The final round of the 2010 Tournament of Champions pitted Ellis Allen and Daniel Taylor of the Westminster Schools in Atlanta against Rishee Batra and Alex Miles of the St. Mark’s School of Texas in Dallas. The affirmative from Westminster prevailed on a 2-1 decision to win this year’s title, the school’s second consecutive championship and the third in school history.

In the tradition of the National Debate Tournament, The 3NR is proud to provide the judge’s ballots from this year’s final round of the TOC—they are available below the fold.

Michael Greenstein and James Herndon votes affirmative; Brett Bricker voted negative.

Brett Bricker—Assistant Coach at Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart and the University of Kansas; 2009 National Debate Tournament Champion

Congratulations to both teams. This was an extremely successful tournament for all four of you and a very close round. Both squads are representative of what I love about debate – great coaches, hard working students and classy people.

My one criticism of this debate is that: for a debate about impact turns, this debate lacked terminal impact analysis. It was difficult to decide given the 2ar framing whether or not extremely significant conflict or environmental decline that did not rise to the level of existential threat still fit within the affirmative’s try or die calculus. While both teams are in a race to warming, there still needs to be a discussion of whether time frame or probability should enter into my calculus at all.

For those of you that don’t want to read the long-winded explanation below, this is the short of it. I concluded that global environmental problems were high and increasing because of much newer, more qualified and well warranted evidence read by the negative which seemed to disprove the thesis that improvements in environmental technology had a chance to remedy all environmental harms. While I am not happy that the status quo will certainly end in war, poverty, strife and a relatively significant decrease in population I think it is the only way to avert what both teams agree the judge should evaluate first – the existential risk to humanity.

This is the long of it. We’ll talk about the most important issues in the order I looked at them.

First is global impact uniqueness. The neg is controlling that environmental decline is happening globally now and has much more qualified and recent evidence on a plethora of global harms like fisheries, deforestation, oceanic biodiversity, global warming and pollution. The only piece of aff uniqueness ev is three years old, relatively unqualified, speaks only to US biodiversity, and, while it is good about specific types of environmental problems that are decreasing now (i.e. mercury pollution), it doesn’t speak to overall global trends. I am less persuaded by the negative’s societal collapse inevitable arguments (which I viewed as separate from environmental collapse), given that I think that most of the reason why that collapse is inevitable is tied to population growth, which the 1AR concession of the population growth take-out seems to remedy effectively. As an aside, I think that this concession could have been applied in many other parts of the impact debate, but that was not effectively utilized in either the 1AR or the 2AR. A question the affirmative could certainly win, but did not in this debate, is that innovation solves environmental harms in an exponential fashion – so even if innovation is increasing and environmental decline is increasing, there is a chance that new innovation will be so quick it will reverse that trend.

The second issue is, can technology remedy this collapse or is the only solution a collapse of the economy? Don’t get me wrong – technology is good and maybe even great for the environment, but it’s insufficient. The way that I evaluated uniqueness makes it hard for me to conclude that technological progress of the status quo is successfully remedying harms of the environment and the negative has relatively good evidence that indicts the belief that things will always just get better the more that we progress. There are four negative arguments that I weigh against a relatively small likelihood that technology could advance in such a miraculous way that it could remedy the extinction scenarios that are likely to come quickly. The first is a decrease in consumption. Econ decline forces whether through will or lack of resources a significant decline in individual consumption of natural resources, which I conclude accesses a root cause to many of the environmental problems cited in Speth, etc., while innovation and regulation act more as band-aid solution to the problems of excessive resource consumption. The second negative link that outweighed innovation was the 2NR’s characterization on the transitions debate that even if there was a significant population die off that would just make the world more sustainable. I mentioned this after the debate, but the 2ar needs some reaction to remedy this concern. The third issue is the agricultural mono-cropping argument at the end of the 2NR. It’s extremely difficult to conceptualize how innovation can deal with this, given that innovation is the reason why monoculture is increasing now as per 2nc evidence. Along with that, this is one of the few arguments that is completely dropped or at least is very difficult to trace what argument in the rebuttals Westminster thinks answers this sufficiently. The fourth link – and probably what I conclude as a sort of tie-breaker – is the 2AR’s mishandling of the argument that globalization causes rollback of environmental regulations, which link turns the likelihood of innovation in a green economy. The neg’s evidence indicates that MNC’s in globalized world can successfully pressure governments to rollback regulations by threatening to relocate to pollution havens. This argument is explicitly answered in a few of the aff’s cards, but I could not trace in either of the rebuttals an explanation of the evidence or a reaction to this argument. So even if innovation proper might help the environmental, economic growth in an industrialized world makes that much less likely. I disagreed with the aff’s, and I guess the other judge’s, characterization that “past the threshold” means only innovation can solve. I read the aff’s evidence to be making the argument that with the current consumption patterns and population size it’s difficult if not impossible to successfully transition to a world of simple and local communities. However, this begs the question of the population die-off and changing consumption patterns, arguments that were talked about above.

