This post is a continuation of our conversation with Danielle. If you haven’t already, read the previous parts here:

Reader Question: Tiny Affirmatives

Why is it so Hard to Run Disadvantages Against Tiny Affirmatives?

How to Run Huge DAs Against Tiny Affirmatives

Preface: This article discusses the competitive environment in NCFCA and Stoa. These are diverse national leagues, so you may experience something different at your local tournament. You should still be aware of the broad historical and national trends to help you compete at the highest level. If you’re not a homeschooler, you can still learn a lot about topicality from this article.

Almost two decades ago, topicality experienced a golden age among homeschool debaters. It was run in most rounds, often with high-level argumentation like structured sub-points and reasons to prefer. The 1N typically spent the first 1-3 minutes running a T press, which was then at least mentioned in every following speech. In some parts of the country, up to a third of negative ballots mentioned topicality as a reason for decision.

That’s the mark of an effective argument class.

Topicality being so powerful forced affirmatives to run cases that were clearly topical so they could defend against incoming attacks. This was good because it resulted in aggressive, exciting affirmative cases with lots of personality. Debates were lively and issues-focused, even at the national tournament. 

But the golden age couldn’t last.

Since topicality was so effective, it was run too often. Many 1Ns got into the habit of running topicality no matter what. They reasoned: topicality had a decent chance of winning, and it only cost a few minutes, so why not run it? Cases that were obviously topical had to defend against topicality in round after round, wasting valuable time and distracting from the fun stuff. 

Poorly-trained teams with a tenuous grasp of topicality spammed the argument as well, imitating their predecessors from the golden age. Tournament by tournament, topicality’s reputation soured. It was no longer a critical check to force affirmatives to honor the resolution and bring something worth debating into the room. Instead, it was an obligatory time-suck.

Tedious. Semantic. Repetitive. 

The pendulum swung in the other direction. Judges got sick of seeing the same generic arguments round after round; they developed a prejudice against it. Some even went so far as to announce before the round that they refused to rule on topicality. Clever debaters realized that they needed to adapt, and topicality faded from the meta. But our story doesn’t stop there.

In the next article, we’ll tell you what happened next.