Thread: Wild Card 2013
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Unread 18-03-2013, 14:25
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Re: Wild Card 2013

Quote:
Originally Posted by Francis-134 View Post
Simply allowing the championship to fill to its mathematical capacity every year is not going to work out anymore, especially because FIRST continues to grow and more regionals/teams are added every year. Sooner or later, the CMP is going to have to grow by a significant amount to bring us back to the "old days," or we are going to have to accept that only those who are good enough to win (whether it be for on field or off field accomplishments) get to go to Championship. Does this mean that deserving teams will be left on the outside? Sadly, this will be the case.
Let me be clear: I don't believe we should go back to the days of open registration for Championship. Championship should be the domain of those who earned the right to be there, either on the field or off it.

I don't believe that a team earning the right to be there multiple times should be able to reduce the number of teams a region sends. A region should send its N best candidates, where N is proportional to the teams in a region. This is clearly shown comparing FiM's 27 to MAR's 14. FiM has more teams, so they qualify more teams. Simple. Logical. Its difficult to apply this to the regional model though. In Canada, we have 3 regionals in Ontario within 2 hours drive of one another, and many Canadian teams attend 2 or 3 of them.
MI has 207 teams for 2013, and they're qualifying 27, or 13%. There are 73 Ontario teams in 2013, and 18 potential slots, or 25%. I suspect the ideal ratio is somewhere in the middle, and that Ontario has more potential slots than it should based on its density.

I DO believe that the only way to make Championships a sustainable thing as the program continues to grow and add more and more regional events is to convert most of the program to the district model as densities allow. Regions should only qualify a number of teams proportional to the number of teams in the region. This gets messy with regionals as they exist in their current form, because they are non-exclusive sets of teams. This results in teams that compete in multiple places earning multiple slots with no easy answer of who to pass the extra seats on to. The FiM and MAR scenario is working with an explicit set of teams, so it is easy to create a system in which nobody can earn multiple slots to CMP, they simply pass an extra to the next available candidate (ie. if 33 wins a MSC CA, AND qualifies for CMP on points, their points seat just goes to the next highest number of points).

Using Canada as an example: Canada now has 5 regionals. 3 in Ontario (ONTO, ONTO2, and ONWA), 1 in Quebec (QCMO), and 1 in Alberta (ABCA). These 5 should theoretically send 30 teams to CMP. The reality of the situation is that 1114 and 2056 have each historically eaten up 2-4 of these 30 slots on their own. In 2013, 1114 and 2056 are both attending all three Ontario regionals. In the District model, they would not be earning multiple slots, and so, more Canadian teams that are deserving would get to go to CMP on a more consistent basis. Teams like 1310, 1241, 610, 188, 772, 1305, and more. These teams often miss out on CMP slots, leaving representation at CMP a bit odd with 1114 and 2056, plus whoever could win an RCA or EI, plus a few "24th best" teams. The district model adds an extra layer of filtering to that, and thus the 27 MI teams that go to CMP are usually higher caliber. I see this as a good thing. CMP should really be the battle of the best. MSC and MAR Championships are seen as high-strength events, and that is owing to the invitation-only nature of them. They are good vehicles for sending the best teams from their region to Championship.

If FIRST were to make Canada a district model region, I would say that they should keep ONTO2 (GTRWest, Hershey Center Mississauga) as the "Canadian Regional Championship", and convert the others to Districts (possibly by changing their venues, but still keeping the general locations the same), while adding a few additional districts, like perhaps Niagara area, Windsor/Sarnia area, and maybe a Northern Ontario district in Sudbury. One in Quebec City might make sense as growth continues in Quebec. It would probably make sense to leave Western Canada out of this hypothetical region due to geography making logistics difficult.