Re: Split Champs in '17 and '18
 

Just because I can, I'll throw 2 cents into this pile. My opinions don't reflect any team or other team members.

Let teams select where they want to attend. Some teams have the means to travel. So a team from Houston wants to go to Detroit, they should let the team decide. (leave in the acceptance time line we have now).

With split dates, one could argue that the teams going to the event on the latter date would have more time to prepare. Most teams attending championships have a practice bot. So there is a case to be made about going to the latter of the two events.

Now on the flip side, I could see where FIRST could say "Rookie Teams" and a set group of teams (2nd and 3rd yr or teams that haven't attend in the last XX yrs) would be locked geographically. This would assist in setting a field while letting others select where they attend.

Now, if any selection is allowed, here is the "Issue" what happens when an event fills up before the last Regionals/Districts and you have a team without the means (Money) to travel a greater distance. Do you lock in a set number of slots, and when the waitlist comes up fill them off there.

How do you handle the wait list? By what a team has asked for or by geography. Team 999999 wants to go to Houston but Houston is full are they even offered a position in Detroit?

FIRST has a lot of decisions to make about how different issues are to be handled. Hopefully some one is looking at what the community is saying as many people have many excellent points to the issues that could and will arise over the next 9 months.

Have a Great Off-Season!!

Re: Split Champs in '17 and '18
 

I'm mostly referring to an in season decision. I agree that a preseason decision would probably work out terribly. But my point is FIRST has always needed to decide which teams deserve to go to district championships and who goes to worlds. Teams have never complained about that. And the same goes for the regional system, which if im being honest, is a horrible system for deciding who gets to go.* I don't see how deciding which teams get to go to the division A champs and which teams get to go to the division B champs is any different. As for logistics, in districts teams would be finding out where they stand in the rankings at the same time that they do now. Maybe there are some more teams that can't book ahead of time because they would have been sure they could qualify for a championship before district champs, but nowe aren't sure which one, but for the majority nothing has changed. As for teams still in the regional system, I think people would just have to get used to a system where 3 teams qualify for division A (say alliance captain, 1st pick, and chairman's), and the other 3 go to division B. It's not perfect, but like I said, it's not like the current system is good either.

* I could talk about how I think it is far too biased towards non-engineering awards and luck, but the aspect of it that I think everyone can agree is terrible is how heavily your chances of qualifying are based on the quality of the regional, how late in the season it is, and how many regional you can afford to attend, rather than how much you actually deserve to go.

Re: Split Champs in '17 and '18
 

OK, now I understand.

In principle, I don't see there being all that big a deal...

But then there are two further points that need to be made.

#1: If you sort into an A and a B, then one of the two is NO LONGER a CHAMPIONSHIP. You're sorting a second-tier group. That's like telling a rookie team that they could have had RAS and now because they didn't perform well enough on-field they only get RI (or nothing). There are solutions, yes. But don't call it a Championship. I've made my views on that very clear in the past, this isn't a good way to do it.

#2: As I said before, ANY solution that results in teams having zero time to make travel arrangements (particularly flights--as a Bostonian, you need to understand that the West Coast has NEVER, EVER been able to DRIVE to Champs without taking multiple days, unlike most of the East Coast and Midwest teams) is a non-starter. It was bad enough trying to get a team in on a lost/canceled reservation (actually happened, but the travel agency worked to get us there and home); I can't imagine doing that under normal conditions.


If you use geography, at least teams know BEFORE they plan where their particular system is feeding to, so they can immediately start planning when they qualify. If you use a points system, teams might not know until Week 7 after qualifying in Week 1--that means that they had 6. Weeks. of. Not. Being. Able. To. Plan. This isn't a DCMP that most teams can easily drive to, this is a World Championship Event! You can't just go in without planning!

Re: Split Champs in '17 and '18
 

I mention that if you dig into threads last year, EricH and I worked out a system that we thought would make everyone a bit happier, but we doubt that anything will come of it, at least until after FIRST has some experience with its current proposed model.

Re: Split Champs in '17 and '18
 

Based on a few conversations I've had with people and some ideas rolling around in my head, I've developed a few thoughts on how I think teams will be split between the two venues. All venue assumptions are just that: assumptions. I may or may not be right.

#1 (District System): Any team that qualifies through the district system will be zoned based on the location of said district. For example, Peachtree would go to Houston, and New England would go to Detroit.

#2 (Regional System): The championship which you qualify for is based on the event location that you originally qualify at. For example, let's say a team from Arizona attends the Northern Lights Regional in Minnesota. If that team won the event, and had not prequalified, they would receive a bid to attend Detroit. If another Arizona team went to AZ North and qualified, then they would attend Houston. However, if the team that went to Northern Lights ALSO went to AZ and qualified, they would still be going to Detroit, not Houston. The team that earned the subsequent wildcard would go to Houston.