The third issue I looked at was transitions. If the aff’s characterization of their transition ev was correct – that human greed made a growth mindset biological – then I think that the aff wins simply because the restart of growth would immediately after collapse, and that would be too soon to have any positive impact from the collapse. However, the aff’s transition evidence only speaks to eco-radical movements of the status quo that tried to sustain current consumption patterns and population size while doing things like living in forests or eco-communities. This is where the lack of a reaction to the 2NR Malthus DA makes the aff’s transitions arguments much less persuasive. While I don’t think that there is a high likelihood of a widespread of an ideological change in consumption patterns, nor do I think the neg’s evidence is very good or qualified, there are two arguments that make me still err negative. The first is the 2NR’s resources vs. will distinction that if the aff is correct that there still will be a will to grow there will simply not be enough resources to restart industrial society. The second is that the small chance, probably less than 10% that there is a widespread ideological change is much more likely to remedy global environmental harm than innovation.

I will conclude with some possible strategic choices for the aff that would have probably changed my decision.

a) US-Russia conflict – I was under the impression that the 1nr incorrectly kicked out of this DA, and the 2nr didn’t help the cause with a 2 second extension of what I think is a different argument than the 1nr made. Both the 1ar and the 2ar are okay on “war hurts environment” there aren’t really scenarios for conflict explained in the 2ar. US-Russia definitely leads to extinction, it’s fast, and certainly turns warming/environment.

b) Try-or-die – My second suggestion for the aff is a slight change in the “try or die” framing of the 1AR. Instead of arguing that only extinction threats should be preferred, there needs to be a distinction between small problems, like poverty, and still really large, but nonexistential threats, like nuclear war between two super powers. Instead of framing try or die as all of humanity will die, therefore we should try, maybe frame as maybe the judges will die and therefore should try. To be honest, this might be what the 2AR is attempting to explain when arguing that if transitions hurt the environment try to die is no longer the correct calculus, but I certainly did not understand it as that.

c) Uniqueness – the aff should have started the environment uniqueness debate earlier with more evidence and thicker analysis. While the debate is really an impact turn debate, it turns into a link turn debate of which strategy is better for the environment. It is just difficult to win absent innovation, globalization and environmental regulation are succeeding in the status quo.

Congrats to both teams, can’t wait to get another year (maybe 5 or 6) of getting to judge you all.

Michael Greenstein—Director of Debate at Glenbrook North High School

Congratulations to everyone! Seriously. In a year of many unbelievably talented seniors the fact that the finals was between three juniors and a sophomore really speaks to all your talent. Next year should prove to be filled with many exciting and excellent debates.

I voted Affirmative. I thought voting affirmative was the only hope to solve extinction mostly because current and/or future technology could solve warming and other environmental harms and that a transition away from growth would result in environmental destruction. Even if some pretty devastating wars and/or death might occur as a result of voting affirmative there was a substantially higher risk the world would end if I voted neg.

Specific Rationale for Decision:

Before I explain how I decided various issues, I will say that when I judge debates, the way something was debated by the people in the round plays a much larger role in my decision than evidence does. This is not to say I don’t read evidence or use it to make my decision (after this debate I read many cards); I just feel that it is the onus of the debaters to compare and evaluate evidence for me. I am most likely to read evidence and make my own determinations about it if there are two completing claims that are unresolved by the debaters on an issue where evidence is available to help me resolve the issue.

Collapse Inevitable Diminishing Returns/Tech can or cannot solve:

I thought debate on this issue was extremely close (close enough that the debaters did not resolve it for me), but that the affirmative’s evidence was better in that it was more warranted, specific/concrete, and less theoretical. They read about four or five cards on these issues, but the most important pieces of evidence were the Affirmative’s long Norberg card and two pieces of Barker evidence.

