The Ranking System
A proprietary rating system designed to measure what actually matters in competitive debate — sustained excellence across a meaningful body of work.
For decades, debate rankings have been fundamentally broken. Existing systems rely on subjective coach polls, reward debaters who can afford to travel to the most tournaments, and fail to account for the massive variation in competition strength across different regions and events.
A debater dominating weak local circuits can appear statistically equivalent to one competing against the best in the country. Coaches know the difference — but the rankings don't reflect it.
The Debate Point Index was built from the ground up to solve this problem. It's a transparent, data-driven system that treats every competitive result as evidence and weighs it according to the difficulty and prestige of the competition.
You cannot be ranked on reputation alone. The DPI demands a verifiable trail of competitive results. Every debater starts at zero and earns their position through tournament performance that can be independently confirmed.
Attending 30 tournaments means nothing if you are breaking at none of them. The DPI penalizes padding your resume with easy wins and rewards consistent, high-level competition against strong opponents.
Where you compete matters as much as how often. A strong performance at a major national circuit tournament carries significantly more weight than a dominant showing at an under-attended local event.
How far you advance in elimination rounds matters. Reaching quarterfinals at a major tournament demonstrates a higher level of sustained performance than a first-round exit, even with strong prelim results.
Raw speaker points are normalized against the tournament field to account for variation in judge pools and scoring standards. Your points are evaluated relative to the competition you faced, not on an absolute scale.
Beating a top-20 nationally ranked debater is worth more than beating an unranked novice. The DPI tracks the average strength of your opponents and weights your results accordingly.
Major national circuit tournaments (TOC, NSDA, Harvard, Glenbrooks) carry more weight than regional or local events. This reflects the deeper competition pools and higher stakes of prestigious tournaments.
A debater who reaches elimination rounds at 8 out of 10 tournaments is rated higher than one who wins 2 tournaments but fails to break at the other 8. The DPI rewards reliable, sustained excellence.
While quality trumps quantity, you do need a minimum body of work to be rated. This prevents fluky single-tournament results from distorting rankings and ensures ratings reflect genuine competitive patterns.