Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence
This reminded me of something brought up between some fellow FIRSTers and I. It wasn't necessarily any of our points of view, but it was brought up in our discussions:
What if only certain teams who qualify for champs via robot performance (ie regional winners, rookie all-star, etc.) were allowed to compete in matches, and teams that qualify in a non-robot-performance way are still invited for chairman's presentations, exhibitions, etc. Basically, let the teams who proved themselves during the competition season compete in what they excelled at, and let the teams who were outstanding representatives of FIRST compete in what they excelled at. That way, everyone who qualifies can go, and even those teams with a robot not at championship-competition caliber can still experience the championship event and compete in their own competition (chairman's, EI, etc.).
Multiple friends of mine who have gone to championships but didn't do the best in matches have told me that what inspired them the most was the atmosphere. The events, the presentations, the people, and the robots. What inspired them wasn't seeing their own team win a lot of matches, but experiencing the FIRST championship as a whole.
This is just an idea that we came up with. It's not any of our main points of view, but it's something.
My personal thoughts: FIRST needs to celebrate all kinds of teams: Those who perform above and beyond in the robot portion of the game, and those who perform above and beyond in the outreach portion. However, FRC is a robotics competition, and I want to see the highest-quality matches at the championship event. Watching a championship qualifier with low scores and little action doesn't excite me. I know Dean has said "it's not about the robots", but amazing robot matches is what we all want to see. If FIRST were a tree-planting competition, I wouldn't be here right now.
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Personally, I don't think this would be good. I think the RAS/EI/CA teams would feel very left out. It also assumes that those teams do not have good robots. We won RCA in 2010, but were also in the quarterfinals at regionals, and an alliance captain on Curie that year (with, literally, a box on wheels mind you!)
Quote:
Originally Posted by JesseK
Cory has a good point and can get his way* with just three mere words: I.R.I.
- No automatic HOF invitations
- No Original and Sustaining Invitations
- No invitations back just because a team did well last year
Make it an official FIRST event with no CA/EI/RAS (it practically is already...). Problem solved. IRI is so fun to watch, I bet we could even get ESPN, PBS, HBO, or some other network to broadcast it. And no snarking on PBS...
*Cory doesn't strike me as a guy who likes Unicorns or Rainbows, so I'm guessing he'd rather that Champs be purely a merit-based event... |
I dig this idea, if you want competitive matches, IRI will deliver.
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If we're going to say that the Chairman's Award is the most prestigious and important award in FRC. And that the CA recognizes a model team that others should look up to and learn from, then I don't see how we could possibly suggest
not giving CA winners a spot at CMP.
If we want less teams at CMP, the waitlist is the first thing that has to go. I don't know why anybody would suggest cutting teams that do amazing things, work hard, and actually qualify for CMP over teams that are, essentially, buying their way in.
I totally agree that 100 teams was too many, and 8 matches sucked. But honestly, the "elite" teams with fantastic robots still rose to the top. Yeah, maybe the rankings were skewed and who exactly was alliance captain was thrown off a little from what it would have been. But the finals were full of those elite teams.
Yeah, we were one of
those robots this year, we went to CMP for RCA.
So I'm sorry that our robot might have brought yours down a little, but hey, the winning alliance from Curie was still all "elite" teams anyway, what difference did it really make?
Sorry if I come off as defensive or angry, it's because I'm defensive, and a little angry.