Coordinating intercollegiate speech and debate organizations and helping programs across the country.

Thanks for visiting the COFO website. COFO’s historical purpose has been to serve as a coordinating body of leaders from various intercollegiate national speech and debate tournaments, such as the American Forensic Association National Speech Tournament, Phi Rho Pi, and many more.

While the organization itself has been on hiatus, the COFO website had not been updated regularly.

Beginning in the summer of 2024, it is our hope to again have regular updates in the following areas:

  • Listing what colleges and universities have speech and debate programs – there are more than 600 different colleges and universities that compete in at least one different kind of speech or debate activity.
  • Offering a national tournament calendar, to help organization leaders see which weekends are holding national tournaments.
  • Restarting the calendar of different college and university tournaments – each year typically includes more than 300 tournaments in a variety of different speech and debate formats. Post-pandemic, there are a variety of tournaments — in-person, online and hybrid — to help different programs compete.
  • Adding additional content about intercollegiate speech and debate.

Additional planned updates:

  • Adding tournaments from 2021-2024 to the historical database.
  • Updating the look and feel of the website.
  • Adding 2024-2025 tournaments as they become available.
  • Bringing back the submission form for tournaments (all tournament submissions will still be subject to review for standardization purposes).

To find out more about intercollegiate speech and debate or this website, contact:

  • Joe Gantt, American Forensic Association President, jgantt at lclark.edu
  • Michael Dreher, michael.dreher at gcsu.edu, COFO Webmaster
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