North Championship vs South Championship
 

It always seemed clear that the North Super Regional in St. Louis would be much more competitive than the South Super Regional in Houston, but with the announcement of Ontario moving to the district system, I think that the NSR might be even more competitive than the single Championship this past year. The North has more competitive regions than average, and more district regions (which qualify better teams). The NSR will also have fewer waitlist spots than the single Championship had this past year.

Here are the district areas in both the North and the South (including both Ontario and Texas), with how many teams were in each area in 2016.
Currently, the proportion of district teams that qualify for a Championship event is calculated simply by dividing the number of teams attending the championship by the total number of teams. So with 800 teams attending a Super Regional, and with last year’s team count of 3130, 25.6% of district teams will qualify to advance. This results in 265 teams from the North and 107 teams from the South. (Note that both the total FRC population and the population in the district areas will increase, so these team counts will be approximately correct).

I also count 18 regionals in the North (counting the new NY regional) and 26 regionals in the South. (Obviously these numbers will change slightly as new regionals get added). As it stands, this is 108 teams from the North and 156 teams from the South.

In total, the qualification spots for both super regionals is approximately shown in the tables below.

Not only does the North have deep and competitive regions like Ontario, Michigan and Indiana, but it also sends way more teams from district areas and almost no teams from the waitlist. Meanwhile the South has more waitlist teams than district teams!

FIRST will almost certainly change how districts qualify teams to limit how many teams the northern regions send, but even with those changes it seems clear that the North Super Regional will be far more competitive than the South Super Regional (and maybe even more competitive than the Championship this past year).

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

Ironically, even though the change was made with the guise of getting more teams to the Championship, it might even be harder for teams in the north region to go to the championship to qualify or get in via the waitlist.

Considering this goes against the stated reason for the change of getting every team to the World Championship every four years, this is incredibly shortsighted on FIRST's part and further demonstrates just how poorly thought out the two Championships plan has been from the start.

Seriously, who's happy about this now?

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

Two topics that come to mind:

1) Has FIRST announced how district team ratios will be set in the new era? Will it be a percentage of all FIRST teams, or a percentage of all FIRST teams zoned for that event?

2) The South numbers will probably depend a lot on whether Texas goes district in 2017. A state that big flipping would be a game-changer.

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

Coming from a team that has been propelled by the "Competition" in FRC, and is assigned to SSR, this is very disheartening.

I knew it wasn't going to be good, but I didn't know the numbers would shake out to be this bad. :(

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

I ran some numbers on all the teams that had attended championships this year.

This is a breakdown of the combined and average OPR of teams attending the North and South championships in 2017/18, using their scores at the championship event for this year.


Here are the same numbers run on ALL teams in 2016, using their OPRs averaged over all events they attended this year.


Take these numbers how you will (OPR isn't the greatest stat ever), but I think they might hold a bit of weight.

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

The unbalance between the North/South waitlists is striking.
A couple ways to balance the waitlists.

• Send Chesapeake to South Championship
• Allow North teams to apply for waitlist spots to the South
  

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

Houston-area waitlist teams.

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Chesapeake has belonged to the south before; we all know how that turned out.

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

That's literally double the travel distance for CHS teams.

It would be better to send more of the international teams to Houston. Or locations like Nebraska that have similar drive times to both.

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Somehow I don't think switching the Championship location of the 0 teams in Nebraska is going to make much difference. ;)

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In practice - almost all of the international teams are going to attend Houston. The only international regions zoned north have tiny populations to make it appear that international teams were divided evenly.

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This is definitely true. I'd be surprised if there are more than 2 FRC teams from outside North America at NSR.

-Mike

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

So... What happens when Minnesota switches over to districts? Currently they only having 24 champion slots from their regional, but at 208 teams they would need 29 more slots*. So either some region is going to have to move to the south or north will have to be 420 teams and last years winners with no waitlist.



*At the 25.6% listed in the original post Minnesota would send 53 teams.

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

I don't recall seeing an announcement concerning the number of teams which will be invited to attend the Championship events in 2017.

What is the source of the 400 teams per event?

The May 5, 2015 announcement states, "The details for Waitlist slots, along with the number of earned slots assigned to each FRC District, each FTC Super Regional event and countries outside the U.S., and each FLL and FLLJr. region and Partner are still being worked out."

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

Why don't we just send everyone?

YOU GET TO GO TO CHAMPS!

YOU GET TO GO TO CHAMPS!

WE ALL GET TO GO TO CHAMPS!

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

The original post is just for next year, assignments will change slightly when the NSR moves to Detroit.

Also, (as stated in the original post) FIRST is going to have to change how they determine the number of teams that get sent by a district region. Right now they are over capacity if a handful of northern teams win southern regionals. (Actually, I forgot about Legacy teams in the original post, so they are already over 400).

And finally, I don't see Minnesota moving to districts in the foreseeable future (5+ years). FIRST wants all DCMPs to be week 6, meaning that Minnesota will need three fields and way more key volunteers to fit in the schedule. Too many threads have been derailed by Minnesota District discussion, so if someone wants to continue this conversation please make a new thread for it.



