Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

Dont forget to add Hawaii teams to that mix................at least that is what has been talked about amongst the.........:rolleyes:

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

So here is the real problem: The team lottery and teams who just "buy" into worlds. If you wanted to make worlds just "the best of the best," you would remove these ways into the competition. However, this is not what worlds and IMHO what FIRST is about. FIRST is about inspiration. Is it more important for upper level teams to be inspired by other upper level teams? Or is it more important for those smaller teams who can't "win on the field" to see what can be done if you exploit the resources you have effectively? I know what my personal answer would.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

I like a points system for assigning priority to the teams on the wait list. Even without district models in place everywhere, it would still be possible to design a reasonably fair points system.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

The New York Yankees and The Detroit Red Wings may be two of the best franchises in their respective sports but occasionally they miss the playoffs.

I think the Championship should be a "Pure" Championship. Only Winners, Chairman's, Rookie All-Star's and HoF teams should attend in my opinion.

This is not meant to be a slight to EI winners, Original teams, or the winners from the previous years Championship. But the winner of the Super Bowl doesn't get to automatically play in it next year.

52 Regionals (3 Winners, Chairman's, Rookie All-Star) = 260 Teams
Michigan- Should Qualify 15 Teams (3 Regionals worth)
MAR- Should Qualify 15 Teams (3 Regionals worth)
HoF Teams- 15 Teams
-----------------------------------------
305 Teams total (76 Teams in each division)

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

If you like the sports analogy, then what of wild cards? Event winners and RCA winners are basically division winners. FIRST could allow other teams in based on some criteria, and they would be wild cards. Sometimes wild cards are a great thing, particularly when the same division has more than one great team in the same year. Analogous situations happen in FIRST regional competition.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

They do, on rare occasions. I can ONLY think of 2, and in both cases it was the Finalist alliance. Arizona 2004 and Silicon Valley 2008. In one case, the ref made a mistake; in the other, a team made it onto the field in between when the count started and the match started, giving the ref a tough call, which he passed on to the other alliance (who proceeded to take event Finalist in the subsequent match).

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

A points-based qualification system and a district competition model are two separate (albeit complementary) concepts. Even if every region isn't ready for the latter, it doesn't mean you can't institute the former to help sort the waiting list.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

Your cause is not helped by the new "coopertition point system" that we will probably be seeing more of. Its easier now for less-skilled teams to seed as high as 1 and 2, based solely off a good schedule (They used to only be able to get to like 5 or 4). If this continues your solution might still keep "better teams" from going.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

What do you do with a great team that does well in only one regional (and can't afford to attend another one)? Could enough points be accumulated attending just one regional to qualify for Champs? Would you at least get an automatic bid to Champs if you won that single regional or the RCA, etc? I would hate to see the system biased in favor of teams that have more financial resources that allow them to attend multiple regions.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

Personally, with the growth that Michigan has had in the 4 years of the District model we should get more then 3 regionals worth. The same thing applies to our Chairmans and Woodie Flowers.

2009 - 132 Teams - 3 Regionals - 3 Woodie Flowers - 3 Chairmans
2012 - 190 Teams - 3 Regionals?! (it should be 4 Regionals) - 1 Woodie Flowers - 3 Chairmans

Isn't this why we do the math?

-Clinton-

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

Take the average based on the number of events they attend.

-Clinton-

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

I've created a Google Doc that pulls out all of the unique #1-#3 ranked teams from each regional/district*. Since there's no way to do this quickly, I'd like your help finding the teams that would already qualify despite the rankings (Chairmans, EI, Winners). I've started listing the accomplishments in the "Unique Top 3 Seeds" sheet.

Here's the link.

*EDIT: Except for the Hawaii Regional, since the rankings are missing from FIRST's website.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

But then it arguably benefits teams to only attend an earlier, possibly weaker event.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

I completely agree. In past years, the waitlist was a perfectly acceptable way for great teams to attend championship . However, FRC has reached a growth stage where the waitlist should be controlled by performance, not by money.

So yes, FRC has a waitlist-qualification problem.

This is the simplest solution for teams to understand.

Since I am most familiar with the Lone Star Regional, I will do a simple exercise to see if the top 3 seeds qualify method is a valid metric to evaluate performance.

I encourage everyone to do this exercise for their regionals.

(c) - went to championship
(nc) - did not attend championship

Lone Star Regional:
2011: 118 (c) , 2936 (nc) , 2587 (nc) - all three teams should have attended, but only 1 did
2010: 148 (c) , 118 (c) , 624 (c) - all three should and did attend
2009: 418 (c) , 3028 (nc) , 441 (nc) - 441 should have attended champs, 3028 had a lucky schedule !
2008: 118 (c) , 501 (c) , 1477 (c) - all three teams should and did attend
2007: 846 (nc) , 118 (c) , 476 (c) - 846 should have attended champs
2006: 1902 (c) , 231 (c) , 704 (nc) - 704 should have attended champs

Conclusion: the top 3 seeds qualify method at the LSR back to 2006 was a valid indicator, only one team in 2009 was an anomaly. Many teams did not go to championships from Lone Star, when they probably should have gone !

Disclaimer: the commentary on who should have attended championship is based on my own opinion and does not represent the feelings of chief delphi ! :yikes:

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

This is one of the best threads ever on CD and I totally agree with the original poster. There needs to be a way that includes teams that barely miss after seeing so much success. I think your proposed method might be a bit hard to implement at this point. Here is my proposed solution:

Perhaps the entire FIRST community could vote for 3 teams each year that deserve to go but did not qualify AKA The Peoples Choice. Very simple, each team gets 1 vote and it can not be for themselves. FIRST is about inspiration and it can be quite devastating for a team that did all of the right things but just encountered a bit of bad luck.