#3 (Prequalified teams): All prequalified teams will be assigned based on registered team location in TIMS. This is done far enough in advance and is a small enough number of teams that it shouldn't affect too much.

#4 (District teams competing at Regionals): This is the only major change I think they would have to make. Since FIRST is trying to provide incentive for regions to go to the district model, I believe they would have to choose this solution - if a team from a district attends a regional and qualifies at that event before qualifying any other way, then they DO NOT count into that district's allocation, and, for the purposes of assigning teams to Houston/Detroit, would become a team under point #2. Again, that team would NOT count toward that district's allocation.

This system would, I think, keep the number of teams attending each Championship reasonably constant and predictable.

Just a few thoughts and educated guesses, nothing more.

EDIT: Basically, this http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...5&postcount=36
(Thanks Jared)

Re: Split Champs in '17 and '18
 

Hey Guys-

I feel a bit obligated to chime in, as I am all of your community representative to the 2017 Championship Committee. I can't share specific details with what the split will be, but I wanted to simply state that almost every option and thought shared here has been taken under consideration by the Championship Committee.

Obviously this is a very challenging task. "Splitting" Championship is not the approach I would have taken, but with that being said, making the best possible outcome for both Championships and for the teams was my biggest priority in the MANY discussions had by the committee.

I don't think there is a way to make everyone happy at the same time, but I think many teams will be happy and hopefully everyone will agree the system put in place is fair and predictable.

-Brando

Re: Split Champs in '17 and '18
 

That's sort of true. I'm not sure how much of a sports fan you are, but the winners of the NIT are still called "champions". Does that mean that anyone remembers that George Washington won this year? Besides GW and some really hard-core fans, everyone else remembers Villanova as the "real" champions. It's fine. Everyone recognizes this. I doubt even anyone at GW thinks they could have won the NCAA tournament. Anyway, my point is that it happens for every sport at every level. There is only one World Series champion, but there are plenty of minor league championships, college baseball championships, high school championships, little league championships... None of them would beat the World Series champions. I am in danger of beating a dead horse here, so I'll stop.

Actually, I was going to leave it at that, but I would argue that the A and B scenario is actually better than the geography scenario for determining a champion. I think in the geographic / random distribution of teams, your quote could be amended to "neither of the two is a championship". We'd be where college football was before the playoff system, where the champions were not determined on the field but in the sports editors' offices.

I'm not sure why geography is the only way they know before the season. I am suggesting that teams are "sorted" (including those declaring) before the season. Same situation as before - teams know where they are going, if they qualify.

Re: Split Champs in '17 and '18
 

I can agree to both of those points. There are a lot of problems with making one event better than the other, and I can't say that I have thought enough about the idea to know if there actually is a practical, satisfactory solution to make it work. But I think, done correctly, it could solve at least some of the problems with the championsplit.

Re: Split Champs in '17 and '18
 

Don't most states have a tiered approach to all high school sports?

Division 2 Football Champs
Class A Basketball Champs

Re: Split Champs in '17 and '18
 

Heck one could argue a lot of schools do this with Varsity, and Junior Varsity teams

Re: Split Champs in '17 and '18
 

It would also be bad for the teams that are there for the second event due to the need for hotels and no city has enough hotel space for all teams to be booking hotels to cover across both events

Re: Split Champs in '17 and '18
 

Do y'all really think we're at a level where that kind of segregation by ability makes sense, though? Assume we have perfect knowledge of teams and we magically do that split.

A division = STL Champs - lower 33% of robots, split into 4 sub-divisions. How different does that look from the STL Champs we got? How different does that Einstein look?

B division = lower 33% of STL Champs + the next 200 bots by capability. What does this Champs look like? What does this Einstein look like?

Re: Split Champs in '17 and '18
 

That's done by student population size though.

The real world champion is what we all make of it. Our current system has the winning alliance's backup bot as the world champion. I don't think anyone would argue that any 3rd round pick is better than 254 or other top tier teams, but we as a community, myself included, see all four teams on that alliance as world champions, while no one else is.

For this reason splitting champs by ability or by region will always result in 8 world champions, it just depends on what YOU feel qualifys a team a champion. In much of sports there is more than one champion by virtue of more than one championship. Take swimming for example.

Along with the world championship, their is also the Olympics. You could argue a swimmer that wins gold at either is the world champion. This does assume however that everyone can compete at either championship.

(Assuming a model based on location, which I don't particularly support) If teams want to compete at both championships, let them, but they need to qualify at two events where they can qualify. Say 9999 in the Chesapeake district wants to go to both worlds. They can attend a regional in California, Win chairman's there, and qualify for both championships by also qualifying through their district.

If we are switching from 600 to 1000 spots at worlds next year (not sure of real number) we shouldn't worry about the few teams that make both worlds taking up spots.

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Re: Split Champs in '17 and '18
 

I don't call them championships.
I call them Super Regional North and Super Regional South.