Re: What percentage of FRC teams should attend championships?
 

Yes! CHAMPIONSHIPS should be for the best of the best. I almost feel guilty when, like last year, our team got to the championship being around 30th in FiM. In other sports, only the winners would advance. In FIRST, it is easier to have more teams attend, so more teams should qualify, but not 800.

Re: What percentage of FRC teams should attend championships?
 

And again, someone seems to want to ignore oh-so-many of the wise words Dean, Woodie, Dave, and so many others have tried to get them to absorb.

You are worrying about the wrong thing if you (as your question strongly implies) think that FRC exists to put robots into matches, or exists to sift through the available robots and drive teams to find the "best" robots+drivers.

I'm pretty sure that a very good answer to the question is, "Just as many as can fit into the largest feasible venue(s)."

Blake

Re: What percentage of FRC teams should attend championships?
 

You feel guilty about being rewarded for placing in the top 10%?

Re: What percentage of FRC teams should attend championships?
 

Have you watched the NCAA men's basketball tournament. 68 teams out of 351 Division I schools qualify. That's just under 20%. Most of the "power" conferences have qualifying tournaments, but many other teams qualify. Here's the number from each conference in 2015. The Big 12 has 10 members so 70% qualified. The Big 10 has 14 now so 50% qualified.

Bids Conference Schools
7 Big 12 Iowa State, Baylor, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, West Virginia
7 Big Ten Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan State, Ohio State, Purdue
6 ACC Notre Dame, Duke, Louisville, North Carolina, NC State, Virginia
6 Big East Villanova, Butler, Georgetown, Providence, St. John's, Xavier
5 SEC Kentucky, Arkansas, Georgia, LSU, Ole Miss
4 Pac-12 Arizona, Oregon, UCLA, Utah
3 Atlantic 10 VCU, Davidson, Dayton
3 Mountain West Wyoming, Boise State, San Diego State
2 American SMU, Cincinnati
2 Missouri Valley Northern Iowa, Wichita State
2 WCC Gonzaga, BYU

Re: What percentage of FRC teams should attend championships?
 

I wasn't making a point about a particular percentage. You asked "why pick a percentage target?" and I answered that question from a practical standpoint. Of course the alternative is to pick a hard number, e.g., 600 which they've done, but that will represent a decreasing % of all of the teams.

All other sports that have faced a growing league size have expanded their playoffs. Think of baseball which use to just have the AL and NL pennant winners play. That's clearly no longer the case. The question now is how should the Champs be structured.

If someone is thinking that FIRST is going to drop its contracts with Detroit and Houston, that is a very long shot if FIRST wants to continue to be taken seriously in future negotiations with other cities. If you are thinking of a counter proposal I strongly urge you to either come up with a fully developed playoff system that includes more teams (e.g. Districts everywhere) or that uses the two-city model in some format that brings 400 teams to each city. There's no going back to the way it was.

Re: What percentage of FRC teams should attend championships?
 

We were on the wait list this year and turned it down, even though we captained the #3 alliance in Denver. I got my butt handed to me by administrators, testing staff (our kids missed mandatory testing while we were in Utah), concerned parents, other teachers, and stressed out kids. And we are a well supported program at our school; the team gets tons of respect. There was no way we would have been given a pass to go to CMP unless we had won the state. I don't at all get what people are talking about when they say that kids would do well to go and not compete.

Re: What percentage of FRC teams should attend championships?
 

If it was 1 week or 5 weeks, if we weren't competing, it would never be approved.
We compete at 0% direct cost to the school (I don't need a sub), as we raise all of our own funding.

Re: What percentage of FRC teams should attend championships?
 

Comparing to professional sports in this context isn't a good idea because expanded playoffs are almost entirely due to the league wanting extra revenue. In pretty much all pro sports, all playoff games are sold out, meaning that any other playoff games that are added will almost certainly be sold out as well.

Now an aside:

In general one thing I personally would love (not that this would ever happen), is that we get rid of the elimination tournament at regionals. I would prefer an EPL style ranking system, where the champion is determined at the end of the season by whoever is on top in the standings. Teams play every other team twice during the EPL season, so obviously that level of interplay is unlikely to be achieved during a regional, but if we continued playing 'quals' during the standard elims time, we'd get quite a few more matches in. As it is, FRC rankings within a regional generally turn out all right (I admit that strength of schedule is definitely a factor that helps/hurts some teams at every event), but I'd be interested to see just how many more matches are necessary at an event to make the rankings as true as possible.

The reason I would prefer this kind of system is because I think it could lead to increased competitiveness at champs. Too often it happens that the 3rd-5th best robots at a regional do not advance to STL because of the current playoffs structure. (I will also admit that such a proposal is inherently unfair to those teams who dedicate their game strategy to one specific game phase - this year those would be dedicated canburglars; teams who focused only on building the fastest burglar likely wouldn't seed high even if they were given 16 qual matches).

Of course as long as there are several automatic champs bids for non-matchplay purposes, the impact of this kind of plan is very watered down... But my ultimate hope is that if we figure out a system that qualifies a higher percentage of "competitive" teams, then we will have fewer arguments about how many robots to quality. The issue is that even if you increase champs capacity to 600-800 teams, you're still going to have deserving robots miss out due to the way we qualify teams from regionals. If we can draw a brightline in the regional/district rankings structure, then it becomes easier to stomach if a team misses out on champs - you can point to the table and objectively show that their robot wasn't quite as competitive as the top X# of teams.

