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Chief Hedgehog 03-05-2015 03:23

Re: Proposal for the 2 Championship format
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by waialua359 (Post 1479603)
Its too bad FIRST cant just find a venue (and city) that can hold 800 teams. Problem solved.

Minneapolis. Done. We have the infrastructure, the venues all connected by skyways, Metro Transit, etc. And we are centrally located. With the advent of the new Vikings Stadium and then the subsequent University of Minnesota Arenas and the Target Center as well as the Minneapolis Convention Center all connected via Skyway and Metro Transit the metro area could be a contendor.

It is a safe city and has the ultimate back-up in having St Paul as another place to host events. Minneapolis is a Global City and has the most Theatrical Stages outside of New York in the USA. We have a top tier airport - A Delta hub. The Mall of America that has 40 million visitors annually. We boast teams from the top 5 tier sports in North America (Twins, Vikings, Timberwolves, Wild, and MN United).

I would love to see Minnesota host the Championships. Those that have attended the MPLS or Duluth Regionals can attest to the success of the events.

Maybe in 2021 or beyond we can have all of you here. Our Hotdish is the best!

dodar 03-05-2015 03:29

Re: Proposal for the 2 Championship format
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by waialua359 (Post 1479606)
Is this really true? Sorry, not familiar with facilities across the US.

Minnesota could, so could Chicago, Orlando, probably somewhere in Texas, along with somewhere in California.

Mainly look for big convention centers. But, like I said, you'd have to sacrifice the stadium feel.

waialua359 03-05-2015 05:05

Re: Proposal for the 2 Championship format
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog (Post 1479609)

I would love to see Minnesota host the Championships. Those that have attended the MPLS or Duluth Regionals can attest to the success of the events.

We have, and have no problem going there again if it meant ONE championship.:)

asid61 03-05-2015 07:23

Re: Proposal for the 2 Championship format
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad (Post 1479601)
I would hope that your team would learn a lot from other great teams at the Challenger event. For example, 971 and 701 whom you know well would have been at the Challenger event this year under system A. Our team learns a huge amount from them--they probably contributed more to our team than any other over the last few years. Are they not great teams? I expect that many other teams of their caliber would be at the Challenger event.

And you wouldn't have to win "every" event that you go to. In fact I can see how under systems B or C that teams that place high continually could go to the Premier event.

I loved 971 and 701, particularly the incredible linkage the former used this year.
But if we deicded that anybody who seeds high or gets far in elims and all of those who won a regional were the only people who went to a "premier" championship, then it would feel almost fake to win a the "challenger" event. If all the winners go to one event, then the other event is left, not devoid of talent, but far more lacking in it. It would just be a really big regional event, except without 254, 1678, (probably) 971, etc. etc, and we get to see all of those teams at SVR. But 148, 1114, 624, I doubt we would ever get a chance to see in person without being among the winning group ourselves (in which case I would probably want to have a winner's championship to test our abilities against the best, ironically).

GaryVoshol 03-05-2015 08:01

Re: Proposal for the 2 Championship format
 
In leagues that have the promotion/relegation model, the teams play only in their own division all year long. Then at the end of the season, usually following some kind of playoffs, the promotion/relegation happens. And I don't know that I've ever seen a 50% change - usually it's 10%, maybe 20%.

So are you proposing that we have a split season all the way through? That teams in Champion only play against other Champion division teams?

If not, you don't have a fair way of moving teams to either of the championships. Teams could do wonderfully well in the season, beating other teams that are in the "top" division, but still be sent to the "second" championship.

Come to think of it, there's kind of a precedence for that in FIRST - it's called FLL. Teams could win the Champion award (equivalent to Chairman's) at their state championship, but not get invited to the World Festival. The only difference is that there isn't a "second" championship for them to be invited to, just some Opens. It would be like FRC saying, "OK, you're great, but because you weren't great before you can't go to champs. Maybe you should apply to IRI."

ScandallB225 03-05-2015 09:10

Re: Proposal for the 2 Championship format
 
I agree that there should be some sort of vetting or seeding process, but prior seasons' results should not play into it, until we start playing the same challenge year after year. How do you compare Aerial Assist to Recycle Rush?