The Norberg card answered almost every specific claim made by all the negative’s cards. It indicated that countries that do not grow are too preoccupied to do things to protect the environment. It cited a study of 50 countries and determined that technology was directly responsible for safeguarding forests, fish, soil, and other resources in general. The Barker evidence indicated that growth at a rate of 2% per year would allow for the development of future technology that would be able to maintain the environment.

The negative read a bunch of evidence about growth’s relationship to the environment, if growth was worth pursuing, and whether or not technology could alleviate environmental concerns. This included multiple pieces of evidence from Speth, a Barlow card, a MacKenzie card, a Kotke card (don’t know how to do an umlaut on the computer), a Henberg card, a Cristol card, a Trainer card, and a Bairy card. My general criticism of the negative’s evidence is that it was overly theoretical. The Speth evidence was the most specific, but again the Affirmative’s Norberg evidence disputed all its claims pretty handily. The MacKenzie evidence was all about Trainer which was problematic because the affirmative kept indicting him and the negative never responded to those indictments (this obviously also helped answer the Trainer evidence as well). The Cristol evidence indicting futurism was interesting, though highly theoretical and underutilized by the negative. I thought the two best negative cards were the Barlow card and the Kotke card.

The Kotke evidence was about a 1970s MIT simulation that projected the earth’s survivability based on the amount of resources on Earth. The evidence indicated the study group tried a simulation where the computer model assumed infinite resources were available on Earth and it still didn’t work out for the world. My major problem with the way this evidence was debated is that the affirmative made claims and had evidence about the potential for future technologies and innovations that could overcome resource disparities or other environmental problems. This coupled with the multiple cards (Geddies, Anerson, and others I have already mentioned) about specific technologies that have worked in the past and will continue to work seem to disprove the computer model (as an aside it would have really helped if the affirmative made arguments about the amount of new technology produced between 1970 and 2010 none of which the computer model could have assumed would exist etc.).

The Barlow evidence indicated production caused environmental problems and would eventually lead to a rollback of protections because of the value of growth. I had two problems with the way the negative debated this evidence. First, the way it was extended in the 2nr made it seem like an afterthought. It was not highlighted as especially important or a focus, it was just another argument like all others. Second, and way more importantly, it was not impacted well. After the debate I was left to wonder to what degree the government would rollback environmental protections. There was also no discussion about how the rollback of environmental protections would interact with future technologies’ ability to solve environmental problems. Theoretically (and this is not what I decided in this debate, but it helps to explain why this argument is not ultimately very relevant especially because of the lack of impact explanation), it is possible that a society would lose all environmental protections, but the technology and innovation of that society would be so good that environmental protections were not needed to maintain the environment. Anyway, the negative certainly won rollback might occur, but to what degree remained unclear and it was also unclear why that meant future technology could not overcome any deficit from environmental rollback. (Here I just need to encourage everyone reading this to ask D. Heidt to sing his Grammy-winning rollback song…it exists don’t let him tell you it doesn’t)

As an aside (and again did not enter into my decision), if the affirmative is able to win that technology can prevent environmental harm/create conditions under which resource scarcity is not a problem, then it seems unlikely environmental protections would be rolled back in the name of further growth.

Transition:

I thought the affirmative clearly won that a transition away from growth would be bad – very likely unsurvivable. On this issue, the negative read 3 Lewis cards and the affirmative read 1 Lewis card and a Barnhizer card. Neither side’s evidence was that much better than the other side’s, but the way it debated massively favored the affirmative. The affirmative’s claim was not the typical transition bad argument. Normally in these debates the affirmative says there will be wars in the transition. This is what the Barnhizer card said (though not really discussed in the 2ar). The affirmative’s Lewis card made the argument that the environment would be destroyed in the transition. The negative really never answered this argument during the debate. The negative debated this as if it was an argument about wars in the transition claiming “we know millions of people will die during wars – our cards assume that.” This misstep was important because the environment impact was an extinction level impact.

These two issues were a giant factor in my decision because both sides agreed that the “uniqueness” was the key to the entire debate. If collapse was inevitable in a world of growth it would be try or die for the negative whereas if the transition failed and there was hope for current or future technology to solve problems it would be try or die for the affirmative. In this case I concluded the transition away from growth would not be survivable so if there was a risk that growth could save the environment via current or future technology (and there was) I would vote affirmative.

