YouTube and you read blocks and whatever all at the same time, multi-tasking. You go in the first semester and you kind of figure out that well gee I got a little more developed material than the other side most of the time. We just seem to talk a little bit quicker, then you discover this format and they give you the 1AR and you think, "This is not fair", they get to talk whatever it is 13, 14 minutes, and then you get your five, and you think "This is not fair." But then all of the sudden it is not that big of a deal because the negative team on the other side hasn't really learned what to do with the block and so the 1NR stands up and says "What my partner told you was," and he or she repeats most of what their colleague just said. This coverage game is not that big a deal, so what. Keep going along, novice year progresses, then all of the little

shits on the other side they start talking a little faster too, because they start figuring out that if they quit talking so slowly, and then they figure out that if they don't repeat everything the negative block but say different things all the time that your life is going to be more hellish than it was before. Well all of the sudden it is a lot more difficult, and then the worst comes. You think you are going to be really fast and quick like those other kids on the top team on your school and whatnot. You start talking and your braces get in the way and you can't talk that fast, it's not working out as well. The emperor has no clothes. You see here is the trick: the outcome of the debate is about substantive questions not about technical ones. The outcome of the debate is about substantive questions not about technical ones especially in quarterfinals. Technique can never, ever, ever, ever, trump substance in an ultimate sense. If you learn the prior lessons, how to choose your arguments wisely, if you learn how to define clash on the nexus question, if you learn how to control the framework of the ground of the debate, you learn how to make all your arguments in an offensive manner, then in that circumstance coverage will never hurt you. I was listening to the final round of the National Debate Tournament in 2001. A team from Iowa and a team from Emory, Iowa was affirmative. Each team had one kid on it who had debated together when they were in high school. One of them was blazingly fast and one of them pokey and plaintively slow. And the two debated over and over again in college and the kid Andy Ryan who was plaintively slow managed to win almost every time. What was it? Because he had down the prospect of making argument choice and clash in a way that, on the nexus question and so the judge could say that the other team had won a big percentage of arguments and the other team won the most important arguments. Cover smart, cover smart. Don't think you have to cover every argument in the debate. If you happen to be one of those random kids who has the capacity to cover every single argument in a debate without really much challenge then I would go ahead and encourage you to take advantage of that skill. It is just not very common. Robert Kraft the owner of the New England Patriots said, "Perseverance is how most things get done." Form cannot substitute for

substance all the numbers and the taglines in the world won't make up for a lack of meaning. Number 7--make every argument count. Here is the critical rule of thumb if you cannot visualize how a particular argument in your first constructive would be employed effectively in your last rebuttal as part of a winning strategy then don't invest in it in the first instance. If you can't see how a specific argument in the first constructive would play a constructive role in the last rebuttal then don't spend time on it in the first place. Don't misunderstand me that doesn't mean you can't have multiple strategies in the first negative constructive, you can. You can present counterplans, case arguments, and a disadvantage. You can also present a critique that is consistent with those things, but as you do those things be aware that you limit your own strategic options as much as you add demand on to the coverage needs of the other team. Accordingly when you make choices for what goes into the first speech, the first speech is not a random collection of items, thoughts, and arguments. I used to think of the first speech as essentially a place where you just kind of threw out anything and everything you thought might be relevant and then I began to understand the difference between an argument and a strategy, or stategery if I could borrow a phrase from a recently former president. Effective stategery is one that conceptualizes all arguments as part of A winning strategy. You may choose to put out two winning strategies in the first negative constructive, you might even think about three, although I think you are stretching it at that juncture. But in any case the point is that every single thing you say in constructives ought to be something that you at least can visualize deploying in the rebuttals if it is to be effective in the first place. Number 8--anticipate and know. The best debaters I've ever coached are those who know more about their competitors arguments than do their opponents. They know more about their competitors arguments than do their opponents. I have had the honor and privilege of working with some of the finest people that have ever played this game before and I can name students who have won every single award available in the high school and college debate community. All of that said when I stop to think about what distinguishes the best of the best from each other the one thing that occurs to me is that the very strong students are