IF there is a two "CMP" split, my opinion is there should be a venue for the best-of-the-best of that season to compete against each other. That is not necessarily the Regional/District winners. How many third picks are to have a cold dish for cheesecake? (2nd picks for that matter) most alliance captains are more worthy than the first picks of Regional Winners, but do not qualify.

In my mind the most practical system would be to have Super Regionals with a CMP feel. (HOF, Scholarship Row, How To Conferences ...)Then the top teams qualify for Worlds. HOF RCA RAS have equal opportunity at the Super Regional level.

This idea does not solve any travel issues. For those that qualify it would add another level of cost, especially for teams not in the contiguous USA.

scottandme 03-05-2015 09:38

Re: Proposal for the 2 Championship format
 
I don't think 2 "division" are necessary, but it's a valid solution for many high school sports. Expand the district point model, or adopt a system similar to FTC or FLL where only some awards earn a Champs berth. Again, we're only talking about 75-100 current qualifiers that would need to be re-routed. FTC only sends 128 teams to Champs as is...

Again, this is an argument to make FRC a more legitimate competitive enterprise, which is not what FIRST seems to want, but dreaming along for a second here...

Quote:

Originally Posted by EricH (Post 1479608)
How in tarnation do you deal with a team that just got relegated last year and now has 3 regional wins, one EI, and one RCA, or somesuch impressive resume? Do you put them in the relegated CMP or in the top CMP? Eh? How about the team that won the whole thing last year, and is nowhere to be found this year? Eh? Fair warning, I'm going to keep asking this until I get an answer. It shouldn't be all that hard to figure out--it'd happen often enough, no? And it's happened often enough with one CMP already, somewhat.

Well, that happens in many high school sports. Some schools are perpetually competitive, and stay in the top division, with the bottom of the division(s) experiencing more "churn" as teams rise and fall.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EricH (Post 1479608)
To put it mildly: Relegation works fairly well when there is NOT a lot of "churn" of teams joining/exiting a league--you can assign a team once, they go up and down, and maybe eventually they fold and leave completely. Relegation fails miserably when there IS a lot of "churn"--and in FRC, there's a lot of "churn" going to the Champs. The top teams will tend to stay the same and make a lot of trips to the top event (read: Poofs, Simbotics, HOT, etc.). The not-so-top teams won't--and that's where you have to make a lot of tough calls. Probably a third--a full third--of the teams at CMP this year won't be there next year. So now you have a new X teams to assign, and then relegate, that may or may not end up to be relegated in the long run because they just plain don't make it the next year.

Who do you think makes up the "churn" at Champs in the current qualification system? Pretty much all the teams that the OP proposed moving to the "B" champs.

As per Jim Zondag's awesome Championship History Data - only 567 teams made the elimination rounds from 2001 to 2015. Only 494 of those teams are still active. Only 270 unique teams made elims from 2012-2015. That's a lot of repetition.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EricH (Post 1479608)
One final thought: If some sort of promotion/relegation does happen, any and all talk about "reducing travel costs" needs to be expunged from the record, completely. If it is in fact cheaper for a team to travel to one event, but they are assigned to the other due to the promotion/relegation system, travel costs are not reduced. Can you imagine if a Detroit CMP-bound team ended up in Houston? Or if Mr. Forbes (just to pick on him) and his team ended up going to Detroit when Houston was closer? And if that wasn't just the exception, but the rule?

