McNeil is the real deal.

I think one of my stu­dents summed it up best this morn­ing when they said “Wait, if I have money, I can spon­sor a topic?” They had no idea they were debat­ing top­ics that were, even in grant form, paid for.

I don’t think the NFL has been trans­par­ent in what they are doing. In fact, Greg is the first per­son I know who said that the NFL wrote a grant and pro­posed topic areas to this orga­ni­za­tion. Is that how all spon­sored top­ics come about?

As a for­mer debater who paid my school’s NFL chap­ter dues and my mem­ber­ship dues out of the money I raised sell­ing 4-H lambs and chick­ens at the San Joaquin County Fair because it was the only way our school could be a mem­ber (maybe $99 + $15 per mem­ber doesn’t seem like a lot to peo­ple now but it was a LOT to me), and now as a coach, I would ask the NFL Board of Direc­tors and the NFL Exec­u­tive Direc­tor to be more trans­par­ent in actions taken that directly affect our activity.

Maybe Jonathan wasn’t dead-on about buy­ing vs a grant (did he know it was a grant?), how­ever I agree with the gen­eral mes­sage of a need for trans­parency. As long as kids are doing car washes, babysit­ting, and clean­ing barn stalls to earn money to go to Nation­als, they should know what’s going on.

I’m glad that we all seem to at least agree that it is good to have a pub­lic debate about the selec­tion process and role of spon­sor­ing orga­ni­za­tions. I cer­tainly appre­ci­ate my col­leagues thoughts thus far. I had a pleas­ant dis­cus­sion with Mr. Wunn ear­lier this after­noon that was help­ful in under­stand­ing more clearly what the NFL is and is not doing regard­ing Pub­lic Forum topics.

Before get­ting into the finer details, I think that the cen­tral con­cerns of my let­ter have gone unad­dressed by Mr. Schap­paugh and Mr. Stevens. The NFL Exec­u­tive Direc­tor has been given unchecked power to nego­ti­ate top­ics with spon­sors, the NFL has not been trans­par­ent in this process (result­ing in the kind of murk­i­ness I’m about to dis­cuss), and that the sell­ing of PF top­ics uniquely preys upon this event as a rev­enue stream. Sim­ply restat­ing “spon­sor­ship money is good” is non­re­spon­sive to these arguments.

If you’re inter­ested in the minu­tia of it all, here’s the best clar­i­fi­ca­tion I can offer right now. Mr. Stevens is cor­rect to say that the topic areas are born of a grant pro­posal. I don’t feel that I have the right to reveal email cor­re­spon­dence writ­ten by oth­ers in a forum like this, but suf­fice it to say the following:

A) Upon some mem­bers’ expres­sion of dis­ap­proval when we learned of the February-April spon­sor­ship deal last Novem­ber, the word­ing com­mit­tee received what was at best an unclear expla­na­tion from the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of what role the spon­sor­ing orga­ni­za­tion played in topic area selec­tion. In reread­ing old emails tonight, my inter­pre­ta­tion of this expla­na­tion does sug­gest that the spon­sor­ing orga­ni­za­tion played a role in nar­row­ing the scope of top­ics. Nonethe­less, Mr. Wunn assured me that the topic areas were drawn from the grant pro­posal and I accept his word. Keep in mind though that this means that even though the NFL has a com­mit­tee that is charged with writ­ing top­ics, a small group in the NFL office chose to pre­pare top­ics for the pro­posal with no input from the com­mit­tee what­so­ever. Nor does this address the Novem­ber topic, which was spon­sored by an orga­ni­za­tion clearly focused on the issue of failed states. It would appear — though due to insuf­fi­cient com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the NFL we can’t be sure — that the Novem­ber spon­sor was heav­ily involved in that topic area selection.

B) I’m not sure why who approached who to ini­ti­ate spon­sor­ship dis­cus­sions is rel­e­vant if the con­cern is that topic selec­tion is not being dri­ven by coaches. Again refer­ring back to the inter­nal infor­ma­tion shared with the word­ing com­mit­tee (infor­ma­tion that I argue should be avail­able to the full NFL mem­ber­ship), it would appear that the February-April spon­sor approached sev­eral orga­ni­za­tions look­ing to donate to aca­d­e­mic debate. To me, that means that the spon­sor ini­ti­ated the process.

