Quote:
Originally Posted by Shankar M
Penalty Announcements
I would love to see penalty calls (and their rationale) explained by the head referee. As the field is reset there is often an opportunity to explain why a call has been made in a given match - there may only be time to explain why technical fouls are called, but something is better than nothing at all.
In my experience, as a score is read off by the announcer readying themselves to introduce the forthcoming match, on rare occasions references may be made to fouls assigned but almost never to why they were called. Perhaps this is to be expected: the announcer's role is keep the atmosphere of the event exciting, not to elucidate the minutiae of the rules.
Allowing the head referee a moment to announce any penalties and why they were enforced as they were would bring transparency to a generally murky realm. It would make clear to all teams at the event how the referee interprets the rules and what actions must be taken to avoid being penalised in the future while adding an element of accountability to the referee's actions.
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Interesting, I thought this was already the case. In fact, a random review of my match videos has the GA explaining the specific technical foul violation in every single one. (Sometimes the team number is omitted, particularly for very specific--e.g. human player violations--so as not to call out a specific student in front of a thousand people. However, my alliance has always been provided this information directly, at least if we ask.)
I've never had a question about why a technical foul occurred against my alliance in this year or previous ones where similar concepts existed. Sometimes the announcement has been omitted for whatever reason--usually coinciding with comm or scoring issues--but in 7 years and 11 different official venues, I've never encountered a situation in which a polite
student in the Q box was not told the exact nature of challengable fouls. (Mentors not so much, but it's illegal and unprofessional for us mentors to be asking anyway.) This is not to say I always agree with the calls, but at least they're not a mystery. If this disclosure is not the case for everyone, I agree that should be remedied. I wonder why the discrepancy exists in the first place. What happens when a student politely questions the technical, and what does the head ref say when you request announcements at the driver's meeting?
As to G25, if you have a Q&A to ask, please do. The chances of rules getting clarified goes down significantly if you don't try.