Interview with Legendary JW Patterson from Kentucky

Interview by Jon Cruz.

From
http://victorybriefsdaily.com/2008/03/10/good-evening-mr-and-mrs-north-and-south-america-and-all-ships-at-sea-lets-go-to-press/

JW Patterson is the director of debate at the University of Kentucky, one of the most historically significant and successful debate programs in the United States. He joins me today for an exclusive VBD interview.
He can take great pride in many victories, both deeply personal and deeply universal. This includes directing a program where a team that began debating as sophomores with virtually no experience reached the semifinal round of the National Debate Tournament their senior year. Where six debaters went on to be the top speakers at the NDT. Where a team claimed the championship of the NDT. Where teams have won most of the major tournaments at one time or another over his many long years of involvement in debate.
His great pride extends beyond the scoreboard. “The greatest source of pride is that I may have made at least a minor contribution to many, many debaters who have become very successful and useful citizens,” he comments, “and to have so many of them say after graduation that debate was their most rewarding college experience, and how they have found so many uses for the skills they learned in debate and how that experience helped them in achieving their ambitions.”
Just as his pride extends beyond the scoreboard, Dr. Patterson’s commitment to debate extends far beyond the Kentucky team. As the founder of the Tournament of Champions and powerful voice in both matters of debate education and the debate experience on all levels and in all communities, JW Patterson has had a tremendous impact on high school debate.

JC: JW, thank you for joining me for this interview. I hope all is well in Kentucky.
Let’s begin with the basics. How did you personally get involved in debate?
JWP: I became involved in debate in Oklahoma on the college level. I coached for a few years at Muskogee Central High School in Oklahoma and then moved on to college teaching.
I took a job at the University of Kentucky as Assistant Professor of Speech Communication in 1960. This was the best offer I had that did not require me to do debate. From 1960 to 1971, I taught and did research in the Department of Speech Communication as well as serve as Director of the University of Kentucky Centennial celebration. In 1971, the Department of Speech Communication decided to downgrade debate, but the President of the University responded to an outcry from former debaters and moved debate from Speech Communications to the Vice President for Student Affairs. This move came in August of 1971 and the President suddenly realized that there was no one to direct it. I was on vacation when the President called me and asked if I would do it.
I turned him down three times before accepting. Finally I said I would do it for no more than three years. The rest is history.
JC: Debaters and more recent coaches frequently ask about the genesis of the TOC. When you founded it in 1972, what were your goals? Did you see it as the championship for the national circuit, or did such a circuit not yet exist?
JWP: When I became Director of Debate at the University of Kentucky in 1971, I raised the possibility of hosting a high school debate tournament. Thus, I spent several months exploring this possibility. I asked several questions. First, was there a need for another high school tournament and, if so, what kind? What time of year should it be held and how big should it be?
As I talked with students and teachers, especially at our institute and other institutes, I heard three major complaints.
First, debaters overwhelmingly were crying out for flow-sheet judges. Many of them were being trained at institutes to argue before flow judges but most of them said they received very few such judges, either at Catholic or NFL Nationals and almost never at invitational tournaments.
Second, both teachers and debaters complained overwhelmingly about the politics involved in high school tournaments. Many said that up to 75% of the time they were either judged by incompetent people or people with a strong political bias.
Third, I heard a major complaint from those going to Catholic and NFL Nationals that there was much too much lag time between their district tournaments and NFL.
Thus, I decided to host a tournament in early May that would be aimed at the sixty-four top debate teams in the country. At that time, there was no national circuit. I decided that there was a need for an invitational national circuit tournament that would be limited in size and one in which debaters would have to qualify to attend. In this way, I could attract sufficient number of flow sheet judges and minimize political entanglements. At the same time the tournament would serve as a warm up for those debaters going on to Catholic and NFL Nationals.
JC: Was the TOC received positively? Did most top teams attend at first?
JWP: The first TOC was received very well. We had teams from coast to coast. As far as I could tell, there were a few qualified teams who refused to come but most did attend. At that time, most people in the know seemed to think that the top two teams in the country were from Toledo, Ohio, and Milwaukee. These two teams met at the TOC as well as the NFL final the same year.
One big holdout the first year was Ted Belch, who had a very good team at High Point, North Carolina. He said at the time, and has said so since, “I didn’t attend because I didn’t think anything worthwhile in debate would come out of Kentucky.”
JC: But clearly good things debate-related were already coming out Kentucky. Isn’t Kentucky one of the older debate camps? When did you found it?
