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Unread 07-05-2011, 13:01
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Tetraman Tetraman is offline
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Re: Qualifying for CMP in the future

Disclaimer: This is mainly to be used as a theoretical possibility to be discussed. It's not the answer nor do I claim it to be. It's a well thought out concept model that incorporates what has been discussed so far. Constructive comments please. Also PLEASE don't just quote this entire post, cause it is long.


We know that the best way to reconstruct the World Championship is to reformat the Regional Competitions. One way that has been discussed is a Regional Championship, and here is my take on how to implement it.


FRC Open Events
The traditional Regional Competitions will maintain the same process that they always have in past years, but are titled differently. Rather than being a Regional, they are FRC Open Events. So The Midwest Regional would be the "Midwest Open", and the Finger Lakes Regional would be the "Finger Lakes Open". The Events are open to all possible teams as the Open Event can take in, allowing for teams that enjoy traveling to other regionals as they do today to take part in events across the country or over the world. FRC Open Events take place within the first five (5) weeks of the FIRST competition season at the end of the build period. Regional events take on any number of FIRST teams as they can handle (anywhere from 40-60), and give out the same awards. However, the awards will not be worth the same as they have in the past.

How do you get into an FRC Open Event?
1 - You must pay the fee required to participate
2 - You must sign up early, before the Open Event is filled.
3 - Everything that is asked of you for any regional today.


FRC Regional Competitions
Each FRC robotics team is slotted to a Region based on their location. Location can be state based or by specific distances. Each Regional Competition will hold anywhere from 100-120 teams randomly split into two divisions. The divisions will play their own Qualifying and Elimination rounds with the winners of each division competing to be Regional Championship Winners. Similarly to Open Events and Regionals of the past, trophies are handed out - however trophies are not division specific; You will be competition for each trophy over the entire competition field, not just within each division. Based on records and trophies and such, teams will earn invitations to the World Championship. The Regional Competitions are played after the 5 weeks of Open Events and a week off.

[/i]How do you get into an FRC Regional Competition?[/i]
1 - You must be from the specific Region the Regional Competition is for.
2 - You must have won any Open Chairman's Award, Open Engineering Inspiration Award, Open Rookie All Star Award, and/or are Champions of a FRC Open Event - each from the current year.
3 - You must have won last year's Regional Competition Chairman's Award, Engineering Inspiration Award, Rookie All Star Award and/or Regional champions - each from the last year only.
4 - If you haven't either of those awards, similar to what is done for the Championship these days, teams will have specific years which they may apply for their region's Regional Competition. This will allow for teams to attend the Regional Competitions without stellar performances throughout the year. And since Regional Competitions have fewer robotics teams to worry about, teams will be able to apply every other year, rather than every three or four years.
5 - Pay the fee required and everything that is asked of you for any other regional today.


FRC World Championship
Played how it is now, the World Championship doesn't change much. However with this proposal there will be much fewer teams in the World Championship. The World Championship is only available for those who won awards or reached certain achievements in any events in the current year. It is played after the Regional Competitions with a week break in between.

So how do you get to the FRC World Championship?
1 - Be one of the original FIRST robotics teams.
2 - Be a Hall of Fame robotics team.
3 - From an Open Event - win the Open Chairman's Award, the Open Engineering Inspiration Award or the Open Rookie All Star Award.
4 - From an FRC Regional Competition - win the Regional Chairman's Award, the Regional Engineering Inspiration Award or the Regional Rookie All Star Award.
5 - Additionally from an FRC Regional Competition - the original top 8 seeded teams from each regional division earn an invitation. In the event of actual ties, the tied teams are also allowed in. Also, the winners of each regional division earn an invitation as well. (In this way, a possible 22 unique teams earn an invitation based on their performance, 25 teams from each Regional Competition when you include the award winners.)
6 - Be last year's World Championship Engineering Inspiration Award winners, Rookie All Star Award winners and World Champions.
7 - Pay the fee required and everything that is asked of you for any Championship today.

Notes on the FRC World Championship in this proposal
If there were 50 FRC Open Events, (two more regionals than there were last year) and lets say 6 Regional Competitions, that means a total of 333 maximum unique teams will compete in the World Championship. (if my math is right). That is fewer than the number of teams that played this year, but still quite the large pool of robotics teams. Plus, the teams that will be attending the World Championship will always be the best of the best - the top contenders in Regional Competition play, as well as all the great award winners from the current years smaller events.

This may be the most controversial paragraph. I'd suggest that while Open Event winners of Chairman's, EI and RAS are accepted to Worlds, it is only the winners of the Regional Chairman's, EI and RAS awards that compete for the World Championship version of the award.

Yes. It is unfair that the World Championship is so restrictive and teams must be actually good at what they do in order to get any entry. But isn't that what it's for anyway? Think about most High School Sports. You don't make it to Nationals just by winning in your Regional. You have to compete Regionally before you can make it to States, and you can't make it to the Nationals until you make it past States. It's very "win or go home", and the larger FIRST gets, the more of this reality we have to recognize. Pretty soon, we won't be given a golden ticket to the World Championship. We all will have to earn the right to go. Plus who knows, as FIRST grows maybe there can be a smaller event for average teams to play in as well during the World Championship. While some teams play in the 4-division "NCAA" tournament, somewhere else in the area there can be another 2-division "NIT" tournament.



So there you go. Rage and Discuss.
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"For every great theory about design, there is a better and contradictory theory about design. And don't let the irony of that escape you."

Last edited by Tetraman : 07-05-2011 at 13:21.