those who simply know more about their competitors arguments than do their opponents. What their arguments are, what they might do with them, what they said, what they should have said, what they thought they said, what the judges thought they said, and what the judges thought they should have said. I mentioned earlier a young man named Michael Gotlieb. You know you listen to him debate and he's pretty persuasive, he's very fast, he's very clear, he's all these things, and is he better at any of those things than other fine debaters? No, I remember other debaters who were just as clear, who were just as fast, I remember debaters who were just as persuasive and perhaps more so. I never found one who was better prepared than Michael Gottlieb. He never lost to the same team twice, not once, not a single time, in four years, not a single time. Every time he lost to a team the first time, when he lost to a team the first time, which wasn't all that terribly often, he demanded the ball. I say demand the ball, I mean to say he insisted that the assignment in question was his for the taking. I remember when he and Sparky lost in the octofinals, they were the top seed at the Wake Forest tournament, which is the biggest college tournament in the country when Mike was a junior and Sparky was a sophomore. They were debating a team from Georgetown, a very good team from Georgetown, with an excellent case about monetary reform in the international banking system. We had what we thought was one of our best researchers assigned to the case, back in Evanston we started strategizing and were talking it through. I turned to Matt Anderson who had been doing the work and started to describe what else I wanted done for the future debate. Mike just stopped me mid-sentence and said, "No, I'm taking this assignment." I said, "Mike, Matt knows what he's doing, it's all settled, we're fine, we're good." We went back and forth. Finally, he did it himself. We met them the next tournament in the quarterfinals and won the coin flip without flinching or asking them what they were running he said, "We'll take the negative." 3-0 for the negative. Strategies are not generic, at least not at the top level. There are plenty of times when generic strategies come into play and they

have to come into play. But the more specific that they are, at the top level, the greater your odds of winning debates are. You have to learn how to fit what it is you have to say to what the other team has, even when you are using your generics. You've got to make them fit. That means you are negative, for instance, is that you take the first affirmative and you don't generalize about what kind of arguments it makes, make specific references and exact phrases, and exact phraseologies, and exact words from their evidence, and exact claims that they were making. Make effective strategies fit in a very specific manner. Effective strategies demand specifics, they are not based on tricks, but rather they are based on depth of knowledge, depth of reading, depth of understanding, depth of literature, and ground fundamentally in the differences between what the two sides advocate and what is supported in the literature on both. Understand that, as well, or better, as you know your arguments than your opponent the better off your chance to win. John Smith was a world class wrestler coach at Oklahoma State University, he coached six world championship wrestlers he said this, "Win or lose you will never regret working hard, making sacrifices, being disciplined, or focusing too much. But rather success is measured by what we have done to prepare for competition. Number 9--style and substance. Style and substance are fundamentally inseparable. Aristotle said 6000 years ago that there are three forms of proof; ethos, logos, and pathos. Ethos is the credibility or believability of your argument. Logos is the logic or reason of an argument. Pathos is the evidence or support of an argument. Of these Aristotle said ethos or credibility is most important. Understand this, the judge has to want to vote for you they have to know, they have to hear, they have to feel, they have to believe. You say the judge is not an informational processor, the judge is not a CPU, the judge is not a computer. The judge is a person with real experiences, background, understanding, with knowledge that they have gained, not simply from the academic enterprise of sitting taking notes, watching, and listening, but from interaction and experience. In that regard when you present to them the thing that the debate judge brings uniquely to the table, and other people do not, is that they bring a willingness to hear and listen to any angle, approach,

substance, or situation, no matter how unique or different their own experiences may be. This does not suggest that they accept what you say de facto solely because you say what you say, but instead they have to want to, style and substance are fundamentally inseparable. Along that, part way to the bottom, Bill Parcells a longtime NFL coach said, "Confidence is born not from one thing, but demonstrated ability, it is not born of any impulse you cannot dream up confidence, you cannot fabricate it, you cannot wish it, and you have to accomplish it. Confidence is born of one thing demonstrated ability." Number 10--narrate and judge the debate. The key here is to learn how to write the ballot for the judge. My college coach used to say this to me all the time right before going into a debate. His last advice was, especially when we were affirmative for the 2AR, he would say, "Remember you have got to write the ballot for the judge." At the time I thought I had this queasy sense, this understanding, this rough gut instinct of what he was trying to tell me to do. Then it occurred to me one day I was judging a practice debate in the commons room at the Hardy House and at the end of the debate, which I thought was frankly highly mediocre, I asked both teams to engage in an exercise. The exercise was this I said you have to start by understanding the other sides' strengths, not their weaknesses. Understand the other sides' strengths, not their weaknesses. I turned to the affirmative and I said I want the two of you to take five minutes to describe to me why you think the negative, your opponent, has won this debate. They kind of looked at me a bit perplexed, but they want off to the commons for a bit and they came back and made a little presentation. Next I turned to the negative and played the same trick. I said I want you to describe to me why you think your opponent has won this debate. What that forced both teams to do was to get into the mind of the judge and understand where the strengths of their opponent lie, and what impact that assessment may have on the judge's thinking. In this respect you have to understand that you have to give the other team credit. Know that the world is full of that grey argumentation I described earlier, not exclusively of black and white argument differences. Use this rule of how you execute this in a debate, take the first 30 seconds of your prep time for the last rebuttal and ask yourself this question, "If we are to lose this

