Quote:
Originally Posted by Nemo
If FRC got so huge that you could afford to divide the individual regions into divisions and still have enough teams to fill up the local events at each level, then I suppose you could have a tiered system that simply didn't have any specific criteria for dividing the teams. You'd just put the teams with the best historical track records into the top division, and the other teams would need to prove themselves over time to be selected to move into the top division. The top division could initially be populated with teams according to some algorithm taking into account past competition performances and awards, leaving some space for adding new teams in the future.
But that would have some disadvantages, such as not allowing newer teams to bump elbows with the really awesome veteran teams.
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Everything else made me say "No." This idea made me think. The way I see it, it seems analogous to a
Promotion and Relegation system used prominently in European football (soccer) leagues. I still don't like it much, because I would rather see a large team population dealt with the district way, to keep everything reasonably organized.
Also, who's to say big schools do better? There's all these other awkward stepping stones like multi-school and non-school teams, team age, and team success. My team has been around for 15 years, but only the last three have we been a school-associated team. The school we work in has about 1200 students, but we also recruit from another school (in a different district). Our history has also been incredibly varied. If you base the split on this year's performance, we were mediocre (missed MSC) and also good (Division Finalists). If you look at the last three years, we didn't go to Championships one year, and our robot didn't move the other. The year before that we were on Einstein.
In short: Few teams are consistent enough performers to eve make a tiered system effective, let alone ethical.
And one more thing: Remember the
I in
FIRST.