The bot­tom line is this: us mem­bers of the word­ing com­mit­tee can come here and argue about who knew what and when. But we’re the lucky few that even have a remote clue about what’s going on, and even we’re not being told every­thing. The very lim­ited input that you, the mem­ber­ship of the NFL, has in the Pub­lic Forum topic process is the word­ing com­mit­tee. Let­ting spon­sors some­times choose the topic area is bad, but this lack of trans­parency is even worse. It is time for sig­nif­i­cant demo­c­ra­tic reform in the selec­tion of Pub­lic Forum topics.

So, we’re debat­ing a topic this Feb­ru­ary about peo­ple with a lot of money buy­ing the func­tion of our government…

Mr. Peele says there are three things that need to be addressed from his orig­i­nal post — I was not post­ing to get into a line-by-line debate, but since he feels these things need spe­cific addresses then I will try and deal with them separately.

1. He claims that the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor has unchecked power. First of all, the Board of Direc­tors over­sees the National Foren­sics League and the actions of the office and the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor. If the board mem­bers we elect think that Exec­u­tive Direc­tor is not han­dling the process cor­rectly then they would address that. Sec­ondly, he has an advi­sory board for the top­ics that he can seek advice from. The word­ing com­mit­tee is in an advi­sory posi­tion — they can offer their advice to the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor. Third, he’s the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the NFL … I **TRUST** that his actions are in the best inter­est of the league and in the inter­est of Pub­lic Forum debate. I think that all of the work that he is doing — hands on with PF — illus­trates that he views the activ­ity as a legit­i­mate debate event wor­thy of the same respect as the other events. I also trust that the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor is OPEN to dis­cus­sions about how the process should be. I do not want to speak for him, but from my past inter­ac­tions with him I’d guess that he’s about hav­ing open lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The tone of the post and the re-post are really accusatory and both­er­some — as if some moral wrong has been done. Pro­duc­tive dis­cus­sion with the tones pre­sented are really hard.

2. The claim that the process is not trans­par­ent is the sec­ond issue Mr. Peele brings up. I do not think that there is any less infor­ma­tion about the Pub­lic Forum topic process than there is any other event. There is the abil­ity for ANYONE to sub­mit ideas for pub­lic forum top­ics on the NFL web­site. It does not make sense to me that each event needs to have the same process. Events are dif­fer­ent and require dif­fer­ent con­ven­tions. If PF were treated the same as LD we would not have timely enough top­ics. Not only that, but even if we debate a sim­i­lar topic from time-to-time — things change and thus the topic takes new angles — that’s a great thing, in my opin­ion, for debaters to see and deal with. No debate is the same. Even if you think the events need to mir­ror each other in some aspects then remem­ber that in LD we have debated oppres­sive gov­ern­ments vs. no gov­ern­ments more than once and the same can be said for other topics .…

3. He claims that sell­ing top­ics preys upon Pub­lic Forum Debate. The way that this is being pre­sented is that any orga­ni­za­tion can come to the NFL and say — here’s X amount of dol­lars — now debate this spe­cific topic. It’s sad that these accu­sa­tions are being made with­out any actual sup­port — it’s all spec­u­la­tive. I don’t have any real proof that this is the case but none is being pre­sented by Mr. Peele. This is only fur­ther enhanced by Peele’s admis­sion that after speak­ing with Mr. Wunn he found out that the staff of the NFL office drafted up the topic areas. Addi­tion­ally, all of the top­ics that are being debated are not one-sided and are bal­anced with plenty of infor­ma­tion on both sides (even the Novem­ber topic, which, I believe, had infor­ma­tion given to us by the orga­ni­za­tion that was bal­anced in terms of both sides — com­ing from mem­ory so pos­si­bly not accu­rate). Finally, I trust that Mr. Wunn, Mr. Koshy (both for­mer coaches) and other NFL staff (some of which have been coaches and oth­ers deeply inter­ested in the ben­e­fit of the league and well-educated) can come up with good top­ics … and they have!