debate, why will it be so?" The judge will look at us at the end and describe a ballot for our opponent where will her reasoning begin. Then start thinking about how to prepare a rebuttal around the answer to that question. If you do so you will improve your win/loss record by a measurable or noticeable percentage. Number 11--teamwork. Michael Jordan said, "Talent wins games, teamwork wins championships." I can't tell you the number of highly skilled or talented debaters I've watched who I've thought could have been successful, but instead ended up as octofinalist. The reason they end up being consistent octofinalists is either because they didn't put enough effort required to make the final leap, or the alternative even if they did they focused on individual gain or glory and not on winning debates. I remember a recent debater that graduated in 2006 I judged his final debate. I remember listening to him every time he was a terrific public speaker, top speaker at a couple major tournaments, but I also remember interacting with him during the day at several tournaments and his principal concern was how the speaker points were going. Not who his opponents would be, not what said of arguments needed to be produced, not what the next challenges and opportunities, but how well he had done that day. Remember something you are on the same team, you are in this together, your colleague will make mistakes; know that, I can promise that, your colleague will make mistakes. Guess what? So will you. Divisiveness over errors will not help. The past is relevant only insofar as it informs future decisions, future strategy, future argument choice, and future debates. Respect your partner understand they have reasons for the choices they make, know that at the end when they deliver their rebuttal it is ultimately their choice to make. They can consult and should, but that at decision making time one person has got to make the call and that one person is the person who has to give the speech. Phil Jackson said, "We alone can destroy our championship opportunity." The rest of you know that teamwork is the focused work that you bring to the table to aid in the effort. Pat Riley said, "The truly great actors go out of their way to make sure the supporting actors are brilliant, because they want the movie to be great. These are the people that really understand the essence of leadership."

Robert Woodruff former president of the Coca-Cola Corporation said, "There is no limit to what you can do or where you can go if you don't mind who gets the credit." Jamie Cohen a student at Brown University three time NCAA crew national championship winner said, "It is important to respect both your teammates and your opponents, because friendships make victory last forever." Number 12--prepare to win. Prepare to win means that strategizing is never a petty affair. It starts when the topic is released until the final debate is concluded and continues at all points in between. Preparing to win is about using your prep time effectively. In the tournament context that means that your prep time for a specific debate starts when a pairing is released and concludes when a judge's decision is announced and explained fully. You have to learn to research, practice, on a regular basis. I remember in 1995 I was at the National Debate Tournament with a team Sean McCaffity and Jody Terry who won the NDT as sophomores in 94 the youngest team in 35 years to win. Jodie was having trouble on the affirmative; they had just lost their second affirmative round 6. He came out and said I need to regive that 2AC. That for somebody who had already won his first national championship and was not 36 hours away from winning the second. We found a corner, in a hallway, outside of a kitchen, where the caterer was getting ready to serve lunch to 500 people and re-gave the 2AC. Be detail oriented. Know your strengths and your weaknesses. Take advantage of one and balance and correct for the other. Take advantage of your own strengths. Mike Singleterry was a student at Baylor when I was an undergraduate there. For those of you who don't know Mr. Singleterry is probably the finest middle linebacker ever to play football. Upon his retirement and induction into the NFL hall of fame his coach Mike Ditka from the Chicago Bears said, "Mike Singleterry prepared for each game as if it were his last." The 1968 Olympic gold medalist Jane Clark-Kelly said, "Every day you must challenge yourself to do better than before."

