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This One Time At Band Camp...

by Christopher McIntosh
03/30/2006

Let's just say I'm more than a little disappointed.

LSU upset the preseason number two team in the country, Texas, after mauling the number one overall seed and the team everyone loves to root against, Duke, to earn a berth in the Final Four.

George Mason, an eleven seed that many believed shouldn't even have been in the tournament, fought their way into the final four by beating last year's champion UNC, a favorite pick to win it all UConn, as well as 2005 Final Four alum Michigan State and a strong Wichita State team.

Four elite eight games needed overtime including UConn's final three games.

There were last second sequences that defied explanation. UConn's consecutive three pointers to force Washington to OT. The "can you top this" conclusion to the Texas-West Virginia of three pointer matched by three pointer matched by game-winning three pointer. As the clock expired, of course.

UCLA pulled off the full court trap that every team uses for the late game steal that never works. This time it did. And it capped a seventeen point second half comeback.

The two clear candidates for player of the year were eliminated from the tournament and bawled like children. Adam Morrison even let the tears flow while there was time left in the game. Among the people I saw this with there was zero sympathy. Glee is more like it. Even the fair-minded were left wondering when this became an acceptable practice and why A) their teammates didn't surround them with the typical phalanx to keep cameras from catching their leader in the full throes of emotional collapse and B) where the hell was the obligatory towel?

Players have been crying at the end of basketball games from time immemorial, but they always did it with a towel over their head to cover up from the cameras, the crowd, and frankly, the other team.

If I had to pick a favorite for the final, it was far and away LSU-Duke.

Could be because they have two mammoth players who not only beat Duke but also put the Fear of God in them. Duke couldn't get a shot off at the end of the game. They couldn't get a rebound even when it was one on four. They could barely see straight they were so frightened by the dual prospect of taking it inside against that massive frontline and the possibility that they were about to lose their title hopes to an unknown and unheralded squad. To make matters worse, the only way to avoid the land war in Asia that was taking place under the basket - and going about as well as history would dictate - was to bomb from the outside. Unfortunately, their best aerial asset was MIA.

Could also be because it was the game that I got to see the most of.

I saw the final three minutes.

Twelve games of basketball, a third of which went to overtime, one of which involved the lowest seeded team to reach the final four in history - a school I incidentally have received paychecks from in the recent past (George Mason University) and final sequences that provided enough material alone for the "One Shining Moment" montage.

Cumulative total minutes of basketball watched this weekend: Fifteen.

One quarter of an hour. A coffee break. One, possibly, two commercial breaks of the Family Guy. The amount of time it takes for me to walk from my house to my office. In fifteen minutes I can pay my bills, read an article by Jay Mariotti, and still have enough time to lament the fact that he gets paid to write the vitriolic nonsense he does.

Five hundred minutes of ball. I got maybe three percent. To make it even worse, my average of two and a half Sportscenters a day was sliced almost to zero. So I didn't even get to see the breakdowns.

So why am I bitter you ask? More to the point, why didn't I watch the games this weekend?

And what the hell does this have to do with band camp?

I was coaching at the National Debate Tournament in Evanston, Illinois, held at that Big Ten* powerhouse Northwestern University.

*ESPN.com finally made the necessary Spinaltap joke - dropping the choice headline upon GMU's upset of Connecticut - "This One Goes To Eleven." Why the Big Ten, now that they have eleven teams, haven't made this their full time slogan I have no idea.

I, in point of fact, teach regularly at a four-week Institute for high school debate in Hanover, New Hampshire, and have for the past ten Summers.

It says Institute on the letterhead. It says Institute on the stationary. It says Institute on the T-shirt and my CV. But let's call a spade a spade.

It's debate camp. Which is band camp, only with arguments.

I won't bother attempting to explain the intricacies of the activity, but suffice it to say whatever preconceptions about debate teams you already possess are inaccurate. If you've been reading the press on Jerry Fallwell's pet project, the Liberty University debate team, you're not even in the same ballpark. If you're thinking about Julia Roberts and her ability in Pretty Woman to tie Full Windsor knots stemming from her "intimacy" with the high school debate team, you're also nowhere close.

Here are the basics. A team consists of two debaters. 78 teams qualify for the National Tournament. Each university can qualify up to three teams. The topic is set in advance, but each team has free rein to create any argument they can successfully articulate as relevant to the issues at hand. A central topic exists - this year's involved whether or not the US should use economic pressure to get China to alter their foreign policy in human rights, trade, nuclear weapons, etc—but each team has an equal number of debates where they defend the resolution and negate it.

Here's the catch. The topic is deliberately designed in a broad manner so that teams have wide latitude to pick a particular policy that falls within the bounds of the resolution and defend it. One round you could argue that the US should boycott all Chinese made goods until they cease their territorial occupation of Tibet. The next you could be required to articulate reasons why it would be a bad idea for the US to threaten an across the board tariff to get China to revalue their currency. Very nerdy stuff.

If it sounds esoteric, you're right, but that's not quite it. Dragon-con is esoteric. This ain't some geeky community role playing game. Most of the people have been doing this since they were in junior high school. For seniors at this tournament, this is their last chance at winning a national championship.

As you might imagine, there is no professional debate tour, unless you count the legal profession, which is where debaters go to earn money to leave the nest. Laurence Tribe, Sam Nunn, Ralph Reed, and numerous presidents, are ex-debaters. And if you work at a high-end law firm, odds are pretty good that someone on your floor was a serious debater at some point during their high school or college career.

