Re: Multiple Event Winners
 

What would be kind of cool to see, is a dominant #1 seeded alliance (such as 1114/1503/1482, or 1114/2056/3756) call in a backup bot for Finals 2, giving a 4th team a seat at CMP.

Re: Multiple Event Winners
 

I think that this comes up every single year... Like Eric said, they do not steal a spot from another team... In my opinion, these teams help other teams. In their second (or even third) regional win, they take teams in their alliance to a regional win and thus to championships.

Last year at Palmetto, the winning alliance (343, 1261, and 1398) were all already qualified for championships. Of the finalist alliance (1772, 2751, 1102) I do not think that any of them were pre-registered for championships. But, after the regional, all three (I believe) were invited because of their performance at the regional.

All in all, they are already going to the regional... they have paid, and have earned the right to do their best at any competition that they go to. With multiple regional wins, the wait-listed teams get moved up (that may not have gone otherwise) and get to go.

Re: Multiple Event Winners
 

How can you say that these teams took multiple seats? Each team only gets to attend the Championship once in a year. It's not like they reduce the number of teams attending if they win more than one regional competition. On the contrary, by not using one of the slots being held for regional winners, they let more teams in from the wait list.

Re: Multiple Event Winners
 

Alan, I realize that. I was merely pointing out the distribution of the slots associated with a given regional and which teams earned those slots. I'm fully aware that 1114 has opened 3 seats for waitlisted teams by being awesome.

Re: Multiple Event Winners
 

Keep in mind that those teams that win multiple Regionals also have given their alliance partners a ticket to Championship as well. It has been mentioned that teams on the wait-list will get to go, and that is true as well.

As for the Michigan teams (where some of these multiple-event winners are from), teams are NOT automatically qualified for Championship OR The MSC by winning a district. Teams must compete for points, and at the end of the season, the teams with most points qualify for The MSC (plus Chairman's Award winners, assuming they don't have enough points to qualify).

Besides, it should be noted that these powerhouse teams are essential to FIRST Robotics. As far as I am concerned, FIRST would not be as successful as it is without powerhouse teams doing what they do best: winning. Seeing a team like 1114 win an ungodly amount of events makes one ask, "How can I make MY team compete at that level?" I talked about this a little bit when JVN posted about multiple-championship-winning teams getting an auto-in to the Championship event. While all teams should have the opportunity to compete, one must also recognize that the teams that win year-after-year will not ALWAYS be perfect, don't win the Championship EVERY year, and are part of the culture change that FIRST is attempting to create.

Re: Multiple Event Winners
 

While I don't agree with this within the current Championship qualification rules, I think the giving of points/spots could be incorporated into the district system. It would allow for teams to play within another region without claiming to points for that region. This could also encourage teams to host visiting teams in hopes the visiting team could share any points they won.

For example, if team 51 was good friends with team 78 and wanted to invite 78 out to Michigan to play. If 78 earned points at that event, they could give them to 51 or any other team they thought deserving at the event. This eliminates one of the negatives of the district set-up and would encourage teams to visit other regions as many teams do now. There could be some simple giving rules to avoid teams taking advantage of this system, for instance, you can't give points to anyone on your eliminations alliance, or rules of that nature.

-Eric

Re: Multiple Event Winners
 

Pre-qualified or pre-registered? The entire original #2 alliance at Philly was already going to Champs. When 2607 came in to replace 365 in the Finals, that added some new blood to Champs (I'm glad they can go on short notice).

Also you might want restrict the years range to those using the current qualification criteria. If I remember it correctly qualification for "Nationals" started in '02 but it was much broader (you had to get a certain number of points, including points for all awards) and there were significantly less teams. I am glad that my team has qualified on current year criteria every year, never relying on previous year qualification (like HOF, & last year National Champ).

Re: Multiple Event Winners
 

I dont see how that would happen. Teams that win multiple regionals or any other types of tickets to World's wouldn't want to win by "giving" the extra slot to another team. It would be like 233 giving another team one of their extra slots this week because all the regionals are done.

Re: Multiple Event Winners
 

If your team didn't make the Mike and Justin's top 25, don't feel bad. 10 of the 23 teams that won multiple events did not make the top 25.

Re: Multiple Event Winners
 

I think the Championship should be a well championship. It think it should be like the MSC only larger. Each regional sends a Chairman's, RAS, and EI, the rest of the spots would be determined by points. Teams get points for everything just like we do in Michigan. This way the best of the best play for a true Champion. And if people who didn't make it want to go they could compete in a division 2 style tournament.

Re: Multiple Event Winners
 

On the subject of the spots of teams who qualify more than once, I think I've come up with a simple solution.

If a team on the Winning Alliance is already going to the CMP, then the Captain of the Finalist Alliance gets the spot alloted for the winner. If the Captain is already going to the CMP, then the spot is awarded to the first pick of the Finalist alliance and so on and so forth.

Thoughts?

(This still doesn't cover CA or EI award winners, but the concept could be expanded to them as well.)

Re: Multiple Event Winners
 

I'd like to see everywhere adopting the Michigan model. District events, leading to a regional championship, which then awards seats at CMP proportional to the region's pre-district model size (although to be fair, Michigan should be sending more than 9 teams on merit, given the team-density. Michigan could easily support 4 or 5 regionals now, despite having only 3 when the district model started.)

Compare: 1075 attended 3 regionals this year, for the first time in our history. Total Cost: $5000+4000+4000 = $13000. Thats it for our season.
In 2010, we attended 2 regionals + championship. Total Cost: $5000+4000+5000 = $14000.

Take an MI team, 2337 for example:
They attended 3 districts, MSC, and Championship in 2011 Total Cost: $5000+$500+$4000+$5000 = $14500.

An extra $500-1500 cost, to attend 5 events instead of 3? Yes, please! Even more so, when you consider the caliber of MSC and CMP.

I could certainly see it working for Canada: Niagara District, York/Durham District, Waterloo District, Toronto District, Quebec/Eastern Canada District, and Western Canada District lead to a Canadian National Championship, replacing GTR.

I don't think everywhere has the density to support the model on a state-by-state basis, but MI, TX, NY, and CA surely do. I expect you could glom together a few states in the northwest to come up with a big enough pool of teams.

Re: Multiple Event Winners
 

I like the idea of finalists having a shot at qualifying!
However, say: at a week 2 regional team A is captain of the #2 alliance and loses to teams B, C, and D in the finals. This is B, C and D's first regional and now they qualify for the Championship. In week 4, Team B wins another regional. Does the finalist from the week two regional or the week four regional qualify for Championships?

Every year, there are always a few great teams that don't qualify for the Championship, and its too bad. Maybe a ranking system of sorts to allow the top 10 ranked non-qualified teams to qualify would work.

Re: Multiple Event Winners
 

I say the we get rid of buying one's way in and switch to a Michigan point style system for the whole world. Top teams go.

..and if First still wanted rookies to attend (think Rookie All-star) then they could give a much bigger bonus to that award to greatly boost good rookie's points as opposed to a by. This would go a long way in making Worlds more competitive. Like MSC x4.

Re: Multiple Event Winners
 

You'd make all of Canada a single region? That's going to force some teams to travel far in order to get their two district-level competitions. The distance and density factors are extremely important inputs to a district model.