Here is the sec­ond of three parts of PFDebate’s inter­view with 2005 NFL Cham­pion James Col­ston.

4. The topic for Nation­als was Col­lege Prep vs. Voca­tional Edu­ca­tion. Did you enjoy debat­ing it more than other top­ics you saw through­out the year?

I hated that topic. There were so many other things that we could have talked about. The last few years, it seems like the nation­als topic has been biased toward one side, and I don’t like that. You shouldn’t be at a dis­ad­van­tage before you even get a chance to speak. There were all knds of inter­est­ing things going on that we could have debated. That’s one of the good things about Pub­lic Forum. The top­ics can be rel­e­vant to what’s actu­ally occur­ring day-to-day. The last two top­ics (vo ed and apti­tude test­ing) were my least favorite of all. My favorites this year were prob­a­bly import­ing pre­scrip­tion drugs, manda­tory retire­ment for Supreme Court jus­tices, and flat tax.

5. You won the final round by a fairly large mar­gin. Were you con­fi­dent you had won the debate?

No. We were on edge until we found out. That last round was def­i­nitely not my per­sonal best, so I was unhappy with the way I had per­formed. We have a lot of respect for Lind­say and Adam [Lind­say Bay­ham & Adam Schnei­der from Ladue Hor­ton Watkins HS in Mis­souri], and from what I under­stand, they are still in school and should be back next year. I expect them to con­tinue to do very well. We had no idea it would be a 13 – 2 or any­thing close to that.

6. What are some of the prizes and things you received as a result of your win?

Audrey and I each received a $5,000 schol­ar­ship from Lin­coln Finan­cial. We were also offered full schol­ar­ships at West­ern Ken­tucky Uni­ver­sity, which is a great debate school, that we decided to take. It’s really changed every­thing for us.