Interestingly, one of the negative’s Lewis cards – the one that said “millions would die” in the transition said in small font – the transition would be survivable only if global nuclear war did not occur in the transition. I feel like the affirmative should have gone for their normal transition causes war argument and exploit this part of the evidence. I also think the negative might have been able to use this part of the evidence to answer the affirmative’s environment claim. Although not clear at all from a reading of the evidence, maybe it is possible that Lewis assumes the reason why global nuclear war would not be survivable is because it would destroy the environment. If this is the case, then maybe defeating claim that the transition doesn’t cause global nuclear war also defeats the claim that the transition does not harm the environment…

Warming:

Warming was the most important specific impact the negative advanced in my mind (environment in general was also important and extinction level as well) because it was the only specific impact in the debate that was clearly explained as an extinction level impact. The negative’s Sigel evidence made the claim the only way to solve warming was to stop growth or produce a nuclear power plant every day. The affirmative made the argument and had evidence that carbon sequestration technologies were sufficient to solve warming (Anderson evidence). Absent a negative indictment of carbon sequestration’s ability to solve warming I thought warming would not occur in the world of the affirmative.

Some stuff before the rest:

After evaluating the things already discussed, it seemed very likely I would vote affirmative. At this time in my decision-making process I was confident a transition away from growth would cause extinction because of environmental destruction and that maintaining growth would be sustainable and not cause extinction. I will say that this debate was very winnable for both sides.

Again, when I make my decision I largely do it based on what debaters tell me is important. In this debate the two most important issues according to both teams were the uniqueness and global warming, so that controlled my decision-making process. Had the negative reprioritized the 2nr to focus on the importance of war or agriculture etc. it may have resulted in a different decision. However, because the 2nr did not, the rest of the issues in the debate did not matter very much in my decision. Below is how I evaluated some others issues in the debate.

War/Kwaves/Trade:

The negative won some risk voting affirmative would cause war because the affirmative did not have any evidence to answer Kwaves directly. However, the affirmative did advance the claim that in a world of robust trade war would not occur so I thought the risk was medium to low at best. The negative made the claim that asymmetric trade was not effective, but I thought the affirmative’s argument that the asymmetric trade argument is empirically denied and that the plan would solve these trade asymmetries dealt with the negative’s argument effectively.

Russia:

There were arguments about Russia on both sides – the negative said they accessed this through their other war arguments and the affirmative made an argument about oil. This did not enter into my decision very much because (1) neither side made this argument with enough time to explain it so I could not fully understand the argument, (2) neither side really addressed the other team’s internal link, (3) and most importantly no one impacted this war in extinction, so even if the negative won it in its totality I would have still voted affirmative for reasons already explained.

One last issue (Agriculture):

There were some cards on both sides in this debate about growth’s effects on agriculture. The reason this was ultimately not very important in my decision was because the negative got to it with so little time. It was very unclear to me as to whether a complete argument was made when the timer beeped. If the negative wanted this to be an issue more relevant to my decision more explanation of the argument was needed. The reason is because it was unclear to me why growth destroys agriculture. If the warrant was because it hurt the land needed for food, then the affirmative answered that with their explanation of the Norberg evidence (technology solves forests, land, soil, etc.). Again, because I did not understand what the negative’s full argument was, I have no idea whether or not growth would hurt or help agriculture.

Other general comments about the debate:

Affirmative –

1. I think reading some non-growth related un-impact-turnable add-ons would have really helped you. If you read a few of these in the 2ac and then go for the one they are least successful answering in the 1ar it gives you something external to the dedevelopment debate that would make it much easier to win.

2. I would have gone for your turn on the Politics DA. Without reading the evidence, I believe the 1nr kicked out of politics incorrectly. The 1nr made two arguments. He said that financial reform would inevitably decrease Obama’s capital and the START is key to US/Russian relations. Since the negative did not extend an issue specific uniqueness argument, I believe it is possible for you to win that there is a risk the plan would increase Obama’s capital enough to get START passed despite the amount he would lose from pushing financial reform. If the impact calculus was done differently preventing a US/Russian war is never a bad thing.