As we've seen Frank talk about, he wants every high schooler to have the opportunity to attend Champs in their high school career, primarily from an inspiration standpoint. My viewpoint is that if a student has persevered and stuck with their team for all four years, then they have already been inspired. If we're talking about a student who would be willing to travel to champs with their team, then it's pretty safe to assume that this student is willing to make meaningful contributions to the team (whether it's mech, software, grant writing, etc), and they truly do understand the ideals of FIRST. Speaking personally, my team was lucky enough to qualify for champs my senior year, and I did attend, but I was already inspired by the program long before. The inspiration came from getting eliminated by 254 year after year at the regional level. And of course beyond 254, SVR always has plenty of powerhouses, but my point is that Frank's argument for giving students the opportunity to attend champs at least once implies that these are the type of students who understand the gravity of FIRST already, and they can feel the same type of inspiration at the regional level. And even if a student never attends a competition at all, but they stick with their team for four years, I'm positive that they will feel the positive impact of the program by investing so many hours into building the robot and supporting their team in whatever way they are capable.

Re: What percentage of FRC teams should attend championships?
 

There is no need to attack me personally. I posed a question because I wished to gain a better understanding of others' viewpoints on this topic. Dean, Woodie, and Dave would be among the first to say that being inquisitive should be lauded. I am very happy with the results of this poll and thread, it has already helped me to gain insight on this subject.

You got me spot on for this one. I do believe that "FRC the organization," that small handful of people working in Manchester, exists primarily to provide affiliated teams with a robotics competition. However, I believe that "FRC the community of teams," exists to inspire society to recognize science and technology. I don't believe that "FRC the organization" can inspire anyone. I do believe that they can provide opportunities for teams to generate their own inspiration.

If FRC develops a poor competition structure, which I believe they just did. They diminish teams' opportunities to inspire, which I also believe they just did.

That is an insufficient response. You will at least need to specify the number of venues for this sentence to mean anything.

Re: What percentage of FRC teams should attend championships?
 

I also come here to gain insight from my peers. It can and usually is an insightful conversation as long as we all act as adults without finger pointing from either side of the table.

Dean, Woodie and Dave are not "all knowing". Way too much hero worship going on by both by students and mentors.

So, the mindset is that all teams should attend a championship at least once in their high school career. This has been said because it inspires kids. What is it about the venue of championship that is supposed to inspire kids? Appears that is the underlying question. And it appears that there are different camps with different view points on what inspires their kids. Some like the lure of competition on the field. Others want the knowledge and comradery gained.

Several have expressed that it is foolish to expect a team to attend and pay the high costs just to watch. Yet it appears that those same people think it's ok to attend from a lottery with an inferior robot (I truly do not understand this concept).

I've attempted to suggest that there are valid competitions going on both on and off the field. Many attend for those reasons. But people are often stating that winning or gaining the recognition of those awards will have less meaning without one true world winner. And some chastise this reasoning as blasphemy.

So, what does it all mean? I guess the "inspirational aspect" of attending means many things to many people. What does being inspired by attending mean to your students? Ask them! Don't quote what you think Dean or Woodie think. Your students are the customer. We all agree we do this all for them. How do we continue to inspire them?

As a side note. My kids always seem to see the value of the process of designing and building a robot. They like comparing their solutions with others around the world. Some of their most rewarding years occurred in the lean years when they received no recognition from the outside. Their Midwest values seem to come through and they always work harder and are hungrier after a loosing season on the field. They actually get inspired by their failures (believe it or not). They tell me they only want to go to championships when they are really deserving. I will continue to listen to them and try to give them the support and guidance they need.

Again, what is inspiring for your kids?

Re: What percentage of FRC teams should attend championships?
 

1) Playoffs have been expanding at the college and high school levels as well. The NCAA basketball tourney (non-pro) is but one example. Look at the state basketball and football playoffs. When I was in HS my state didn't even have football playoffs. Yes, much of this might be revenue driven, but it also is intended to satisfy a desire by participants and those around them to have a more complete end of season competitive experience.

2) I'm not sure that an EPL-style system can work in this situation, but it makes me think of a different approach - English League soccer. Teams move up and down divisions based on their previous season. Perhaps the Champs can be divided into First and Second Divisions based on Regional and District placings. Maybe Regional Champs to First Division and Finalists to Second Division.

Re: What percentage of FRC teams should attend championships?
 

No.

Re: What percentage of FRC teams should attend championships?
 

Have you watched the NCAA men's basketball tournament?
ROTFLMAO

Re: What percentage of FRC teams should attend championships?
 

..and the NCAA has no wait list
....and the NCAA has no wild card
......and the NCAA has teams get there on merit
.........and the NCAA has one champion

Hey, I like you idea.

Re: What percentage of FRC teams should attend championships?
 

Yeah it's a pretty crazy proposal and I know it wouldn't work for multiple reasons. That was definitely one of the things I thought of, especially after that other thread where someone compared the 2-champs system to the NCAA tourney and the NIT. Much of the current angst comes from top performing robots being left out of champs, and I think a change in the ranking/qualification system can alleviate some of these problems without having to invite hundreds of more teams.

I was so happy when my college bball team made the CIT last year (4th playoff tourney after NCAA, NIT, and CBI). Obviously not considered too prestigious, but it is a postseason tournament and it was the first time my school had made any tournament in 40+ years. Sometimes being invited to play on *a* big stage is an incredible feeling, even if it isn't *the* big stage. For that reason I wouldn't be opposed to having slightly different qualification structures for a 2-champs system.