Well, all the "reducing costs" talking points are already pretty weak. The team distribution doesn't support the current venue choices. There are too many teams in the Northeast, and not nearly enough near Texas. Circles are 150, 300, and 600 mile. Blue goes to Houston, Red goes to Detroit. There are already going to be a lot of teams closer to Detroit being assigned to Houston.


wilsonmw04 03-05-2015 10:00

Re: Proposal for the 2 Championship format
 
you might see VA and the new Capital district going to Houston. They were originally going to put the VA FTC teams in the Houston. I think there is another reason, besides those given by FIRST for the location of the new CMP's. They may be carrots for the two states that have been fulling a large portion of growth for FRC. You can also assume that that growth will continue in the future making these locations adventitious.

northstardon 03-05-2015 10:11

Re: Proposal for the 2 Championship format
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Chief Hedgehog (Post 1479609)
Minneapolis. Done. We have the infrastructure, the venues all connected by skyways, Metro Transit, etc. And we are centrally located. With the advent of the new Vikings Stadium and then the subsequent University of Minnesota Arenas and the Target Center as well as the Minneapolis Convention Center all connected via Skyway and Metro Transit the metro area could be a contendor.

While I love the location, I'm uncertain of the logistics. The Minneapolis Convention Center is more than a mile away from the new skyway-connected Vikings stadium site. That's a really long round-trip if the plan is to follow the St. Louis model, and put playing fields in a stadium, and 800 pits in convention area space.

On the other hand, the drive teams might love navigating their carts though the crowded Mpls skyway system during the business day. It'd be like that scene in the "Mighty Ducks" movie, only with robots instead of rollerblades.

iVanDuzer 03-05-2015 12:13

Re: Proposal for the 2 Championship format
 
I'm personally a huge fan of Proposal B. I think that expanding the "Challenger Tier" would actually go a long way to addressing a lot of problems in the "Super Regional" model (especially the lengthened competition season).

Let's think in the future...

All of FRC plays with the District points system. As mentioned elsewhere, it'll need to be tweaked a bit to account for the difference between District and Regional play. But the spirit is there: teams earn points for performance at events, by winning matches, seeding high, and winning awards.

At the end of the season, we get two tiers of competition:
  • Tier One (Champion) is the top 20% of FRC teams that year, plus Legacy and Hall of Fame. These teams compete at the traditional, 4-field Championship Event.
  • Tier Two (Challenger) are all teams that are in the 21% to ~50% range. They advance to the "Super Regionals."

Super Regionals in this context would be localized events that are made up of ~200 teams. Two fields, two divisions, etc. They basically have the effect of District Championships, but Bigger.

Instead of adding Super Regionals as a step to qualify for the World Championships, they are the end goal. There are a couple good things about this, I think:
  • Competition Season stays the same length. Students don't have to miss more school, mentors don't have to use up more vacation pay.
  • Challenger teams gain local fame. Super Regionals will be played in local hubs that are accessible for teams in that "zone" to visit. Ideally, many FRC teams would visit their local Super Regional because they have easy access to a higher-quality event.
  • Challenger teams will build local rivalries. More, local competition will increase the drive for mid-tier teams to do well at the regional level. Basically, look at what the NHL is doing with their playoffs: teams play through their division before making it to the conference finals before playing for the Stanley Cup. The model is making intense rivalries that are incredibly rewarding to watch, even during the regular season (see: Tampa smacking Montreal around during the season after being swept by them last year in the playoffs).
  • It's hella sustainable. Under this model, 50% of FRC teams get to experience a "Championship" feel event. And because the events are Localized, you can always add more Super Regionals as needed. They would also actually cut down on travel costs (because, again, localized). And because the events are smaller, they should also be cheaper.
  • It offers more teams the chance to compete, and not be blown out of the water by powerhouse teams. I know of at least one team this year that qualified for Champs but didn't go because they felt their robot was not good enough to make the experience worth it for the price they'd have to pay. Having an event that is actually at their competition level means that more teams can actually vie for a win without being "carried".

So how does his work with Detroit / Houston? FIRST can introduce the tiered-competition system at the same time as the Championsplit, and then roll out additional events almost immediately. Name one city (Say, Houston) as the World Championship, and then make Detroit a (larger) Super Regional (with teams from Ontario, Quebec, Michigan, MAR, NE, etc). Roll out smaller but still decently sized events in the Midwest, the Southeast, and West Coast (Minneapolis, Orlando / Atlanta, someplace in Cali). As far as I know, the contracts just say that there will be events in Detroit / Houston, not that they the events would be the "World Championships." After these contracts expire, FIRST can shrink Detroit to regular Super Regional size.