Negative –

1. My first comment is about the style of the 2nr. The whole speech was “run and gun” very much like a 1ar. While this can be very effective when there are many arguments and things to resolve I think you need a moment where you put it all together. I thought the closest you came to this was on the importance of the uniqueness debate (collapse inevitable/diminishing returns) and the other was that warming causes extinction. I think you needed to re-focus and have a more complete moment alerting the judges about what is truly important.

2. The 1ar read a long card. I would guess it took at least 40 seconds maybe closer to a minute of time. When the 1ar is willing to do that you have to assume that evidence is very important – it was. In the 2nr you need to spend more time answering this evidence directly and clearly.

3. Although some would disagree with me, I think you needed something else in the 1nc to give the block more options and perhaps something else in the block as well. The way you structured the 1nc meant your block had to be on one issue because you allowed the 2ac to have a bunch of time to answer your arguments since there were few of them. It is clear you intended to extend feminism in this debate, but again because your 1nc was so small, it made it too hard to extend feminism because the 2ac was able to answer the case thoroughly forcing you to spend more time on the case in the 2nc. I think having something else unrelated to your end-game strategy in the block is so important because it means you do not have to answer the entire 1ar. When you have to do that, it gives the affirmative a greater ability to focus a bunch of time in the 2ar explaining and winning the key issues which is basically what happened in this debate.

Thanks again for a great debate; I’m honored both sides gave me the privilege of judging it. Good luck next year… though realize Pappas will own you all; smiley face.

James Herndon—Senior Program Associate and Debate Coach at Emory University

I voted affirmative.

I thought that the aff was ahead on the technology solves for the environment debate as well as the transition debate. Those two things, combined with the uncontested magnitude of environment impacts resulted in me being convinced it was a clean decision for the aff.

The Environment Debate

The neg has excellent evidence that the environment is screwed in the status quo. The two pieces of Barry evidence – the 08 and 10 cards both are explicit that the environment has reached a point where a major catastrophe is underway. These, plus the specifics outlined in the 3 pieces of Speth evidence are enough to easily conclude that the environment is screwed and the impact is short-term. The aff reads evidence by PRI, Geddes, and Anderson that all say the environment is improving. However, the neg evidence is far better and more warranted [also much newer which is something the neg should have harped on]. The two cards extended by the aff that I think are useful for the discussion of how I voted are the Norberg & Anderson cards. Norberg is an indict of the aff’s “industrialization and companies mean the environment will inevitably be screwed.” This card is extended well by the 2ar and is a good percentage of the entire 1ar. While it doesn’t contest that the environment is screwed it does contest the argument that growth is necessarily the cause. I finished evaluating the environment debate with the conclusion that the environment is screwed up but not convinced that the growth mindset makes it inevitable. I think the debate then is ultimately about which is a better solution to the environment – a transition away from growth OR improved technology.

The War debate

The 2nr spent a bit of time on the K-wave theory portion of the debate. The argument that wars are more deadly and bloody in a world of growth. I thought that the cards for this were actually quite good and uncontested by the aff. In terms of chronology, I evaluated this portion of the debate next. I thought that the negative won that growth makes wars “worse.” I looked for impact calculus here and the best I got was a quick “we control magnitude that’s Mager & probability that’s Klare.” Both of those cards are discussions of wars being more violent and deadly in a world of growth. However, I don’t think there is ever really a terminal impact to this portion of the debate extended. The neg wins that growth will make wars more deadly when they do happen – but no specific impact that I can compare to environmental problems.

Of course, the “resource conflicts don’t cause wars” concession was damning to this part of the debate being offense for the negative.

SIDEBAR – the war debate was where I thought the 2nr should have spent his time doing impact calculus. A warranted explanation of why war would cause extinction/nuke war/something in the short term that outweighs the environment would have won the debate for the negative. Instead, I think that the focus on the environment means that the risk of that being strongly aff means I have to vote aff here. Usually in de-dev debates the neg is going for the environment and the aff does the war outweighs impact calculus – that wasn’t the case here and so possibly a commitment to past practices may have cost the 2nr the debate.

The Transition debate –

Not the strongest part of the debate for the neg – the main arguments fleshed out by the 2nr were in other parts of the debate. The cards support the arguments that after a collapse communities would be forced to improve their local environments, would invest in less evasive technologies, and there is a risk of a new consciousness. The best part of the debate was the argument that there would not be resources to restart society once it collapsed.

