Quote:
Originally Posted by Kpchem
Full disclosure: I am an alumnus of one teams involved, FRC 360. My opinion is my own, and in no way associated with my former team. I watched the webcast on Saturday and saw only what was shown there. Finally, I understand that as someone with an association with these teams I cannot be totally unbiased in this situation.
I believe the point being made here is not that the blue alliance "thought they had scored enough points" or thought that they should have won. It was the fact that it was announced to everyone in attendance that the blue alliance had won the regional, and the correction to the score did not come until 15 minutes later. While some alliances may think that they'd won a match, and therefore the regional, this was not just an assumption the teams had made - they were told that they had won. I believe that is why people are arguing that the alliance should be given a pass to Championship, because they were officially told that they had earned one and later had it taken away.
I also want to echo Frank in saying thank you to the volunteers at this event for coming forward and revealing what happened. I know how hard it must have been given the circumstances, but it was definitely the right thing to do. Thank you, and I hope that you continue to work with FIRST in the future.
Please know that I am not trying to argue in favor of anything, given my association with the situation. I just wanted to attempt to clarify what is being said in this thread.
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I understand the argument, I just think we're talking about a difference in degree more than in type. There have been a large number of teams who have felt similar to the Blue Alliance did here, it's just that the Blue Alliance had it worse because they thought they'd won for 15 minutes instead of 2-3. Basically, I'm disagreeing that officially announcing it makes this a completely different situation that requires a completely different response. I really do feel very bad that the teams on both alliances had to go through this, but it's not as if awards had been handed out and travel plans had been made already. It's not like their robots were handicapped by field problems and couldn't perform to spec. The only reason for qualifying those teams for Champs in this case is that we feel really bad about how disappointed and upset those teams are. Which, it seems to me, opens up a lot of other circumstances for giving teams free passes to Champs.