Yeah, in most competitive debate events, sides are predetermined, thus each competitor has the incentive to continue to argue ad infinitum about the most basic points, for instance as I debated much over the last several months, what exactly the word "substantially" means. Due to that, the competitor's real views are irrelevant.
If we actually had these debates, I wonder how many people would realize that their actual viewpoints aren't that far off of each other after all.