[Jeffrafa]

Originally Posted by Bob Steele

A secondary consideration was the possibility of taking away points from other teams that were competing in one of their districts that "counted" for them.

I think we need to take a look at that. If our team competed in a third event and we were lucky enough to do well or to win an award, the points we scored that don't count for us are points that a team participating for the 2nd event would not be able to get.

Yes it would be a benefit to get another practice in but at the expense of allowing other teams to get points for District qualifications.

It think this issue needs to be addressed next year. I, for one, would choose to remove 3rd play teams from the elimination rounds and also not allow them to win awards at their 3rd play. I know this seems radical but I think it is the only fair way for teams to advance to district championships.

It is important to understand the reasoning for 3rd plays in the district model. Michigan has been developing and using the district model for over 5 years, and none of the decisions about how the district system works have been made without significant discussion and statistical analysis on impacts to how points are distributed. There is room for discussion and adjustments in the future - but we ought to start out with a common understanding of why things are the way they are.

First - 3rd plays are not for the sole benefit of teams that decide to take them at the cost of teams who happen to attend the same event, they exist for two reasons:

1. To increase participation, rather than let vacant spots go to waste.
2. To make district events fair by making sure all events have the same number of teams in attendance.

The fairness of 3rd plays has been brought up and discussed throughout the development of the district model, when it began as FiM. Jim Zondag was heavily involved in the development, and addressed many common questions last year in an FAQ, including this one - it is well worth a read. I'll include Q10 for easy reference:

Q10: “Why do you allow some teams to play a third district, isn’t this an unfair advantage?”
A10: One of our primary goals is to increase FRC team participation wherever possible. In pursuit of
this goal, we feel that offering vacant slots to teams who want them serves the goals of FIRST and FiM
better than leaving them empty. While this does give additional playing time to some teams, all teams
who wish to play at an additional event are free to enroll in the annual lottery for these available slots.
All teams have equal opportunity for these lottery slots.
Also, if we left these spots empty, we would be giving additional advantage to any team attending a
partially unfilled event. Mathematically, the system is fairer overall if the events are all fully attended.
We want all events to have the same statistical significance in our system.
We add events in units of 40 slots. Growth forces us to add events each time we add 20 new teams.
Usually the number of teams/40 leaves a remainder of 15-20 spots open. We prefer to fill these for
event balancing.

Third play is also not intended to constitute a significant portion of available spots - if the right number of events are available for the teams in the district, only a few spots should remain (1-2 dozen, ideally - roughly 5%), instead of the ~16% remaining in PNW after second registration. And teams participating in 3rd play, although earning points that don't get counted, aren't there simply to 'steal' points away from other teams at that event - they are there to make sure those teams have the same opportunity at the points as if they attended any other district event.

Any district that is smaller gives all teams attending a clear unfair advantage over teams attending larger districts. Already the PNW district has strayed from the intended use by having unequal event sizes (I am not looking to place blame, just stating a fact). I do not envy the job of having to determine where and how many events to host, how many teams to have attend each, and how to make sure all events fill evenly. It is far from an easy task, especially in the first year of implementation. They were planning for growth going into 2014, but instead the team count shrunk (in both states). They adjusted by decreasing district sizes from 40 to 36, but this still didn't end up being sufficient - as 56 spots were left after second district registration. Really, we should have had 9 districts instead of 10, so only 20 3rd play spots would have remained (or 8 districts @ 40 teams each, leaving 14 3rd plays), but who would have forecasted that a year ago when planning started. Then 3rd plays were opened to top off events, but the 18 that went for it fell far short of the 56 required to fill up all the events.

Let's take a quick look for a case study: Mt Vernon had 28 teams, that means all but 4 automatically earned some number of alliance selection points (That's 86%, compared to 69% at Oregon City or Auburn, or 60% at a Michigan district), in addition to getting an almost de-facto chance at additional points by playing in finals. On top of that they had a better chance at winning an award since fewer teams were in attendance. This would have been even more severe if 3rd plays weren't allowed, as the disparity between the smallest and largest event would have been even greater. 3rd plays aren't there to steal points, they are there to make sure no team has an unfair advantage at points by attending a smaller event.

Also we need to keep the big picture in mind. We are not an island, and long term it is important that things are equal and fair not just within our district but between districts. Inter-District play will become a reality sooner rather than later, that's why they have already standardized the district point structure - we can't just go making our own changes to the system. By the time Inter-district hits, it will be important that our event size is the same as FiM or MAR, so that our district doesn't offer an unfair advantage.