Mr. Peele wants topic selec­tion to be dri­ven by coaches. First, he offers no unique rea­son each area of debate must be treated the same. Sec­ond, I think that given the nature of PF Debate it’s great to have com­mu­nity involve­ment. If PF Debate is to be a debate that is pub­lic then why not have pub­lic input? Finally, like LD — any­one can sub­mit ideas for PF through the NFL website.

Bot­tom line from me — A) I trust the NFL Office and Mr. Wunn to direct the league accord­ingly. The tone of the posts, the accusatory aspects, etc. are really both­er­some and do not lend itself to a pro­duc­tive dis­cus­sions. B) Spon­sor­ships to the NFL are great and are bring­ing more resources to PF Debate and to a newer activ­ity — adding legit­i­macy and greater oppor­tu­ni­ties for all to debate and suc­ceed in PF. C) I will say this — Mr. Peele has some good ideas and they are worth talk­ing about — I’m sure the NFL is happy to talk about them. Increas­ing the knowl­edge of coaches about how top­ics are picked is a great ini­tia­tive. I think the intent of Mr. Peele was good but the exe­cu­tion, I guess, was not the best or most pro­duc­tive. I know Peele per­son­ally and con­sider him a friend on the debate cir­cuit — and will after all of this, as I’m sure he will too — that’s the great thing about debate — we can have these types of dis­cus­sions and make progress.

Admit­tedly this could be bet­ter orga­nized and edited — did this dur­ing my prep so I didn’t have as much time to put into it.

So was it ONLY the Feb­ru­ary, March,and April top­ics that the spon­sor gets to dictate?

As far as the open­ness of the email, as a teacher in a pub­lic school, all of my emails are open to an inquiry. Our topic selec­tion emails could prob­a­bly be trans­par­ent, though why any­one else would want to read them is beyond me.

The ques­tion is really as I put it before, though as usual, my word­ing is too long. It might make a great mock debate between coaches. I will try a new resolution!

Resolved: the NFL seel­ing topic areas in pub­lic forum debate threat­ens the aca­d­e­mic integrity of the activity.

Just curi­ous, would these orga­ni­za­tions not give money to the event if they were not allowed to choose the topic?
And as a for­mer LD’er I agree with the fact that I would scoff about any res­o­lu­tion that was “bought” so to speak but this com­ing from some­one who does not know every­thing there is to know about this par­tic­u­lar sce­nario. That being said, I can only see pos­i­tive things com­ing from a dis­cus­sion like this so kudos to JP for bring­ing it up!

Boom boom pow. Peele on a 9 – 4 decision.

He is absolutely right, the topic Decem­ber was one of the worst top­ics ever, sorry I mean February’s topic is the worst.

I have very lit­tle insight into the sit­u­a­tion, but as a cur­rent debater I wanted to post my own $0.02. I totally agree with what Michael T said above: I want top­ics to be selected that are going to be con­ducive to fair and edu­ca­tional debate, and that are “insti­gated for the ben­e­fit of myself and my peers.” How­ever, I’m not con­vinced that the top­ics we’ve been given vio­late these prin­ci­ples. I think every topic this year has been a rel­e­vant, current-event (or at least cur­rently per­ti­nent) issue that pro­vided for com­pet­i­tive debat­ing on both sides that forced me to learn about some­thing I didn’t oth­er­wise know a lot about but that was a valu­able edu­ca­tion. I think February’s topic is actu­ally the best yet of this year — I’m more excited for this than I’ve been about a topic for a while.

Since I think the top­ics have been fine, I don’t see any issue with there being money given to spon­sor them. If *bad* top­ics were being cho­sen by that money, then I’d be con­cerned, but I’ve not seen that hap­pen yet. I agree with poster stevens: we stu­dents as debaters will man­age with just about any­thing that’s thrown at us. It’s impor­tant to find some­thing bal­anced, but we always find a way. I, like every­one else, have top­ics that I thought were bet­ter than oth­ers (Octo­ber last year about Nuclear Energy was by far my favorite topic of all time, with Mil­i­tary Options against Iran com­ing in sec­ond, and March on NCLB was prob­a­bly my least favorite), but that doesn’t mean we didn’t have pretty good debates on all of them. I think Michael’s T’s cri­te­ria for “ben­e­fit­ting us” might actu­ally be being bet­ter met if there is money com­ing in that can be used to sup­port the activ­ity, so long as there is over­sight on spon­sors so that fair and bal­anced top­ics con­tin­ued to be pro­duced. Trans­parency is def­i­nitely a good thing, but since I’ve been given noth­ing but pretty good top­ics so far, I have no rea­son to worry that this will be any prob­lem other than start­ing down a pos­si­bly slip­pery slope.

