Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

174 is 26-8-0 this year and we haven't qualified for Champs. Do I believe we should have qualified due to our win/loss record or our status as a 5th seed at FLR? No. As much as I want FIRST champs to be about the best-of-the-best robots of the year, I don't think that it fits in FIRST's ideals. You either qualify though one of the awards, though your victories or when it's your due time on the waiting list. What makes FIRST different and better than traditional sports teams is only the best of the year have the shot at the national title, whereas in FIRST all teams can have a Championship moment at some point.

Not to disrespect the original 32, but I don't think that's a good enough reasoning for an automatic qualifier now that we have surpassed 20 years of FIRST. I agree that should go, but not upset it exists. And I think that allowing previous winners to return could also be dropped. Want to win back-to-back Championships? Earn it.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

I would rather see the 3rd pick of an alliance not get an invite than to not invite our sustaining teams. Keeping a team going for 20+ years is an accomplishment that I think is not celebrated enough. There is so much history and experience on these teams that it is a shame not to showcase it.

HoF falls under the same category to me. While I understand we are now removing ~30 spots from the pool we need to come up with a better qualifying system rather than remove things that should be celebrated.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

We could always add an extra day, which would allow for bigger divisions.
But I personally think we should rethink the system so that only the best teams are going. I hear the argument that everyone wants to go to champs, but you should have to earn it. If champs truly had the best teams matches would be much more fun, and spectator friendly.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

Not to mention there are not 30 spots taken up... there are 7 remaining original and sustaining teams.

20, 45, 126, 148, 151, 190, 191

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

Only seven teams are original and sustaining, and two of those are already qualified as Hall of Fame teams. The remaining five teams include some good teams that regularly qualify anyway. Therefore, changing that rule only nets a few extra spots in an average year.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

Winning the championship on Einstein is an extremely difficult thing to do. It requires tremendous robot ability, robustness, teamwork and luck. I have no issue whatsoever inviting these teams back automatically the next year. IMO its 3 very hard fought and well-earned spots.

-Brando

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

The best way to deal with this IMHO is for the non-districted regionals to adopt a district-style point accumulation system that qualifies teams to attend a Week 7 super event - let's call it Nationals*. Points can be earned only at the first two Regionals a team attends. Make the event open by qualification only, and make it a two-division event open to 100-120 teams.

From this Nationals event, just like a district Championship, there would be 18 spots for teams to qualify for Championship. It gives teams who came really close, but lost due to bad luck, random robot/FMS issue, etc another chance to both play at a prestigious event and potentially qualify for the World Championships.

To make this model more financially viable, either eliminate the entry fee for attending the Nationals/Super Regionals event or halve the registration fee for additional Regionals and the National event.


* Or another way could be to have several Week 7 Super Regionals instead of a single Nationals event, to move the event geographically closer to teams.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

You would have to amortize the performance somehow. Either divide total points by the number of events attended, or take the best single event performance. For that matter, you would also need to do things like normalizing qualification W/L/T points to account for 9/10/11/12 round qualification schedules at various events.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

Then you would probably need to exclude Israel and possibly Canada....and even then you're looking at a <80 team "worlds". That just doesn't seem right, and doesnt really fit with what FIRST is trying to do.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

Yeah... I was including HoF and rounding up.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

Adopting a super-regional system would have its merits, but I can tell you that it would be pretty tough for our team to attend four competitions in one year. It would be a little different if we had district events in nearby cities and only had one competition that was far away, but all of our events are out of state.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

In the other thread about a qualification-only championship event, I advocated for a points system similar to how the regions with district events do it. Teams could attend events and earn points throughout the season and the top 300whatever teams would qualify for CMP.

For MAR (and I'm assuming FiM is probably similar), points are awarded as follows:

16 points to the #1 Alliance Captain
15 points to the #2 Alliance Captain
and so on

16 points to the #1 overall pick (if they accept)
15 points to the #2 overall pick (if they accept)
and so on

Winning Alliance: 30 points to the alliance captain and the first pick, 24 to the second pick
Finalists: 20 points to alliance captain and first pick, 16 to the second pick
Semifinalists: 10 points to alliance captain and first pick, 8 to the second pick

Each team receives 2 points for each match they win and 1 point for each match they tie. Technical/design awards and the coopertition awards are worth 5 points and the rest of the awards are worth 2. The winners of the Chairman's Award are the only ones who automatically qualify. I'd advocate for keeping automatic qualifications for the previous year's winners, HoF teams, original teams, etc. The number of spots they take up is pretty negligible and many of them qualify anyway each year.

I think the points system does a pretty good job at determining which teams deserve to go to the championship in terms of robot ability. Obviously, a separate system for the actual Championship Event would have to be determined, but I posted the MAR one here just to give people an idea of how it would work.

Perhaps even we could keep the current qualification rules (regional winners, RCA, EI, RAS) the same and use the points to determine the "at-large" or "wildcard" spots?

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

First note that I'm using 1114/2056 as examples since they're popular robots and teams to follow, so most people know their history and accomplishments each year.

FIRST will forever need teams wanting to buy a ticket to championships. Why? There are 52 Regionals, but not 260 unique teams that win those Regionals and/or get RCA's/EI's. To further emphasize this point, let's look at Canada. This year, 2056/1114 have dominated Canada's 3 Regionals Waterloo, GTR-E, and GTR-W (though not always together). A potential 12 slots from winners and RCA's went to only 7* unique teams since 1114/2056 take 2 slots via RCA's and 5 slots via winning. (* no research was done for the other teams to know if there was an RCA/Winner overlap).

So there is a gap between space available at the venue and # of teams who've "earned" a slot. FIRST needs to fill those slots or the cost of the venue on a per-team basis would rise. Teams who want to buy a ticket to championship (such as those Canadian teams who are really good but can't get past the 1114/2056 combo every year) are more likely to be able to buy a slot, fullfilling their want and FIRST's needs.

IMHO, if a team has completed a robot that's performed "average" on the field at a Regional then they've earned a slot to Championships. It shouldn't be up to us to deny those students the incredible experience just because they didn't have the right combination of strategy, talent, and luck at their event, especially if they've done enough to fund raise the near-astronomical cost of going to St. Louis on short notice. Save the "best of the best" attitudes for IRI, and remember that winning a FRC event is considered a secondary goal to FIRST's main mission.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

I admit that I am relatively new to FIRST, and when I first learned that there were so many ways into the Championship *other* than winning a regional, I was surprised. It seems to me that the Championship should be reserved for only those teams that have shown that they have what it takes to win in a given year, not based on legacy reasons or those who can afford to "buy in." Clearly there is a lot more to it than that, but the Championship is already quite large as it is. If/when my team makes it to Championship, it will be because we won and not gotten in another way, and it would be nice to know that all the other teams there followed the same path.

Re: The Rest Of The Best
 

I should add: I think the district model is the way to go and I look forward to it being implemented in CA.