JWP: In 1961. Kentucky is one of the oldest camps in the country. I [founded] it for two reasons.
At that time, [the state of] Kentucky had a wealth of speech and debate programs, but most of the participants never got out of state. I thought by bringing people to Kentucky, we would broaden their horizons. For many years we had debate, extemp, oratory, interp, and drama. I switched to only debate about 1980.
My second reason for the camp was simply that I wanted to maintain some contact with forensics. I came to Kentucky because it was the best offer I had that did not require me to do debate, but I still wanted to maintain some in involvement so the camp seemed the best way to go.
JC: Turning back to the TOC, let’s talk about how you settled on the mechanics of the tournament itself.
Was the system of bids at different outround levels (octafinals, quarterfinals, etc.) exist from the start? If not, how did it work? And if so, how did you arrive at this qualifying system?
JWP: For the first eight years, all qualifying tournaments were at the semifinal level. This worked well, but after a few years we came to the realization that at some tournaments it was much easier to get to the semifinals than others.
Also, [in] about 1980, some tournaments were becoming national in scope and we decided that it was as difficult to reach the octafinals or quarterfinals at some tournaments as it was it was to reach the semifinals at others. Thus, we instituted the four qualification levels.
When the TOC began, there were few, if any, “national circuit” tournaments. But there were several strong regional tournaments. Among others, these included Emory, Georgetown, Pittsburgh, Detroit Central Catholic, Bellaire in Texas, Tulane, Redlands, USC, Milwaukee, etc. At that time, several of these were on the verge of becoming national in scope.
JC: How did you first assemble your Advisory Committee? Were these coaches you knew from your days in high school coaching? From recruitment for college? Or just through the grapevine?
JWP: For the first eight years, I did not have formally designated Advisory Committees; I simply called on coaches in various parts of the country for advice.
For example, if I had an at-large application from a given area, I would send it to two coaches in the area and one outside the area. Initially, I leaned on coaches that I had known from my high school coaching days. After that, I leaned on coaches who attended the early TOCs. I did not formalize the Advisory Committees until about 1990. That is when we went to the committee rankings as a whole to decide the at-large recipients.
After the first few years, I began to realize the importance of seeking high school coaches’ advice on the TOC. Although it was, and still is, a Kentucky invitational tournament, I obviously recognized the importance coaches and debaters place on the TOC. I, therefore, leaned heavily on coaches advice in helping me keep the TOC as a major culminating event. In selecting people as my advisors, I always ask the question “is this coach capable of putting aside their personal agendas for the good of the TOC?”
JC: What kinds of qualities do you look for in a TOC-qualifying tournament?
JWP: We look for tournaments that have a substantial number of quality teams from several states as well as a tournament that is run according to widely accepted norms. We give some consideration to regional placement in hopes that we can give as many people as possible an opportunity to qualify for the TOC.
[So, then,] geography is a factor. It is particularly encouraging when a tournament springs up in an area where we don’t have many qualifiers.
Beyond that, it’s important how many teams are in attendance from how many schools and how many states. It is particularly encouraging when schools are attending outside that area and when some teams or LD debaters are in attendance that have been earning TOC bids at other tournaments.
JC: To borrow an expression from both Chris Matthew and Aaron Timmons, it’s time for a hardball. Do you feel the TOC promotes or favors a particular style of debate? If so, what is it?
JWP: I do not feel the TOC promotes a particular style of debate.
The style of debate employed in high schools and by many of the schools attending the TOC is highly influenced by the style of debate employed by college debaters and taught at summer debate institutes. Both the good and bad practices used in college debate ultimately trickle down to the high school level. This is particularly the case in policy debate, but it has had its impact on LD debate.
For example, in the early TOCs, the use of the “spread” was indeed a rare phenomenon. But as college debaters used it more and more, soon it became the dominant practice in high school debate.
JC: Which practices specifically would you personally consider good? Bad?
JWP: I think three of the worst practices in NDT have filtered down to high school debate.
First, inaudible speech started in college debate and soon spread to high school debate. This has tarnished the name of debate as a communication activity. When non-debate people, such as university professors, go into rounds and say they can’t understand a thing that’s being said, it tends to undermine one of the purposes of debate. In the 70s, college debaters began speaking or reading as fast as they thought the judges could take and before we knew it, many judges were reading almost everything that was uttered in the debate. It wasn’t long until this practice spread to high school debate.