EricH 03-05-2015 13:04

Re: Proposal for the 2 Championship format
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by scottandme (Post 1479630)
Well, that happens in many high school sports. Some schools are perpetually competitive, and stay in the top division, with the bottom of the division(s) experiencing more "churn" as teams rise and fall. [..]
Who do you think makes up the "churn" at Champs in the current qualification system? Pretty much all the teams that the OP proposed moving to the "B" champs.

That's not exactly what I'm getting at here. As a whole, the number of sports teams stays the same, right? (Barring any school closings or openings or suspensions and all.) And between any two random years, the skill levels ain't gonna change all that much, right? Barring some random luck of getting a superstar on a low-level team, of course.

Not in FRC. Not only does the number of teams vary year-to-year, but the skill levels of those teams can change radically. Example: 330, from 2005 to 2007. 1 regional and world champs in 2005, didn't get closer than finalist to anything in 2006 (and didn't get picked for CMP elims), back on Einstein with two regional wins in 2007. If you went promotion/relegation, they'd be in Premier in 2006 and in Challenger in 2007, when you could sure argue the reverse ought to be true. This isn't the only team I can think of...

You HAVE TO have a mechanism for dealing with "improper relegation" here. I haven't heard ANYBODY say ANYTHING about it, which is why I keep bringing it up. In sports you've got the entire previous season's body of work, including the championship (if any) determining relegation/promotion. In FRC, you've got the current season's up to Championship and the previous Championship--sounds a bit off, no? Gary nailed it. Scandall got where I think this is going, long-term--the super-regional model isn't dead, just dormant for another 5 years.

Quote:

Well, all the "reducing costs" talking points are already pretty weak. The team distribution doesn't support the current venue choices. There are too many teams in the Northeast, and not nearly enough near Texas. Circles are 150, 300, and 600 mile. Blue goes to Houston, Red goes to Detroit. There are already going to be a lot of teams closer to Detroit being assigned to Houston.
My point wasn't necessarily that that was the case, but rather that one of FIRST's stated items was to reduce team travel costs. If you're a Detroit team and get assigned to Houston because you're a "Challenger" team (and "Challenger" is in Houston, rather than being assigned to Detroit based on distance, FIRST looks an awful lot like a bunch of liars, no? I mean, unless they offer to pay your travel down there, which I highly doubt they'd do. Being on the west coast, let's just say that for us out here it's kind of irrelevant, we have to fly anyways, so I'm really hoping that Salt Lake City is being talked to now about 2021...

George Nishimura 03-05-2015 13:05

Re: Proposal for the 2 Championship format
 
I think it's unfair to have the previous year determine the ceiling for the following year.

The World/Challenger Championship is originally something I backed, but I can't think of a way to make this fair, especially with regards to RCA and double entry teams.

What happens in the case that all the RCA or EI winning teams are in the top 10% of robots? It only seems to work if you disregard the awards at the second "championship".

Personally, I'm beginning to believe that if you have to have two championships, the originally proposed model, after adding the ability for teams to swap bids, is the most fair. If the two winning alliances played each other it would be a lot like if we had 800 teams and 8 divisions last year (ie pre playoff format).

Also I think it would be a great shame if rookies weren't well represented at championship, and something I doubt FIRST would implement.

PayneTrain 03-05-2015 13:58

Re: Proposal for the 2 Championship format
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by wilsonmw04 (Post 1479633)
you might see VA and the new Capital district going to Houston. They were originally going to put the VA FTC teams in the Houston. I think there is another reason, besides those given by FIRST for the location of the new CMP's. They may be carrots for the two states that have been fulling a large portion of growth for FRC. You can also assume that that growth will continue in the future making these locations adventitious.