This is serious stuff. Two separate documentarians were covering the tournament, one for CSTV and one independent film company who's hoping to pull off their own version of Spellbound. (Won't happen. Video, strangely enough, is precisely the worst medium for capturing the appeal of the activity. But any press is good press.)

Participants spend years doing this business. For each affirmative policy a team chooses to advocate, professors in the know say that it requires the research sufficient to earn a Master's thesis. Many teams develop and argue three or four of these cases a year.

This is no simple debate club. Money talks. Quite a few university debate teams have annual budgets that run into six digits. To even be competitive and qualify for the national tournament requires flying around the country to tournaments in North Carolina, Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago, among others. It ain't cheap. And universities willingly cough up the cash for transportation, fees, and scholarships. There are even scholarships set aside for promising graduate students whose only requirement is to coach debate. Typically, there are 10-20 people on a debate team—coaches included. You do the math. That's a pretty large investment per-capita for just a "club."

One team came to the National Tournament with 12 extra people to do research, write arguments, and generally help out. And that's not including the participants or the rest of the team at home who are gathered in the office awaiting phone calls for assignments they can scan in and email in response to new arguments developed at the tournament.

So this is it. No amateur leagues or pickup debates, as it were. If you're a senior, this is it. Eight years of work. One tournament. One last chance. One last gasp. One last shot at achieving something very, very few people in life ever get to claim.

National champion.

Cue the Eminem.

In the basketball tournament, no matter how small the school you attend, you've got some shot at professional basketball somewhere around the globe. At the very least, there are leagues where you can still play for the love of the game, even if you end up an accountant or a sales manager for John Deere. That loss to Duke in the first round doesn't mean that you'll never again get the chance to feel the joy of hitting a deep three with a man in your face or throwing the no-look bounce pass through three guys to your buddy making the same back cut he used to make when y'all were at Winthrop two years ago.

Where I was, it was one and done. You debate. You wait for a decision. And that's it.

If the panel of judges votes against you, you're out. Tournament over. Career over. Shot at the title, over.

So I had that going for me, which is nice.

My team experienced what can only be described as an unmitigated disaster. We're still in shock. They received one of the at large bids reserved for the top 16 teams in the country. Somehow we didn't even make it out of the preliminaries. We caught a run of bad luck like I've never seen, much less been a party to, in my entire fifteen years associated with the activity. It was roughly akin to Michelle Kwan not making it out of the compulsories or Carl Lewis losing a preliminary heat in the 100 meters and never getting within three heats of the medal round.

More appropriately, it was like watching a dark horse pick for the final four go down in the 2-15 first round matchup.

By 20.

Don't get me wrong. I'm proud of my boys. They were prepared. They played well. They did everything they could. It just wasn't their day and unfortunately, the gods picked the worst weekend possible to make the book of Revelation reality for them.

On the plus side, the ensuing shock that characterized the following thirty six hours resulted in some outrageous stories.

And by "shock" I of course mean liberal amounts of whiskey.

Unfortunately, most of them are unprintable.

But not all. Names have been left out to protect the innocent.

I found out the following:

æ A fellow participant went away for St. Patrick's Day to a bar with a painting they found appealing. So in true drunken brilliance, they successfully distracted the bartender while a female member of the group ripped the painting from where it had been nailed to the wall. They made their escape to another bar and shoved the painting under the table. Fifteen minutes later, six large men show up with Mag-lites and distinctly hostile facial expressions. It soon became apparent that they were searching for the aforementioned painting. Which they found. At which point words were exchanged and the smallest of the group (isn't that always the way it goes?) decided to escalate the altercation by hitting one of the large, angry men in the mouth. To which the large, angry man responded (reasonably) with a similar punch of his own. But he had about 75 pounds, inches, and a Mag-lite in his fist. Needless to say this was the modern equivalent of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and thus began this war to end all wars. Thankfully defensive measures were taken so that no one was hurt or arrested. That last part remains unclear, but suffice it to say, no one is complaining.

Or dead.

æ Band Camp, at least according to the movie, had some serious, freaky sexcapades. I cannot speak for the sexual habits of anyone other than myself at this event (nonexistent) but as far as vice goes, I would estimate that the consumption of alcohol in Evanston, Illinois spiked roughly three hundred percent for the time we were there. The contract for the tournament hotel included a rider that mandated the bars in the hotel remain open as late as legally possible each and every night. One person, who will remain nameless, appeared at the end of tournament banquet after having a number of shots that should only be used in reference to the age of R. Kelly's girlfriends, proceeded to realize his mistake and ceased drinking. I take that back. He switched to coffee. I saw him drink no less than (cue the principal in Ferris Bueller's voice) nine cups of coffee in about forty-five minutes. When he went up to get his award, he stumbled through the banquet tables from the back up to the riser like a Plinko chip from the Price is Right. Of course, he wasn't as bad off as his partner, who at one point in the evening attempted to climb over the bar to strangle the bartender who had decided to not continue serving him. Or should I say, illegally serving him. Good times.

æ My ability to prognosticate sporting events is somewhere south of my ability to antagonize campus security guards (especially those on campuses I'm not currently a student at) and only a little north of my ability to earn a living without prostituting myself or becoming... ahem... involved in independent pharmaceutical sales. Let's just say I made straight picks (meaning without a spread, not that they needed the Queer Eye treatment) and got five out of eight. One more than a coin-flip. The lesson is clear. Do not, under any circumstances, bet on sports. Oh yeah, and that thing about the SEC being over-rated.. Yeah, my bad.

Needless to say, if for some reason you encounter me on Saturday or Monday night, do not under any circumstances tamper with my ability to watch these games.

You don't want to make a band geek angry.

We've got nothing to lose.

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