Second, stretching topicality to the outer limits started in college debate in the early 70’s. Today, some NDT teams stretch it to the point where the designated topic for debate is no longer in the round. In my opinion, this has weakened the strength of the arguments and strained the argumentative fields.
Third, and this is minor, but the dress code of college debate had diminished to the point to where “the sloppier the better.” High school policy debaters picked up on this and acted accordingly and now I am seeing it in Lincoln-Douglas debate.
JC: As corny as it might make me sound, I really agree with the last point you just made.
JWP: Also, some twenty to twenty-five years ago college coaches and hired support staff began doing the work for the debaters, i.e. doing the research and writing the briefs. In my opinion, this is antithetical to the role that the teacher should play. I think it lessens the learning experience for the debater and it discourages those debaters whose limited resources prevents them from hiring a support staff if they choose to do so. This practice has spread to the TOC debaters to the point that some schools arrive with bigger support staffs than the squad they brought with them.
As far as good practices that have spread from college to high school, the biggest one is the development of more sophisticated arguments backed by more in-depth evidence.
JC: Some see the TOC as being necessarily in conflict with Nationals. Your comment?
JWP: I have never thought there was an inherent conflict between TOC and NFL Nationals. In fact, when I picked the date for the TOC in 1972, I regarded it as a warm up for NFL.
The fact is that the TOC and the NFL serve different purposes. With its district qualifying system, NFL represents ever area of the country whether there are competitive champions in that area or not. The TOC, on the other hand, attempts to bring together the best policy teams, LD debaters, Public Forum teams, and Student Congress competitors in the country regardless of where they are from. If by chance they all happen to be from the same area, that’s fine. The important thing is that we have a qualifying system that insures the very best will be there.
Granted our qualifying system is not perfect and we are constantly trying to make it better. But in large part, I think it gets the top debaters to the TOC.
JC: What specific complaints have you heard about the qualifying system?
JWP: I have [heard] three major complaints.
First, many say that the qualifying tournaments are not as geographically well-distributed as they should be. For example, some say that there are far too many tournaments in some areas, specifically the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic as compared with the Midwest and Northwest. This is perhaps true, but it should be noted that there is much greater participation in certain areas than others. Others say this is unfair because people in the Northeast, for example, don’t have to travel nearly as far to qualifying tournaments as do people west of the Mississippi.
Second, some say that the level of competition is not equal at various levels. For example they note that it’s much harder to get a bid at some quarter finals tournaments than at others. Admittedly this may be true, but I am at a loss as to how to correct it.
Third, some complain that we don’t give qualifying status to some tournaments even though the draw is as good or better than it is at some of the qualifying tournaments. Often this is because that area doesn’t need a qualifying tournament at a given level.
JC: Sometimes you’ve had to make calls about TOC bids based on unexpected contingencies: the freeze-over of Atlanta during Emory a few years ago, the cancellation of Westminster in ‘98 (and the subsequent relocation of the bid to Mars Hill), the switch of the LMU tournament to USC. Has there ever been a particularly tough call to make? Have any of these situations caused you to rethink standing TOC policy?
JWP: Perhaps one of our weakest policy links is that we do not have a clear-cut plan on how to deal with unexpected situations. As of this time, I deal with them on an ad hoc basis but have no clear-cut policy. The Emory situation was one of the toughest calls. Even though it would have been based on one round of debating, I did offer to count as qualifiers if indeed an octafinal had been held.
JC: Lincoln-Douglas debate debuted at the turn of the 1980s but didn’t appear at the TOC until 1986. Was there resistance to adding it?
JWP: We added Lincoln Douglas to the TOC in 1986. This move encountered a strong resistance from my Advisory Committee. I started making plans for this in 1983 but was warned repeatedly by many policy coaches that this would ruin the TOC. Finally, after three years of arguing, I put it in the TOC over objections of many, many policy coaches.
One of the people who had backed this move from day one was one Richard Sodikow of Bronx Science. He had been urging me to do this since 1981. At that time, Richard had a very high profile image in being a very successful coach in both policy and LD.
JC: What were the objections to adding LD to the TOC? Don’t worry. We won’t be offended. [laughs]
JWP: I was told by some of my advisors that LD was a form of shallow debating. That it didn’t require in depth research and in depth argument construction. The same people said that putting it in the TOC would give it a dignity that it did not merit and that it’s addition would detract from the “real debate.” I disagreed with my advisors.
I was fortunate in that I had heard some very good Lincoln-Douglas debates in its infancy and I came to the conclusion that if it is done well debating value topics demands more creativity that does policy topics.
