By Colin West & Logan Scisco
EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to some topic areas being reused on a yearly basis by the National Forensic League, some of Colin’s analysis that appeared on Extemp Central’s website last year was pieced into this topic area analysis.
As was done for the Catholic Forensic League (CFL) national tournament, Extemp Central provides you with this topic area analysis for the United States extemp portion of next week’s NFL national tournament in Birmingham, Alabama. While it appears this year that there will be a stronger overall pool of talent in International extemp, conforming to the normal pattern of the last decade that does not mean that International extemp is the harder tournament to navigate.
When people ask me which area of extemp I think is harder to win at NFL, I always answer United States extemp. My decision could be biased, as I did United States extemp all four years (although I regret never dabbling in International extemp), but I do believe that United States extemp has more variables tied into achieving a high level of performance than International extemp for two reasons.
First, it is very difficult to write thirteen rounds of questions about the United States. Yes, we are a great country and many of the things that take place here establish policy that significantly alters the globe. However, trying to come up with nearly thirty questions per round about issues only in the United States is very difficult. This is compounded by a problem all extempers are familiar with at some local tournaments: a lack of quality questions. I remember senior year the first question I drew was “Why does the right hate public education?” I also have encountered questions about whether prisoners should have to work, questions about timber companies, and questions about water problems in Utah. All of these questions show that there is a depth to U.S. extemp that can get very nit picky and there might come a time in the tournament when an extemper is going to be forced to talk about an issue they may never have heard of or not have a lot of substantial material to support a speech in their file boxes.
Second, most judges are more familiar with topics found in U.S. extemp rounds than International extemp rounds. If an informal poll was conducted at the national tournament, I would be willing to bet that there are more judges who know about the current Supreme Court nominee than about Britain’s expenses scandal. This presents U.S. extempers with two issues. The first issue is that judges are going to be somewhat aware of what you are talking about so it is harder for those extempers to “b.s.” their way through rounds (although that may work to many educated competitors advantage). Another issue is that for some topics, such as abortion, affirmative action, etc. that are quite controversial, judges have biases that are tough to shake. I remember drawing abortion, Title IX, and slave reparations in round ten of NFL my junior year and I am convinced that the bad topic draw I achieved in that round and the biases my judges were bound to have, was part of the reason why my cumulative score took a hit.
To assist extempers to navigating the tournament, this topic area analysis hopes to serve as a preview of what extempers can expect to see in each round and provide some practice questions so they can be ready for next week’s event. Keep in mind, these are only predictions and opinions of the writers based on our prior experiences at the tournament. We can be wrong, but I would like to say that most of our predictions about last year’s topics (and my prediction about the Health topic being the CFL semi-final or final topic area) were right.