Good catch, I could have sworn I saw the 400 number somewhere, but I cannot find it now. If they keep FTC in the separate dome they could fit more than 400 teams at the NSR. (I don't think they've ever done more than 100 team divisions though).

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

Bringing the Championship philosophy back to how it was in the 90s is certainly one way of making Championship great again. ;)

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If you want insight into what is going to happen in the Year 3000, you can take it up with these guys.

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

Just looking at the map, if balancing was needed, I'd switch the following state/Provinces over to Houston:

NU, MB, ND, SD, NE, IA, MN.

Not a perfect plan, but then again, what is? My biggest fear is the Canadian teams affected would have a harder time finding a flight to Houston than Detroit.

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

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Well, the website you linked actually says
But since we're talking about >400 teams here, it hardly matters.

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One way they can clean up the mess that's been made here is by freezing district merit-based qualification at their current numbers and turning over all new spots to the waitlist.

On the topic of moving Chesapeake to Houston; I'd probably prefer to go to Houston in 2018 after all of the likely glaring issues are solved and we are just left with lingering ones. Doesn't change the fact that I am having trouble going to sponsors and other stakeholders in our organization to justify that trip, or pretty much any trip that will end up costing $15k.

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

I would have said the same thing about Texas and Ontario a couple of weeks ago... but I won't dig too much into that issue. I just wanted to bring it up as it would be a large problem if it were to happen in the planned system.

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I read that as "We will attempt to get 400 teams there but it may be 398-399 depending on the last minute invites."

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When everyone goes to championships, no one goes.

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Don't worry, it will get more competitive when California goes dist....nevermind

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What they're doing now would be like the NFL having an AFC championship and an NFC championship with no Super Bowl.

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Up until 2002, basically everyone did go to Nationals (what we know now as Championship). For anyone interested in some decade+ old opinions on this change, this thread is worth perusing:
https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=664
A copy of the actual letter sent out explaining the system can be found in this post:
https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/s...1&postcount=17

There was another change in eligibility again a couple years later (2004), which laid out the regional qualification method still used today (minus the wild card system). Also worth reading about:
https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=22322

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

If #2Champs was announced just 12 years earlier, it sounds like it would've been met with thunderous applause.

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

Thanks for the history lesson!

What I'm getting is that CD never stopped complaining, and FIRST will go ahead with their decision despite complaints. :]

A prediction from 2001 became somewhat true. Yet, FRC goes on.
Maybe one of prediction for 2Champs becoming bad will turn out to be right. FRC will go on anyways, changed but not destroyed.

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

You just won the necromancy award. :D Seriously thanks for finding and posting this. In it is the solution for the north/south dilemma. Just move the southern 1/2 champs back to Disney World. It is not about the robot anyway. Who wouldn't want to go to Disney rather than Detroit (or St Louis) in the spring? The snow is all gone, not really the rainey or tornado season. Hurricane season hasn't started up yet.

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I like it!!! Starting in 2021, ESR in Disney World, WSR in Disney Land.

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I thought he meant we were holding Champs in Omaha! :yikes:

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I think you might have miscalculated - those OPR's are too high for 2016. I calculated the stats below with the 2834 database using the world rank OPR. Calculated for all teams in each region, and teams from that region attending the 2016 championship.

Region - Teams - Average OPR

FRC North 1773 23.71128032
FRC South 1357 21.27907148
CMP North 355 34.4256338
CMP South 245 31.15387755

See charts below for data from 2016. The big difference for next year will be the waitlist percentage. Does anyone have a dataset that lists how teams qualified for the 2016 championship? I would expect a bigger gap for next year, since the North will have a more competitive group from Ontario, and likely a smaller group off the waitlist. The last chart roughly represents elimination teams if each event has 4 fields of 100 teams.

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

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Was wondering how long this would take. I looked up 2015 numbers and saw 0 (FIRST's new website doesn't make it easy to filter by state). I later discovered there was a 2016 rookie. My bad.

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

One way to fix the qualifying space issue is to reduce the number of teams that qualify. I'm not suggesting don't qualify Rookies or EI or Chairman's. I'm suggesting going back to 2v2. Or 2v2v2.

With 2v2, you will see fewer matches at a given event, however, at district events, the increased time between matches may be welcome (but I'll be on the opposite side where 60 team regionals will be LUCKY to get 8 matches). Could make sense if the current indication is only 50 teams in a division though...

But with 2v2v2, you get the best of both worlds. Still have 6 teams on a field a time, so you don't see any change to the current schedules or expectations of match numbers. But you only qualify 2(3) instead of 3(4) teams from an event. Then you only need 6 divisions of 75 and Einstein is some sort of weird round-robin type tournament where everyone plays everyone. But then we need #3Champs. Nevermind :ahh:

Re: North Championship vs South Championship
 

I dunno--that single team could swing the balance of N/S quality... ;)