JC: Public Forum debate seems to have been welcomed into the TOC more quickly. What led to its inclusion?
JWP: Three years ago, we added Public Forum. There was much less outcry against this move than I received with LD but it had and still has its detractors. Some say the verdict is still out.
JC: I have sometimes thought that perhaps a TOC in Public Forum is antithetical to an event that is supposed to feature “community” judges more than coaches and other “debate expert” critics. Your thoughts?
JWP: Granted, the manner in which Public Forum is currently judged does not live up to it’s stated mission, but I think in time this problem will be solved. Certainly at the TOC in 2008 we are making every effort to have UK community people as judges.
JC: The TOC is an old tournament with lots of traditions. I’d like to ask about some of them. First, and perhaps most importantly, tell us about the history of the tournament hotel. This past year marked quite a swanky upgrade.
JWP: When I started the TOC we used the Downtowner Motel on Main Street in Lexington. This proved to be grossly inadequate. At that time, we moved to the Hospitality Inn on the north side of Lexington. The hotel was soon bought by the Helmsey Corporation in New York City and was called the Harley. In the late 90s, Leona Helmsey sold the hotel to the Ramada Inn Corporation. We used the hotel from 1975 to 2006.
This year, we moved to downtown Lexington to the Radisson Hotel. The much-needed move was a long time coming. We outgrew the Ramada about ten years before we moved. We needed more bedrooms, more meeting rooms, a larger banquet facility, etc.
I was reluctant to move, I suppose, for sentimental reasons. For over thirty years, I had run both our high school and college tournaments out of the Ramada Inn and the Lexington Suite holds many fond memories. This is the one thing we miss the most about the Ramada. To my knowledge, no hotel in Lexington has a hospitality room as big as the Lexington Suite.
JC: How did the Breakfast of Champions start? Are there any now-defunct traditions you’ve wanted to bring back?
The Breakfast of Champions on the last day has been part of the TOC from it’s beginning. Its title came from an old syndicated radio program that originated in Chicago in the heyday of AM radio.
JC: When did you begin the tradition of having guest speakers at the TOC? Have any speakers and speeches particularly stuck out in your mind? Last year’s was quite excellent.
JWP: We have always had what used to be a luncheon speaker and a speaker at the Breakfast of Champions. Two that stand out in my mind as being particularly good was a debater from Northwestern name Mike Gottlieb and, of course, Bill Smelko’s last year. I can think of no speaker who captivated the audience like Bill did. I watched the students as Bill was speaking and they seemed to be hanging on to every word he was saying.
JC: Have the trophies had the Kentucky Derby-style horses from the start?
JWP: Yes the trophies have always featured the Derby horses.
JC: In recent years, the TOC has been expanded to include new events and has been moved to a new hotel. Are there any other short-term and long-term changes we should be expecting?
JWP: I think we have had enough change for the moment. Of course, we are constantly looking for ways to improve the qualifying system, and will make changes as new approaches emerge.
JC: I often ask human interest questions. So, now, the age old one — and the source of many a trivia question on VBD — what is the origin of “JW”?
JWP: As to the origin of JW, at the time of my birth my parents were trying to decide between Jason William and Jackson Wallace. The doctor suggested they just put down the initials and change the name later. Of course the change never came, and I have lived these many years with only initials for a name.
This has caused me some apprehension over the years. Many times people have insisted they want to know what the J and the W stand for. Several years ago, in dealing with an insurance company, they just kept insisting that I give them the real name. In desperation, I sent them “J.(only) and W.(only).” The policy arrived made out to “Jonly Wonly Patterson.”
JC: [laughs]
I can’t think a human interest question that’s going to produce a better response than the Jonly Wonly anecdote, and since that seems to be all the time we have, I’ll move on to an important final question.
JW, you’ve been involved in debate for a long time, and as such, have a great deal of experience working with fellow coaches and with debaters. What advice would you give both coaches *and* debaters regarding “national circuit” debate?
JWP: Don’t go overboard hopping across the country just to try to get bids to the TOC. I believe coaches should try to balance the attendance at local, regional, and national tournaments. All of a school’s debaters should have experiences at all levels if at all possible. I think it is a big mistake to pick a handful of students and travel them only to national tournaments. I think it is also a mistake not to attend local and regional tournaments just because they don’t have TOC bids. The TOC is only a part of the learning experience. To assume that it’s the one and only learning experience is a sad mistake.