I am in full agree­ment with Mr. Van­der above. I agree that trans­parency and other such issues are vital to good topic selec­tion. In the end, though, the top­ics have not yet been in any way biased or nar­row. Even February’s topic, which, granted, is a repeat of Jan­u­ary 2007, can be explored in new ways with new per­spec­tives and new evi­dence.
So far, it seems, the NFL com­mit­tee has reached the right bal­ance: bring­ing in new resources for PF while at the same time main­tain­ing integrity in topic selec­tion. It is impor­tant, how­ever, that the sit­u­a­tion be mon­i­tored so as to allow coaches the largest voice in the process.

The sur­rep­ti­tious nature of the NFL in choos­ing top­ics makes it dif­fi­cult for me to trust the verac­ity and integrity of topic mon­i­tor­ing. When orga­ni­za­tions spon­sor top­ics, it’s not exactly like the NFL web­site has bright ban­ners dis­clos­ing this infor­ma­tion. In fact, it seems as if the upper ech­e­lons of the NFL are act­ing like a cabal in keep­ing all of this infor­ma­tion secretive.

I feel like above all, trans­parency is the biggest issue here. I’m almost cer­tain that no one would com­plain about topic sell­ing if the NFL jus­ti­fied the choos­ing of each topic; how­ever brief it may be; the point would of course be to make the NFL accountable.

Fur­ther, in look­ing at the con­text of sell­ing top­ics, allow­ing the whole­sale of PF top­ics is a slip­pery slope. While now, only sev­eral are sold each year, who’s to say that the trend won’t increase with vorac­ity in each suc­ces­sive year? How do we know that topic sell­ing wouldn’t be incor­po­rated into other events as well? (On a tan­gen­tial note, why should we be de-legitimizing pub­lic forum with these spon­sor­ships when other events are spared?).

If the NFL is so con­cerned with mak­ing money, why not have com­mer­cial breaks in between each speech? Why not roll to the ads dur­ing prep time? I’m sure that with this kind of adver­tise­ment oppor­tu­nity, McD’s is going to want to get in on it too…

Clearly, Mr. Peele has a point in stat­ing that some checks need to exist over the Pow­ers That Be.

I believe in Jonathan Peele.

As far as I’m con­cerned, the issue with February’s topic is sim­pler than the debate that has tran­spired here in regards to the ethics of “bought” top­ics. My prob­lem? I DEBATED THIS TOPIC BEFORE. If the cor­po­rate spon­sors attempted to imple­ment a res­o­lu­tion about, say, the BRIC nations, would this have been allowed? Sure, that topic was debat­able — one of my favorites, even — but even the best top­ics don’t need to be debated twice. And although in this instance my part­ner and I have the advan­tage of a plethora of evi­dence from pre­vi­ously debat­ing a strik­ingly sim­i­lar res­o­lu­tion, is this really fair? If top­ics are going to be recy­cled, at least wait a full four years to avoid this kind of sit­u­a­tion, where long-time debaters have an even greater upper hand than usual. The spon­sor­ship of top­ics is one thing, but please, NFL, don’t repeat res­o­lu­tions over such a short span of time.

I am not so much dis­ap­pointed with the actual con­tent of the res­o­lu­tions as I am with their word­ings. Count­less teams, myself included, were wrong­fully dropped by inex­pe­ri­enced judges who though the pro on the Feb­ru­ary topic was actu­ally the con. I know for a fact that this prob­lem made it so that teams did not qual­ify to state tour­na­ments and did not advance at sev­eral of the big national tour­na­ments held this month. I am equally dis­ap­pointed with the use of the term “jus­ti­fied” in the March res­o­lu­tion as it allows for frame­works that place less empha­sis on hard evi­dence. All I am ask­ing for are con­sis­tent straight­for­ward res­o­lu­tions (ex: Jan­u­ary topic).