Number 13--focus and concentration. These are the keys together they unlock the secrets; the secrets are the fundamentals; choice, clash, offense, controlling the ground of the debate, and all the rest. Focus and concentration are the keys that make them the instinctive skills they need to be. These skills as simple as they seem will help you overcome the most demanding obstacles. Together they will permit you to rise to the most challenging situation you can imagine. Greg Louganis the swimming and diving great put it this way, "You always want your opponent to have a career day, because that will elevate your performance to a level you did not know you had." Chris Everett the tennis champion said simply, "Singlemindedness that is what it takes to win a championship." I can't promise immediate results these fundamentals may not work in round 4 of your first tournament against a new affirmative case for which you have no evidence. They may fail you when in a particular elimination round your strategy is skewed by a misunderstanding, by you or the judge. But in the end I can tell you this they are your first, your last, your only best chance to be the best that you can be. For each of you this will be a long and difficult road. Remember something nothing worth having ever comes easy. With patience, hard work, commitment, dedication, and with the fundamentals in your sights these things will get you through. We've talked a lot this afternoon about great debaters and great debate teams. I've used a number of examples from my own career, people with which I've had direct experience. I said in my opening remarks that I would return to this theme, or proposition. Greatness is not defined exclusively by winning, watches, trophies, or other awards. I've had the honor of working with the names and faces some of them you know, NDT champions, top speakers. I commented at the beginning I've had opportunity to work with a number of great debaters. In that sense in my mind greatness is something much bigger than winning any debate or tournament, instead it is made of precisely where I began; character, commitment, teamwork, and hard work. Greatness is about a lot more than winning. Great debaters are those who dedicated themselves to improving every aspect of their skills. Great debaters work for what they achieve, they research, they

strategize, they practice. Great debaters win with class and lose with grace. There are many champions you have met this summer, that are exemplar of great debaters in so many ways. You met Tonya Starks she never won the NDT, she is a great debater. She understands the importance of character, commitment, teamwork and hard work. You met John Warden who despite all our best efforts never won an NDT. He is a great debater, his greatness come not just from trophies, but instead from character, commitment, teamwork, and hard work. So many others that I could introduce you to or that you have, or will meet in the course of your last two weeks that you have here. The point remains that greatness is defined not by a specific tournament, not by a topic, not by a trophy, it is defined by a set of characteristics; character, commitment, teamwork, and hard work. One of the essential parts of our philosophy here at Northwestern is that when one of us wins we all win. When one of us loses we all lose. That remains true without regard to whose particular names are engraved on a trophy at any given time, or who won the last tournament. But instead those who are believers in the fundamentals or characteristics. Another part of my own philosophy is this; once a part of the family always a part of the family. I have the privilege to attend a wedding about a month ago; I like weddings for the most part. There were about 150 Northwestern debate alumni in attendance that I had coached over the last 18 years. It was at that juncture that I understood what we mean by community, and family, because of the 150 individuals in attendance. While there were plenty who represented tournament championships the vast majority of them not. Nevertheless they consider themselves to be, and are, part of our family. We walked through fire together. We lived and loved. Greg Louganis said that, "Victory is not necessarily a gold medal." Carl Lewis the great runner said, "It's all about the journey, not about the outcome."

As I wrap up this presentation and leave some of you this afternoon. I leave you with three closing thoughts. The first is a quotation from an American philosopher in the early part of the 20th century Alexander Mickleback. He said this, "When I try to single out from the long line of students one group who will stand out as intellectually the best, the best in college work, the best in promise of future intellectual achievement. As much as I would like to do so I cannot draw the line around my own favorite students of philosophy, nor those of mathematics, biology, or other fields. Nor could I fairly award the palm to the accomplished students of Phi Beta Kappa. It seems to me that stronger than any other group in intellectual fiber, keener in intellectual interest, better equipped to do battle with the coming challenges, are the debaters. Those who band together with friends from other schools searching for the solutions to great challenges." Second is a quote from a man from Northern Iowa. I was at a tournament there in the early 1990s and they had a presentation of some of the finest graduates, the most accomplished graduates from the university. This particular quotation struck me so I grabbed my brief case and pen and flow pad and scribbled it down. It is now inscribed on the wall of my office at the National Association for Urban Debate downtown. I read it at the beginning of everyday. It is this "Never be afraid of taking calculated risks in your own personal life. Be willing to work longer and harder at your craft than the next person. Never settle for being good at something, when you can be great. Learn to be hard on yourself when you don't quite give it your best and easy on yourself when your best isn't quite good enough. Know that failing means only that you did not achieve your desired goal and the sooner that you take the word can't out of your vocabulary the better." And finally my own reflections, I'll say this; make no mistake, that I stand before you today at the precipice of age 50. I look back at all my life experiences, all of its successes, all of its failures, all of its accomplishments, all of its disappointments. I rest confident knowing this, knowing that debate, no other experience than debate, has had the most profound impact on my own sense of self, on who and where I am today. As I look back on the contours of my own life there are many things about it I would change if I could, but not this. Long hours, demanding schedules, all that

goes into effective debating, and effective coaching. The lost weekends, I would do it all again. I would do it all again not for any particular tournament or trophy, not for specifics of any topic, not even for the intellectual benefits that debate bestows upon its participants critical thinking and so forth. I would do it all again for the chance to work with hardworking, dedicated, and committed students like those assembled in this room.