The card and argument that won this debate for the aff was the Lewis & Barnhizer cards. These were much more warranted that it is impossible given the size and current mindset of civilization to abandon the growth society, that a “hunter-gatherer” society is no longer physically or psychologically possible. The card specifically indicts the psychological shift that has taken place in western societies. The Harbinzger piece of evidence indicts that form of society as being bad for the environment saying that groups will make bad decisions for their environment because they have no understanding of the surrounding groups.

Overall the aff did a better job of debating this part of the debate as well. The 1ar/2ar indicts of the author’s assumptions, the reference to evidence that was both more warranted and specific to the question of what would happen as a form of a transition were overwhelmingly better. Thus I concluded that the environment would not improve at all as a result of an economic collapse.

That alone was enough to warrant an aff ballot since the neg doesn’t access anything other than the K-Wave war impact stuff at this point.

Tech debate –

This was probably a tie breaker for me. After reading the evidence and going over the flow I thought the aff won that technology offered a superior option to solving the environment than a “transition” would in the long run. Here were the neg’s major arguments for tech being insufficient and the aff responses –

A. “demand would be so high tech won’t sole for it.” I thought this Trainer piece of evidence was okay at best. It was very rhetorically powerful but lacked a warrant for why that would be true. The Heaberlin card extended by the aff made the argument that the population had already reached the levels where meeting the needs of the population wasn’t possible without advancement in technologies. This, and the 2ar spin, that they control the uniqueness on the needs of tech were quite good. Plus, the Norberg card’s explicit indict of those that don’

B. “high standards of living not possible.” – Lewis 2k. This was the better of the neg’s pieces of evidence. Again though, the 2nd piece of Heaberlin card was far more warranted and lengthy. I wish there had been more highlighted in the Lewis evidence. The 2ar spent a good bit of time talking about how the “growth mindset” was distinct from the standards of living that the neg evidence was indicting. This, combined with a good discussion of the needs for technology to produce the food needed to sustain populations.

C. “futurists are hacks” the Cristol card. I didn’t think this piece of evidence got the negative anywhere. It just was a general indict of people who are in the field of “futurist predictions.” Not necessarily an indict of technology nor did it speak to the role technology is currently playing.

D. “we would need 1 new nuke power plant a day to solve warming.” This was a powerful rhetorical tool of the 2nr – a sort of try or die scenario. [this more than anything was where the question of how useful the “transition” would be comes into question as in if the neg had won the transition would have eliminated warming or general environmental based problems they would have won this debate BUT considering that the quality of that debate was decisively aff for me – this was easy]. The Norberg card won this debate for the aff. Technology can find resources to replace older ones, we have centuries of experience telling us this is true, and it says industrialization is wrong because companies are smart enough to adapt to make sure they avoid environmental problems.

A Few additional notes on this debate –

A. I find my decision to be evidence heavy. I hate those decisions. But, I think it is necessary in this debate because both teams did a great job of handling all parts of the debate. It was closer to a high quality college round than previous high quality high school rounds I had judged. It was difficult for even Michael Greenstein to find an easy way to make a decision. In those debates, quality evidence is important.

B. I believe the aff gave a great example of why having quality evidence is more important than quantity of evidence. On several questions where I defaulted aff [and other 2 judges did as well] were areas where the neg had several cards that were unfortunately over-highlighted, but the aff had one really long high quality card. In the 1ar when ellis took the time to read a very long card [although I think Daniel made him finish it instead of marking it so kudos to him] it gave me a long warranted piece of evidence to read on the tech debate versus several shorter cards. Quality will always win out.

C. I think the strategy for the negative needed to be re-tooled. I understand committing oneself to the de-dev debate early has value. However, the main problem was that the 1nc was a K shell, a politics disad, and about 17 case arguments. The 2ac exploited this to stay way ahead on the number of arguments they were able to make on de-dev. If instead the 1nc had added in a topicality shell and a counterplan to the debate they could have done so in 1 minute or less. That would mean 2 less case cards. However, the 2ac would have had to cover two more very legitimate positions. The negative could have given the EXACT SAME BLOCK and had substantially less to handle. The block was great – but the 1nc should have been bigger – making the relevant parts of the 2ac smaller and making the debate easier in the end. St. Marks is obviously well coached because this style of block is FAR more successful than the sillier obsessed extend everything block. But, putting pressure on the 2ac is a part of the game too.