I've been a big fan of having CMP trips that aren't financial boondoggles like what West Coast teams have to shell out to go anywhere so in my selfish monetary opinion I'd like to avoid Houston :)

Any kind of promotion/relegation system in FIRST is pretty ludicrous. I do see some merit in creating an Open Championship vs World Championship split but not if it means resigning teams to a division they can't compete in/needlessly dominate for no reason. I do think a CMP event with higher parity in the competition creates a more inspiring environment for everyone, so promotion/relegation in the frame of reference of an FRC season doesn't make any sense.

Michael Hill 03-05-2015 14:03

Re: Proposal for the 2 Championship format
 
I actually wouldn't mind a premier league and challenger league. One thing, however, I would request is teams start making "robot tour" videos after the event. One of my favorite things about championships is elite teams being very willing to give you a tour of their robots. One team that sticks out in my mind is 2056. If you ask them how their robot works, they're more than happy to show you how (provided you approach them during down time). Other teams are very good about this as well (1114, 254, etc.). Splitting into two championships (especially divided by talent) would really segregate the good from the great. If teams published "your" videos, I think it would really help this situation out. Heck, there could even be an award for the team that produces the best tour video (who says all awards have to be given out during the season?). It's a pretty tall order to have teams do this, I understand, but it would really satisfy one of the things I (and I assume many others) get out of champs.

Rachel Lim 03-05-2015 14:09

Re: Proposal for the 2 Championship format
 
I really like system B (and not just because then I'd have a good excuse to write another paper explaining the district point system to my team). I'm still going to keep hoping that in 2021 there will be enough districts that DCMPs / super DCMPs can filter into a single championship, partly because I think champs would seem more "real" (no one can argue that XXXX team should have been in the other one), and partly so that everyone will get to see at least their local-ish powerhouse teams.

That said, I don't think it will be accepted without any arguments. Here are some of the issues I think will come up:

Goals:
- FIRST: they don't seem to think a single championship/winner is a priority. If they don't, and continue not to, how much will they be willing to work with a system that will be causing them more work?
- "Average" teams: the teams typically un-/under-represented on CD, that FIRST seems to be aiming this structure at, but that we can't really tell what they think. Without knowing what percentage of teams are for/against this structure, it's impossible to tell--and since once again the more vocal group (minority?) is the group more likely to respond to surveys, getting accurate data probably won't happen.

Philosophy on winning:
- I've heard two different philosophies, both in FIRST and in general. Either:
- If everyone is a "winner," no one is truly a winner. It just cheapens winning.
- It removes the incentive to be best, the push to be best, and the inspiration in seeing (or being) the best.
Or:
- If everyone is "winner," everyone is happy. (Or maybe not "everyone" but a larger portion of teams)
- It creates a sense of accomplishment, a desire to keep going, and the inspiration in knowing that you can--and did--do something right.
- I think the majority of people on CD, which is generally mentors on at least fairly famous teams, fall into the first category. I understand that--I'd put myself in there too. But I do see why FIRST could think the second inspires more students. I do know students (and adults) who think that way.
- Would FIRST see splitting champs based on performance as falling too far into the first category? What balance are they trying to strike?

Location:
- From what I could tell from the recording/transcript of the meeting, FIRST does think they'll be saving travel costs for a significant number of teams.
- Telling a Michigan team to go to Houston, or a Texas team to go to Detroit, because they qualified for the "other" champs definitely doesn't fit in.
- Obviously this won't matter a ton for California / west coast teams--it's a full day of nonstop driving just to get into Arizona from the bay area (and it's not a very interesting drive)--but some other teams will not be as happy.

But XXXX shouldn't be there...
- There will undoubtedly be complains about who got into which one. There are already complains about the teams who have/haven't qualified for champs.
- Even with the best intentions, this could define a "second-tier" of teams, and someone at some point will be pointed out as "not deserving" their spot.


Then there's the whole issue issue that they may not truly understand what it's like to be on a FIRST team, despite their best intentions, as I said somewhere else with my analogy about my parents not letting me go to the lab. I think we all want what's best for as many teams as possible. FIRST HQ and CD just disagree about the best way to accomplish this, and based on the recording of the town hall meeting, it doesn't sound like either side is truly willing to listen--at least not yet. I'll continue to be optimistic and hope for the best.


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